Yamishibai—Japanese Ghost Stories: Complete Collection, Seasons One & Two

Rather than featuring super-powered Tokyo schoolgirls kicking demon butt, Yamishibai is closer in theme to the old-time Nippon horror anthologies, such as the live-action Lafcadio Hearn-inspired Kwaidan. The CGI-assisted animation here simulates traditional paper-doll puppet-show cutouts in a series of 26 macabre shorts that are related by a masked storyteller after school in a gloomy mid-20th-century Japan. Most are rudimentary vignettes rather than fully plotted tales. A tired salary-man on a stalled train is the only commuter to perceive a gruesome creature. A school copier malfunction reveals a traditional, long-haired ghost. A carefree village boy sees the bad omen of an umbrella-carrying spirit and fails to observe safety precautions. A Shinto priestess heals a little girl of a curse…almost. A cop's ventriloquist dummy inconveniently comes to life during a safety presentation. And so on. Exploiting viewer phobias and urban-legend dread, the material is longer on style than substance, but there is no fan service and the violence is mild, even with the intense creep-out ambiance. Compiling all 26 episodes from the 2013-14 first and second seasons in separate DVD and Blu-ray editions, rated TV-14, and presented in Japanese with English subtitles, this artful and atmospheric series is recommended. (C. Cassady)