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If you’re in the mood for atmospheric horror anime set in samurai-era Japan, Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales makes for a nicely creepy evening or two of anime entertainment. Each self-contained tale is vastly different in tone from the other stories, and can be watched separately from the others.

The first is the darkest of the three stories. Yotsuya Kaidan (Yotsuya Ghost Story) is a retelling of a traditional Japanese ghost story. Tamiya Iemon, a ronin samurai, marries a beautiful woman named Oiwa; but after the birth of their child he grows restless. When a scheming young woman from a rich family offers her family’s wealth if he will marry her, Iemon agrees. The young woman poisons Oiwa, and Oiwa later dies; but after death she continues to haunt her former husband and all of his associates. The character designs for Yotsuya Kaidan are by famed artist Yoshitaka Amano.

The second tale is Tenshu Monogatari (Goddess of the Dark Tower), a haunting romantic drama set in feudal Japan about Zushonosuke, a falconer, who is ordered by his domain lord to retrieve an expensive falcon that has escaped. While searching for the falcon, Zushonosuke comes across a beautiful woman bathing in a lake, Tomihime. He follows the falcon to the woman’s castle, only to discover that she is a fallen god and the falcon is actually the spirit of her mother. Her mother committed the sin of falling in love with a human – the same sin Tomihime comes to fear she will commit with Zushonosuke. The tone of Tenshu Monogatari, rather than horror, is more romantic and supernatural.

The final installment of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, entitled Bake Neko (Goblin Cat), employs a fascinating and unique art style as background to a quirky horror story. A demon cat haunts a corrupt rich family. A traveling medicine seller arrives, and as the demon cat’s attacks increase the medicine seller promises to exorcise it, but only if he understands why the family is being haunted – which leads to the unveiling of the family’s dark history and secrets.

Incidentally, Bake Neko gave rise to a separate anime series, Mononoke, which follows the continuing adventures of the enigmatic medicine seller, utilizing the same unusual art style.

Each of the three tales is around two hours in length (Goblin Cat is a little shorter, at one and one-half hours).

Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales was produced by Toei Animation and licensed by Geneon.

Jan Suzukawa works in the manga industry as a freelance editor and English adaptation writer. Website: www.jansuzukawa.com. Blog: jansuzukawa.blogspot.com.