Mononoke (モノノ怪) is a Japanese anime television series produced by Toei Animation. A spin-off of 2006's horror anthology series Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, Mononoke follows the character of the medicine seller as he continues to face a myriad of supernatural perils. Mononoke takes place between the end of the Edo period and the Meiji era of Japan with a four-class system, with samurai being the highest class and merchants (such as the medicine seller himself) being in the lowest class. The anime has spawned a manga adaptation and two stage plays; a film is in production, set for release in July 2024.
Mononoke follows a wandering, nameless character known only as the "Medicine Seller" (voiced by Takahiro Sakurai in the 2007 series and by Hiroshi Kamiya in the 2024 film). The series is made up of individual chapters in which the medicine seller encounters, combats, and subsequently destroys mononoke. Mononoke are a type of ayakashi, unnatural spirits that linger in the human world by binding themselves to negative human emotions. The Medicine Seller always proceeds in the same manner, using his knowledge of the supernatural to fend off the mononoke until he can learn the spirit's shape (Katachi), truth (Makoto), and reasoning (Kotowari). Only then can he unsheathe his sword and exorcise the demon. The English subtitles translate these three necessities as form, truth, and reason.
While spending the night in a traditional inn, the medicine seller stumbles upon a strange phenomenon. A pregnant woman named Shino, who is desperately seeking shelter at the inn, is led to the last vacant room. The room, though, is haunted by a group of Zashiki Warashi. When the Zashiki Warashi kill an assassin aiming for Shino's life, protecting Shino and her unborn child, the Medicine Seller inquires into the origin of the mononoke.
The innkeeper reveals that the inn used to be a brothel, which she owned and ran. The innkeeper forced her prostitutes to abort their children to continue working, and Shino's room is the room in which the abortions took place. The medicine seller realizes that the mononoke are attracted to Shino because of their strong desire to be born. The Zashiki Warashi want Shino to give birth to them, and she agrees, much to the Medicine Seller's dismay. She pulls the talisman, warding off the mononoke from her stomach. As it turns out, one of the Zashiki Warashi that she had met upon her arrival was in fact her own child. However, the overload of all the spirits causes Shino's in-the-womb child to start bleeding. At this point, realizing their wish would only cause harm to the only person who showed them kindness, the Zashiki Warashi smiles and allows the Medicine Seller to destroy them with the sword.
Traveling on a merchant's luxurious ship, the Medicine Seller and the other passengers drift into the Dragon's Triangle, a mysterious sea full of ayakashi. Among the passengers are Kayo, a servant girl from the Sakai house of Bakeneko fame; Genkei, a Buddhist monk; and Genyousai, a minstrel and spiritualist. Through the appearance of Umizatou, an ayakashi who demands that the passengers reveal their worst fears, the group discovers that Genkei was the one who set the ship off course.
Genkei explains that he and his sister Oyō, who was five years his junior, grew up very close ("too close," he states) because they were left alone on their tiny island home when their parents perished at sea. This lust for his sister drove him to become a Buddhist ascetic at the age of 15, leaving Oyō behind.
Although he faithfully immersed himself in study and the solitary monk's life, he still could not extinguish his lust for his sister. When he learned that their home island's ships were sinking and being destroyed at sea, he accepted his village's request for him to return to become a human sacrifice to the sea by being imprisoned alive in a "hollow boat" set adrift. He explained that he would rather be dead than live with his unquenchable thirst to "lie with" Oyō. However, on the night before he was to climb into the boat at sunrise, he met with Oyō, who was now 16 and "so pretty." She then confessed to him that she had the same feelings for him all along and that since they could never marry, she would rather become the sacrifice in his stead, preferring, as she stated, "to go to the pure land" rather than marry a man who was not her brother. Upon hearing this, the young, recently promoted monk fled, vowing to commit suicide to join Oyō in the afterlife. He could not do this and, instead, spent 50 years in deep meditation praying for the soul of his poor sister Oyō, her corpse supposedly adrift in the hollow boat in the Ayakashi Sea. However, deep down, he was actually glad that his sister died instead of him, and that guilt followed him. It was his intense focus—metaphorically and specifically, his right eye—on that area of the sea and magnified by his guilt over not truly loving his sister that had caused the Dragon's Triangle or Ayakashi (spirits, generally malevolent) Sea to be so deadly.
Tragically, the ayakashi showed the hollow boat to the current passengers by dragging it up from the bottom of the sea onto the deck of their ship. Although they thought they heard scratching from the inside, they discovered that it had lain empty for 50 years and that Oyō had in reality "given herself to the sea," as she too could no longer live with her own lust for her brother. The Medicine Seller discovers that Genkei is the mononoke, or at least his darker side has become one, and that this particular mononoke (literally translated as "enraged god who is sick," which forms when human feelings of vengeance, rage, guilt, etc. meld with Ayakashi) was responsible for the Ayakashi Sea's unrest. The medicine seller exterminates the mononoke at Genkei's request and restores calm to him. After 50 years of guilt and lust, he is now at peace, although his beloved Oyō died for naught.
