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So Chocothunda and I are splitting up reviewing duties for Yamishibai, also known as Japanese Ghost Stories or Theater of Darkness. Based off of the custom of kamishibai (or paper scroll theater storytelling), an old man brings his theater on the back of his bicycle and tells stories at 5:00.
The tradition of scary stories told as the sun starts to dip below, dying the sky from red to black, dates back thousands of years, from campfire tales told to chill as well as warn against the night's terror, to modern day tests of courage at a slumber party. Yamishibai, who just wrapped its season at the beginning of the month, comes at a very auspicious and fitting time of the year. In Japan, Obon and scary story telling usually begins in high or late summer, where the heat becomes unbearable even in the evening. Perhaps telling bone-shilling stories was a way to cool off, but when it gets to the end of summer, you can guarantee that you'll be getting some spooky feelings as the summer melts into fall.
That said, as the descriptions of the anime state, the 5 minute stories in the show are usually based off rumors and urban legends around the country. As such, you shouldn't expect any neat little resolutions at the end of the story. How many actual urban legends that aren't already legends (so we discount our Ghostly Hitchhiker stories or the Backseat Killer tales) actually have tidy endings? Most things you hear are snippets of strange, horrifying or just plain creepy rumors that often have no basis in anything real except the common theme of fear relating to things in our world that we take for granted as "safe" (our schools, our family, our homes, our friends, etc).
These next 3 episodes all, coincidentally, deal with a common theme: working late or overworking. Its no stretch to remember Japan's high work ethics; hard work day in to night out is a point of national pride, for better or for worse. More than assuming they warn against overwork, I think the message that the Japanese viewer will take more than the Western viewer is that overwork is simply a fact of life, and sometimes it can lead to terrible places. Whether or not you can prevent it, or whether or not you deserve it is irrelevant; being a good person or bad, or deserving a terrible fate or not is irrelevant in a hurricane, isn't it?
As always, your story begins with a "particular" person, perhaps in a "particular" place (or a familiar one, depending). These are basically how urban legends start, do they not? Its not so much different than "So I heard this from my brother's sister's best friend, so its legit". Its particular since they don't really make the "main character" someone you can't relate to. You could easily be a "particular" person one day. You could be in that "particular" place.
It can easily happen. To you.
Episode 3: Hair
A teacher is working late in a school, well after hours are done. Apparently she's in charge of the newsletter or newspaper for the school. She puts her document into the huge Xerox machine (copier-printer...please don't sue me Xerox @_@), where upon it spits out a copy with strange lines over the text. Checking her machine, she finds a frightening visage, but chalks it up for working to hard or being too tired. As more copies pop out with an increasing amount of black lines, she sees that they're strands of hair, inexplicably coming from the toner ink compartment.
Lady, forget the 5 Hour Energy and GO HOME. >_>
What I loved about this episode besides the great jump scares is at the end, you get peaceful, inspiring piano music, up until the horrific end. Perfect. Also, the sounds of the hair are just so creepy and skin-crawling, I'd argue its got the best foley work in the series. This episode is a good standard for the series, perhaps even as a good springboard to get someone's attention (but really, at 5 minutes, might as well show ALL THE EPISODES, right?)
Episode 4: The Next Floor
A man, suddenly called into work while shopping for a birthday present for his son, enters an elevator shaft that takes him to very dark places. Even his wife, frustrated with his choices of work over family, tells their son that they'll celebrate without workaholic daddy. Its this frustration that the father, in the back of the elevator, thinks to himself how he's working to support them, and how he wishes, fatefully, to be alone. Oddly enough...the elevator girl (yes, this is an actual occupation in some parts of the world) seems to hear his request and brings him to floors that aren't marked on the floor lights. Pay special attention to the floors she passes; the number 4, which can be pronounced the same way as the word death, usually isn't present in Japanese buildings, which might explain the man's unease (you'll have to be quick to catch Floor 4 as its announced while he's thinking to himself); but when your Basement Levels on the lights end at 2, the announcement of floors B4 and B13 are unsettling enough in their own right.
What's particularly fascinating is the look his wife gives him as he leaves them; its a look of intense disappointment as well as bits of anger and resentment. Its a fearfully telling detail about the amount of work someone might have to do in a workaholic nation like Japan. One may assume the man's journey into hell is due to his wife, but you can't forget his "request" in the beginning; its a story of being careful what you wish for, especially when you're not truly wishing.
The elevator girl's final look in the end, however, is what makes this story really successful.
Episode 5: The Overhead Rack
A salaryman is riding a train home, amid other passengers, lamenting his overworking as well as his own empty life. Glancing into the overhead rack, which is where passengers can store items to make as much room as possible on these sardine stuffed cars, he sees a horrific blob of red flesh sitting there. Soon after, the train comes to a very abrupt halt: though the announcer doesn't say it outright (choosing carefully the words "accident" involving a "person"), someone has thrown themselves onto the tracks to commit suicide. When the power to the car is cut off for the safety of the rescue workers, the blob comes to the man in the dim light, beginning to absorb him. Wildly, his thoughts become a rushing train of emotions and ideas, looking for a way out, thinking that this horrific thing is due to his overwork even as this thing croaks out in a terrible voice about how it hurts and its so tired, but eventually, running out of options, comes to an epiphany that overlaps with the blob itself.
What's interesting is that instead of screaming hysterically about things no one else seems to see, the man internalizes his suffering even more; he doesn't ask for help, instead choosing to try finding a way out of his hell by himself, as well as focusing on what he ought to do with his life instead of the immediate threat. In this way, the blob can come to mean so many different interpretations that many western viewers have fumbled with its meaning and missing the horror of the story right in front of them. The horror of the story is not the blob itself, but the idea that sometimes, its our own selves that do us the most harm. Perhaps the blob is the shinnentai (manifestation of a person's will rather than a spirit) of suicidal people, leading others to their deaths (as in the screencap you notice that "accidents" have been occurring there a lot); perhaps its the will of the others who have died, targeting and dragging people most likely to be broken to that it perpetuates the endless cycle of suffering. Someone interpreted this as the blob actually being the man as he dies on the tracks and the car is a delusion caused by his inability to break free from his desires/previous life. He is alone, but soon...maybe it won't be so bad....
Anyhow, I'll leave it up to you. Click each title card for a link on Crunchyroll.
And, do me a favor: take a vacation once in awhile, ok??
Dio (10/17/13)
All images screencapped by me, episodes streamed on Crunchyroll.
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