Mononoke (2007)

 

Director: Kenji Nakamura

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka, Ikuko Takahashi, Manabu Ishikawa and Michiko Yokote

"Voice" Cast: Takahiro Sakurai as the Medicine Seller

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / An Abstract Candidate

 

Mononoke originates as a spin-off, from a 2006 animated horror anthology named Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. Both came from the Noitamina bloc, a syndicated time space on Fuji Television in Japan which, whilst have had more action and genre orientated anime shows over the decades, has however stayed with its origins, designed explicitly to cater to anime for multiple audiences and encouraging experimentation even with the more overtly genre productions. It is where Eden of the East (2009) came from, a conspiracy thriller about a young man possessing the ability to unlimited resources to grant wishes, or, for the perfect example, Masaaki Yuasa's The Tatami Galaxy (2010), an eccentric adaptation of a Tomihiko Morimi novel in which a university student, in a Groundhog Day scenario, finds himself repeating his school life in various clubs in an existential crisis, Masaaki Yuasa before he finally gained his fame in the Western helming series for this block beforehand. Ayakashi, for two of its three tales, adapted ghost tales from classic authors, whilst Mononoke comes from the one tale which was entirely original, contrasted by its absolutely idiosyncratic art style. This third tale was an original story also directed by Mononoke's Kenji Nakamura, which first introduced the world to the Medicine Seller, a figure in his own series here who follows the trope within a lot of anime of occult and supernatural figures, in episodic stories, who investigate and resolve paranormal scenarios, only in this case set in Japan's ancient past.

Mononoke itself is a series of five stories, all taking two or more episodes to tell, set between the Edo and Meiji periods of Japan, the nameless Medicine Seller found wherever there is a mononoke - when a supernatural spirit (an Ayakashi) is corrupted by the worst of humanity and starts to interact with the human world in violent ways. He can only exorcise them with his magical sword when he finds out their shape (form), the cause of their creation (truth) and why this was (reason in the English subtitles). The series, from the first (two episode) tale Zashiki-warashi, immediately stands out as a beautiful production. The tale is very obvious in plot, in which a pregnant woman on the run stays in a hotel with a sinister past, but the way Mononoke presents this is entirely unique in terms of its art style, and in terms of plotting, emphasising the sins of human beings as the cause of the mononoke. Whilst a beautiful story to look at, it is soon revealed this inn was once a brothel whose owner was the woman who did the abortions for the sex workers, hiding the foetuses in the wall of the room the pregnant woman is occupying, and not pulling its punches in this theme.

Mononoke is an exceptional looking show which appears to have been made with cut outs or even with paper used as animation cels, making the fact (as behind the scenes footage on its US DVD shows from Flatiron Film Company) that it is a computer animated production which layered this two dimensional look on top of computer drawn sketch lines a perfect marriage between the two styles. It argues the balance between the old hand drawn era and the digitised era perfectly, having aged without fault from 2007, and that some of the best anime of the 2000s onward made a conscious decision to marry the two sides or embrace the expressionistic. It looks like, as with the original Ayakashi story, that it was drawn using glossy paper, a tactile appearance which is contrasted by the use of colour, significant in how bright and vivid a show with such morbid subject matter becomes, drastically contrasting what is expected from the tropes of horror in what aesthetic palettes are usually used. Even with stories which had intentionally dank, dark looks, the visual and colour palette is significant with many of these stories in terms of aesthetic detail, even when with the absence of colour, used to signify details carefully.

The stories tread on well worn tropes but the unconventional look through the stories, alongside the time given to them over two to three episodes, gives them new personality here. The tone for Mononoke as a result is openly symbolic and surreal both for style and to tackle exceptionally grim subject matter, where the titular beings known as Zashiki-warashi in the first story are connected to the aforementioned unborn children, symbolic imagery blatant in meaning like red cloth being ripped, but allowing material that would be gristly to actually depict to be shown in a heightened, meaningful manner. Sometimes it is useful for the limitations of a TV anime production whilst presenting an utterly artistic flair, such as the final arc of the series replacing moving crowds of bystanders with mannequins in costume, all felt having be practiced with the Ayakashi episodes and perfected here.

