It’s time for more Yamishibai! If you’re not familiar already, Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai is an animated, 5-minute episode show that features scary stories told by a Japanese Kamishibai performer. These stories range from well-known Japanese urban legends, to more modern takes on horror.
I fell in love with these short stories a few years ago, and though I have far surpassed Season 4, I am going back and reviewing them all to spread the word on how great this show is!
Tongue
A man learns what happens when you take pity on a dead animal. For whatever reason, I feel like I’ve heard this rumor before; if you make a grave for a dead animal you come across, its spirit may follow you home. For this salaryman, it wasn’t just a cat’s spirit. It’s a little silly watching a ghost cat lick this man’s face, and even weirder to see a ghostly woman along with it. It’s kind of out of nowhere, even though she states she was lying there dead as well.
Fish Tank
When middle school boys break into an abandoned house, they find a mysterious fish tank that wreaks of death. I really liked this story. Give me anything with a haunted/abandoned house in Japan and I’m all in. They did the fish tank really well — so well, I could almost smell it. Yuck! And it left me wanting to know more about what was hiding in the tank and why.
Sewing Shears
A woman finds a talisman under the floorboards of her new apartment, not knowing the dangers of her removing it. I’m not sure how anyone, especially a Japanese person, can see a talisman and think of removing it. Clearly it’s there to protect you. Her dream sequence and monster under the floor was done well, and I liked the ending too.
Red High Heel
I’m almost positive this is a Japanese urban legend (if you know it, please write in the comments!). A man gets in a taxi and discovers a single red high heeled shoe, only to be yelled at by the driver to quickly throw it out. Perhaps this is just the American in me, but I wouldn’t just go pick up a random shoe in a taxi. I also would follow directions seeing the driver so scared of said shoe. A ghost woman follows the taxi and crashes into it, possibly reliving how the woman died in the first place. Nothing new, but solid story.
Night Bus
A man gets on the wrong overnight bus after using the bathroom. Now this was scary! Slowly figuring out that he was actually on the wrong bus was a tense few minutes, and I want to know more about the bus and those beings on it. Very chilling to see the passengers all looking right at him!
Guess Who?
A girl crushing on a friend of hers meets a ghost. I’m not sure why, but this story kind of made me sad. The style is slightly different from the others, drawn in a more “anime” style, probably to imitate the Slice of Life storyline. It steadily gets more and more creepy as a ghost girl makes her presence known, until pulling an Angel Beats and disappearing completely.
Footsteps
At first, I thought this was a repeat of S1E5, “The Next Floor,” but it was a similar, and scarier tale. A man on a shopping trip with his wife finds himself surrounded by ominous footsteps in the bathroom. The idea of any room completely covered in magical kanji is frightening, as are random footsteps that all seem to stop after noticing you. Kinda funny to think people could physically look over and into a Japanese bathroom stall (they’re very different from American bathrooms), but it was a creepy episode nonetheless!
Cassette Tape
Yo, this one legitimately freaked me out! A man returns home for a friend’s wedding, but is scared when he listens to a recording of himself as a child. The recording getting more and more nonsensical as he gets older is actually really unnerving, so I appreciated that. I was getting real into it too, trying to piece together what was happening. I want more!
Grinding Teeth
When a woman goes to get her toothache checked out at a late-night dentist, she gets more than she bargained for. A simple story of something scary happening, the person running away, and later finding out she really should have stayed to get her problem fixed. Spoiler, the tooth falls out and makes its way into her friend’s mouth to, uh, cause more trouble I guess? I don’t know, this one was kind of weird.
Calling Crane
Besides haunted house stories, I love hearing tales about rituals to speak to the dead. A group of girls does a ritual and things go bad. It always makes me wonder how people come up with this stuff. Swallowing a paper crane and putting a string and a razor in a glass of water? Crazy beginning, even crazier ending. Great story.
White Line
A teacher staying late at school meets a boy laying down white chalk lines through the halls. Spoiler, the boy is a ghost, leading other spirits to jump off the roof with his white line showing the way. Poor teacher gets trapped in it. I could do without this one.
Snow Hut
A boy building a snow hut meets an evil entity hiding in another hut. I always feel bad for kids who are likely going to die because of something the adults didn’t let them know. Same with this story. I could see why the boy would want to seek out what was in this mysterious other snow hut. But now I’m just sad.
Underground Walkway
A man decides to take an underground tunnel to escape the rain. There are lots of these tunnels in Japan, so I could totally see them being a place where scary stuff could happen. As he travels down the dimly-lit shaft and sees another, even darker and smaller shaft, I knew something bad would happen. I was fully expecting him to get lost in a never-ending tunnel, but that didn’t happen. Just a scare of what could have happened.
With each season, I find more and more little things I like about Yamishibai. Like the previous seasons, we have a nice little intro and outro (with a very catch tune, I might add). We also get small snippets of live-action alongside the animated scenes. For example, in “Sewing Shears,” we see a messy scraggle of hair and scissors wrapped in a paper with kanji on it. Or in “Night Bus,” we see a text exchange between the man and his friends. I appreciate the glimpses of real life; they make the stories feel more real.
Overall, I always enjoy Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai. Getting through a season takes about an hour, and I always find that I need to stop myself from binge-watching more than that. Definitely a great addition to your horror repertoire!
What did you think of Season 4 of Yamishibai? Let us know in the comments!
Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai is currently available to stream on Crunchyroll. See our reviews on Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3!
