Director: Mizuho Nishikubo
Screenplay: Yoshiki Sakurai
Voice Cast: Fumie Mizusawa as
Minamoto no Hikaru; Kan Tokumaru as Abe no Seimei; Kenta Miyake as Watanabe no
Tsuna; Shinichiro Miki as Mansairaku; Kumi Sakuma as Urabe no Suetake; Ooki
Sugiyama as Usui no Sadamitsu; Shinichiro Miki as Minamoto no Raikou; Wasabi
Mizuta as Kintarou
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
[Major Plot Spoilers Throughout]
Otogi Zoshi is of note, for me personally, as this is from a period where Manga Entertainment, still going strong in their home country in British even into the 2010s from the nineties, changed as an anime distributer considerably in the early-to-mid 2000s. Just purchasing the rights to multiple animated series is a change as, beforehand, they rarely did baring the curious decision to buy Virus Buster Serge (1997), a very unpopular Masami Ōbari helmed show, and focused on OVAs and films instead in their initial heyday in the nineties. This period Otogi comes from has, up to the 2020s, never been fully re-released from those original Manga Entertainment ones, probably with the huge technical issue that, tragically, most anime by this time for television was not made in high definition or on film, in the transition era of digital drawn animation from handdrawn. This means that a lot if in Standard Definition that, unless piled onto Blu Rays as the American company Discotek is want of doing, leaves them ostracised in the world of high definition even over the quality of the work on the discs.
Baring Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-5), a very popular show spun off from an original 1995 film, this has left a lost sector of the company's slow and eventual change to a changing audience fading into the past. Imagine picking up Neo Magazine, which started in Britain as a publication in 2004 and devoted itself (alongside other Asian culture) to anime and manga, and seeing the titles the company once behind Ninja Scroll (1993) and Urotsukidôji: The Legend of the Overfiend (1989) had now acquired - She, The Ultimate Weapon (2002) (an odd mix of body horror, war and tragic romance with an abrupt finale), Tetsujin 28-go (2004) (a 2000s reboot of the 1960s series which Discotek did release as a Standard Definition on Blu-Ray set1), or Heat Guy J (2002-3) (a hyped series which instead became a running gag by accounts on the defunct podcast ANNCast). And also among these is Otohi Zoshi, a period chambara action drama on the surface which does throw back to the older titles Manga Entertainment had released. Still action based, also by Production I.G., a big gun in anime as a studio because they worked on Ghost in the Shell. This period was, in hindsight, a tentative step still with the action and science fiction of yore, but eventually as the market changed and the audience, edging close to one day into the 2010s titles and genres they released would dynamically change.
Ironically, Otogi is a very idiosyncratic creation, because it is literally two very different thirteen episodes shows which just happen to share the same characters and plot. The first half is how I knew of the show and the only way people likely knew of Otogi Zoshi in promotion. In the Heian period, the sister of (real life figure) Minamoto no Raikō, Minamoto no Hikaru, has to pose as him for a mission, accompanied by her aide and samurai Watanabe no Tsuna, in a quest to protect the capital of Kyoto by acquiring magical objects, five magatama that represent the five elements (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth) scattered across the country. It becomes clear that she is in a plot of greater machinations, on her quest and acquiring other allies, based on real figures or folklore ones - Usui Sadamitsu (a noble ladies man samurai), Urabe no Suetake (gender swapped into a mysterious woman sent with them they are initially distrustful of), and Kintarō (a super strong boy they abruptly meet who is obsessed with food, based a folklore hero). The first half of Otogi Zoshi is very narratively straightforward as there are three magatama left to collect the series, with the only other details being a growing bond between Hikaru and Mansairaku, an acclaimed performer travelling the country too, and that everything is under suspicion the more they travel, and the more people they encounter in their quest to acquire the magatama back whose perceptions cloud her initial one.
It is for the most part grounded within the logic of a materialist world, at least in mind of a super strong young boy in the cast based on Japanese folktales. When one character abruptly turns into a demon in a fight, it does set up how, eventually, the show will fully embrace the supernatural. In terms of the look of the show, it is very realistic with the character designs defined as such, alongside the aesthetic naturally befitting a period chambara tale with extensive research involved by the production. Learning that the figures in the show are based on real people for the most part from this era, who became folktale figures with various interpretations, provides the series with a greater weight to where it virtues will eventually lay. Personally, for me though, it is difficult to talk about Otogi Zoshi without spoiling it immediately, as this show only can be explained with what its structure is meant to be and what the goal of the project was. Narratively the first thirteen episodes charge through this samurai narrative very quickly. It is engaging when watched, but in all honestly, if it had been all there was, Otogi Zoshi would have be immediately forgotten.
