12:50 a.m. - Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010
Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror Review 10/10
Alright, I finished another anime in my list of horrors. If you want an idea of my list head to http://myanimelist.net/soratothamax and you can see all of the animes I have lined up and will review. For now, I'm giving you my opinion on my latest anime (yes, another horror):
Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror
I will be discussing the story, character development, music, art design and style, and the writers and creators.
Story: This is a three-part anime. There are three different stories and they are told in three different ways. One is told by chapters, one has narration,and one is told in the basic anime way. 1)The first in the anime is called Goddess of the Dark Tower. It's a story of a Goddess who fell in love with a human. The biggest problem with the Goddess loving the humans is that the humans killed her mother, making the Gods lose their immortality. Really, the Gods needed the humans for food and to ease the pain of losing the Queen of the Gods, who happened to be the mother of the main princess in the story. This was about the two world colliding. Something that irked in the back of my mind was still unanswered in the anime. 2)Yotsuya Ghost Story is next. It is the story about a good woman who fell in love with a samarai. The Samarai seemed good to her, and apparently she had sex with him and became pregnant. But her father didn't approve. This seemingly nice samarai then gets angry with the rejection, and turns into this evil man. He ends up murdering her father. He pretends he didn't do it, and promises his woman that he would seek revenge, as men had to do for their families. But soon after his woman had her baby, she became ill, and this evil man started to grow tired of her. A young spoiled girl, who had her eye on him, plotted to poison his wife and take him for herself...which caused a big mess...You have to see the rest. It caused a curse, I'll say that. 3)Bake Neko is the third story. The story begins with a young girl marrying to help her family financially. But just as she's about to leave, she falls dead. The story comes up that a demon has possessed the house. A young medicine man appears as well to tell the family this. The only way to get rid of this demon is to know why the demon is angry and the reason it has appeared at the moment. As he finds out the story, the truth about the family's past comes to the light. All of the stories are interesting in their own way and told in different ways, so this never becomes competitive. It can become confusing if you don't pay attention. If you like Samarais, you'll love this. If you are interested in traditional Japan, you'll love this. And if you love drama or variety, you will love this. The nature of every story is so distinct, you might forget you are watching the same anime.
Characters: The cast is very vast, but the characters are very well developed. The first story is about the Goddess focusing on the characters Himekawa Zoshonosuke and TomiHime. Himekawa is a medieval falconer who lost his bird having him run deeper into a woods which made him meet the Goddess TomiHime. She was supposed to kill him, but he was so nice, I guess she didn't want to. Well, she was really in awe of humans and fell in love with him. Their forbidden romance causes problems for both worlds.
The second story about the ghost focuses on Tamiya Iemon and Tamiya Oiwa. Tamiya Oiwa was a good woman who took care of her child. But when Iemon abandoned her, she put a curse on him...This was a dramatic story. The third story focuses on a family, but the real main character is the medicine man, who btw, has his own spin-off series called Mononoke. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
Music: The opening seems very out of place, but it's also pretty good. It's called HEAT ISLAND by Rhymester. It's a hip-hop/rap song. The ending song is more traditional. It's called Haru no Katami by Chitose Hajime. Interesting blend of music.
Art/Design: All of the styles are distinct and vary according to the story. The one that stood out the most to me was the third story. It had so many bright colors and geometrical figures. It was pretty loud. The second seemed the most traditional in style. The first seemed more modern.
Writers and creators: There were three writers, which is pretty obvious because none of the stories are alike or told in the same way.
Chiaki J. Konaka (Yotsuya Kaidan)
Yuuji Sakamoto (Tenshu Monogatari)
Michiko Yokote (Bakeneko)
They are the three writers, and have serious distinction in their ideas of horror. If I were to pick my favorite story, I think it would be the third...I guess because there's just something interesting about the medicine man. The second one would be next because that was just so far-fetched and insane. The last would be the Goddess story because of it's predictability (like watching Shonen anime) and the idealistic tone.
So this is my anime review. This is a must-read. I recommend the first story for anyone 13 and older. I recommend the second to anyone 18 and older. And the third 13 and older.
~Over and Out~