A despairing woman named Ochou, wishing for freedom but unable to escape her oppression, confesses to killing her husband's entire family. The Medicine Seller doubts this story and visits Ochou in her prison cell to ask her for the truth, but encounters a mononoke in a Noh mask who fights the Medicine Seller and allows Ochou to escape. The man in the mask convinces Ochou that he has given her freedom by helping her kill her family, but the Medicine Seller pursues the two and reveals to Ochou that she had killed not her husband's family but herself. Ochou married into a good family as her mother wished, but in her desire to please her mother, she withstood abuse from her new family to the point of forsaking any happiness she could have gained from her life. When Ochou realizes this, the man in the Noh mask vanishes, and Ochou finds herself in her kitchen. It is implied that the man in the mask was an illusion conjured by the Medicine Seller to help Ochou escape—at the end of the episode, Ochou ignores her husband's orders and leaves her family, gaining the freedom she had long desired.
Three men seeking to marry Lady Ruri, the sole heir to the Fuenokouji school of incense (kōdō), arrive at her mansion to participate in a competition of incense, only to find that the fourth suitor is missing and that the Medicine Seller has taken his place. During the competition, Lady Ruri is murdered. When the Medicine Seller inquires as to why the three suitors are so desperate to inherit the school even after Lady Ruri's death, the suitors reveal that the competition is not actually over the school of incense, but the Toudaiji, a piece of wood rumored to grant its owner great power.
Although Medicine Seller presides over a second incense contest, none of the three suitors win the Toudaiji, as all are killed. It is revealed that the suitors had already been killed by the Toudaiji and that the Medicine Seller put on this act to make them realize their deaths. The medicine seller then asks the Toudaiji, the true mononoke, to reveal itself. The Toudaiji draws its sense of self-esteem from the fact that people value it so highly, yet in truth, it is nothing but a rotting piece of wood. The Toudaiji kills those who seek it, including Lady Ruri's suitors, perpetuating the bloodshed for its sake. The Medicine Seller destroys the Toudaiji, appeasing the souls of its victims, including Lady Ruri's suitors.
This chapter makes a reference to the Rannatai (the type of wood described above) that once existed in the Shōsōin (Great Treasure Room) of the Tōdai-ji temple in Nara, Japan.
Set in a time decidedly later than the previous arcs—implied to be in the 1920s—the Medicine Seller boards a train with several other passengers. Unfortunately, the train hits a ghostly girl on the tracks, and six passengers and the Medicine Seller are locked in the first car. The medicine seller questions the passengers to reveal a dark connection between them, shedding light on the murder of a young newspaper reporter. At the end of the episode, the woman's spirit has its revenge, the passengers are saved, and the medicine seller challenges the audience to reveal to him their truth and reason, vowing to continue hunting mononoke as long as they roam the world.
Produced by Toei Animation, the anime series was directed by Kenji Nakamura and written by Chiaki J. Konaka, Ikuko Takahashi, Michiko Yokote, and Manabu Ishikawa. Takashi Hashimoto directed the animation and was the character designer; Takashi Kurahashi was the art director; its music was composed by Yasuharu Takanashi, and it was broadcast in Fuji Television's block Noitamina between July and September 2007, lasting 12 episodes.[4] Siren Visual licensed it for Australasian region.[5]
At the 15th anniversary event held on June 18, 2022, an anime film by Twin Engine was announced. Kenji Nakamura will return to direct the film. Originally, it was scheduled to premiere in 2023;[6] however, in February 2023, it was announced that the film would be delayed to beyond 2023. Additionally, Takahiro Sakurai, who originally was returning to reprise the role of the medicine seller, was removed from the cast of the film.[7][8] The film, titled Mononoke: Karakasa, will be released on July 26, 2024, with Hiroshi Kamiya performing the role of the Medicine Seller.[9][10] The film was screened at the 28th Fantasia International Film Festival on July 20, 2024.[11][12]
A manga adaptation of the original Bakeneko arc was published in Young Gangan between August 17, 2007, and August 1, 2008.[13][14] The individual chapters were collected and released in two tankōbon (collected volumes) by Square Enix on January 25, 2008, and September 25, 2008.[15][16] A second manga series started to be published on September 25, 2013, by Tokuma Shoten in its magazine Monthly Comic Zenon.[17] The last chapter of it was serialized in Monthly Comic Zenon on November 25, 2014. The series was released in two volumes on July 19, 2014, and December 20, 2014, respectively.[18][19] A manga adaptation of the Mononoke: Karakasa film is set to begin serialization in Kodansha's Monthly Shōnen Sirius magazine on May 26, 2024.[20]
At the 15th anniversary event held on June 18, 2022, a stage play based on the anime series was announced.[6] It ran from February 4–15, 2023, in Tokyo.[21]
A second stage play, titled Stage Mononoke ~Zashiki Warashi~ (舞台 もののけ 〜座敷 ワラシ〜, Butai Mononoke ~Zashiki Warashi~), is scheduled to run from March 21–24 and April 4–7, 2024, at the IMM Theater in Tokyo, and March 29–31 at the WW Hall of the Cool Japan Park in Osaka.[21]
The directing and art have been called "boldly confrontational."[22] It blends a murder mystery structure with a "twist of supernatural and a shake of historical, peppered with plenty of stylistic experimentation." It frequently achieves "the ideal - great directing combined with great animation."[22] The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said it could not be dismissed as a mere experiment and that the story's themes were every bit as advanced as the digital animation techniques employed.[23]