Normally when you have twenty six episodes, the thirteenth is the time of the second act, plot twists changing the show considerably if they had not already. Well, Otogi Zoshi takes the biscuit as by them most of the cast is killed off and the capital is left a burning wreck by conflict. What happens is that in the next episode preview, you the viewer are informed that next story is set in modern day Japan, with reincarnation meaning the cast all returns in the shadow of their past lives. By itself, the first half of this show would have been a frankly generic show for me. Where things get potentially controversial, but interesting for me, is that the second half is now an entirely different genre and tone, as the cast have to deal with the results of centuries before for karma's sake.
A breezy modern day aesthetic, even Hideki Taniuchi as the main composer replaced by the legendary Kenji Kawai, brining in New Age influenced smooth jazz, and an episodic structure of Hikaru, with her friends, now a teen landlady who helps investigate supernatural phenomena around Tokyo whilst looking for her missing brother. Arguably one factor in my preference for this, honestly, is that one of my favourite types of plot structures are supernatural/horror ones involving figures investigating weird incidents and folklore over episodic tales, building sometimes to a main narrative. The show completed changes tone from it action heavy tale of sword fighting and intrigue, with an energised opening song changing to another over real footage of Tokyo street life, rotoscoped, whilst the cast are animated mouthing the lyrics to a lighter hearted song. The only real detraction, by accident, to this change is that Hikaru arguably is a less proactive figure as a result. Forced to be her brother in the Heian period, handy with an archer's bow and having to fight, you can make the argument she is a weaker figure in the second act, the one major flaw which personally could have been written better.
It does feel more interesting however as a series through the modern Tokyo setting as, for all the research, the first act charged on so quickly with the plot you do not have time to really absorb the world. Here, every episode is named after an environmental location or landmark in Tokyo. Real ones, turning this show into a geographical tour as one episode can actually be about Kourakuen Hall, the famous arena, where a character comes across the ghost of his late boxer father, or at Shibuya, a district where a giant ghost dog is wandering about disrupting ATMs and cash machines in lieu to the folk believe of wolf figures representing good luck in economy. This becomes, if all real folk and anecdotal tales, an actual snapshot of Tokyo painstakingly researched and drawn onscreen. If some of them are spiced up, they do not feel contrived and out of place. As the characters' past literally haunts the modern day, the ghosts and supernatural realms can be found even in the underpass of the Tokyo railway, or how, near the iconic Tokyo Tower, the urban legend of white noise on television showing the dead is explored in one episode, entirely in lieu to the tower being just above a cemetery and caused by disgruntled ghosts.
It as a turn offers a problem mind in how to sell the show as, not able to spoil such a major direction in the whole narrative, it also means Otogi Zoshi is no longer an action samurai show with a steady pace, but becoming a different genre with a sedate and even playful tone. I half wonder how viewers reacted to this, especially as these were the days every anime distributor, in the United States and Britain, followed an insane distribution method of releasing individual discs with a handful of episodes on them separately rather than whole series (or a couple) of box sets. Imagine those who were buying each DVD release for this, full price per disc, and I wonder how many liked this change or not. Otogi Zoshi by accident also feels like a symbolic eye at how Manga Entertainment was at a cross roads. Perversely its first half is like those older titles they licensed, the second like the titles they would be more open minded to as the market place changed. In fact, the later half feels closers to something the late ADV Vision would have licensed, or frankly MVM Entertainment, one of those titles they might release, having survived into the modern day, alongside the type of titles which would become popular in the 2010s.
Just the show itself, without any other context, is imperfect but I liked quite a bit. Not the best of the genres it is tackling, but this type of story by the second act is that I gain great pleasure from. As a structurally risky work, it also does deserve praise for the experiment, especially as it embraces by the final act when a supernatural train that floats in the sky needs to be ridden, a reminder in itself that now I have least seen the 1985 animated adaptation of Kenji Miyazawa's Night of the Galactic Railroad, I would not be surprised if I keep falling over explicit references to it over these reviews and even anime I grew up with. It even negates a need for a villain as, in a poignant touch, said villain of the first half now returns in the second as a changed man, wishing to alter a history caused by him to protect Tokyo.
In fact, the second act is only eleven episodes. The last two are bonus episodes, one of Urabe, now a fortune teller who gets to do more here, before reencountering the group in a story of a haunted hospital and a cat. The last is a self reflective and philosophical tale of the former villain encountering an old man with greater wisdom then many of the nature of time and how Tokyo has existed as an entity almost immortal over centuries. A befittingly obscure conclusion to a surprisingly unique television series, worthy of rediscovery as a fascinating curiosity just for the tonal shift and how that changes the work.
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1) Sadly, a concept not brought over to British anime distribution. As always, we get barely a lot of titles over here as a result, which is a pain.
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