A story like Umibōzu, in which there are a group of people on a boat in the midst of a haunted area of the sea, shows how all the stories are effectively chamber pieces, supernatural detective stories where the Medicine Seller is the judge of mortal sins. As he has to figure out the cause of the mononoke to cleanse them away, he becomes the auditor who usually extracts the truth from all the characters with him in each particular story, especially as many have a tendency to lie. Rather than laborious plot twists, its closure is equivalent of peeling away the layers of an onion and using the stories to depict human fallacies, Umibōzu particularly poignant for this as its about guilt, the masks people in any stature wear and how cleansing it actually transforms a person for the better. That story also shows how proudly strange these tales are, openly riffing on folklore from Japanese history whilst improvising around the lines, such as a surreal sight of a ghost biwa player, a fish creature with one leg, who forces mortals to experience their worst fears as if real, even if it makes you puke up your prized giant goldfish.

This could also alienate the viewers in place expecting actual monsters, the next story Noppera-bō about a woman who might have murdered her husband and his family which is instead an existential drama all within her own head. Constantly, however, in these tales they are using conventional plot structure to tackle human drama through these folk creatures. Noppera-bō for me is a great story, within a series of consistently perfect narratives in themselves, as this is an existential drama in which, whilst with an obvious twist, uses its artistry and symbolism perfectly to tell the story of a woman without a real self, helped to free herself, based around very surreal imagery of Noh masks and faceless beings. As with all three stories of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, these are tales based on human behaviour and the acts we commit, and it feels more sincere to depict them as such than the (usual) Western model of such creatures being mere monsters outside our species.

Also as a result of this, openly existential and psychological tales using the wild and wonderful yōkai of Japanese folklore, the series openly embraces the strange even if it is by means of rewriting said creatures of Japanese culture for new meanings for the stories too. Nue, the fourth tale, is openly weirder than the others, a literal chamber piece involving two dead bodies, four people including the Medicine Seller and a mystery to solve...only that its surrounded by an incense smelling competition between the individuals where, for one game, the answers have to be named after chapters of Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji (1021), the first ever Japanese novel ever written. The oddest arc of the series, which includes visual clues that on future watches will immediately show the story showing its hand early, naturally it comes from one of the most interesting anime screenwriters I have encountered over the years by the name of Chiaki J. Konaka, who has made a career of this type of distinct writing. Both loved and notorious for his existential and abstract plotting, his work goes from fan favourite Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to frustrating viewers of the second season of The Big 0 (1999-2003), a legitimate candidate for an auteur screenwriter in anime who just happens to be in a production like Mononoke, one where the scripts by all the screenwriters involved are all strong too.

The only issue with Mononoke is that it could have been longer, but in 2022, a feature film was announced in production¹, making this a production which has all the ease in being able to be returned too over and over again. Mononoke for its finale offers a tantalising conclusion by jumping forward abruptly in time to the 1920s and the Taisho period, the story Bakeneko about a group of people trapped on an underground train that may have all been responsible for a death of a young female journalist. This jump offers an obvious realisation - our sardonic Medicine Seller is not human, clear as his real form when he can use the mononoke killing sword transforms into a golden gold-like figure - but it also offers the tantalising fact that, if this had continued, Mononoke whilst getting its personality from its Edo period narratives could have continued in various periods of modern Japanese history too. This three-part narrative does stand out for its bold style in this historical time period as well, with moments of legitimately gruesome horror by way of expressionistic imagery and the nihilistic tone it has for three quarters of its length. Even if it offers a happy ending, as argubly most do, that people can redeem themselves, it still has imagery of people scratching out the limb or organ which sinned, being mauled by cats, or that unlike others, where the mononoke punishes the transgressor, there is in this a macabre conclusion where the one truly guilty person (or two) who compromised does not get to escape their sins.  

It is a great way to have ended the series, with the obvious connotations, with the Medicine Seller ageless on the train, that it does leave one gasping for more episodes about the character existing in modern day Japan, standing out in his appearance but still have a cool, humorous air to him dealing with mononoke still. With Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales the bleakest tale, as a prototype, which is worthy of seeing too, they all together are among one of the best anime horror series in existence. The art style alone, alongside its use of symbolism, is truly a one-off, but the stories themselves are just as exceptional as ghost tales, the aesthetic and storytelling sides fully succeeding..

Abstract Spectrum: Abstract/Avant-Garde/Grotesque/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

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1) Mononoke Anime Gets New Film in 2023, Stage Play, written by Crystalyn Hodgkins and published by Anime News Network on June 18th 2022.