Ayakashi Ep 1 - 4: Yotsuya Kaidan

Ayakashi consists of 3 supernatural tales and the first 4 episodes are allocated to Yotsuya Kaidan. In this story, there are two main characters Tamiya Iemon and Oiwa who are a married couple. However, due to Oiwa's father dislike for Tamiya, he separates them which causes the latter to bear a grudge. In order to get Oiwa back, Tamiya kills his father-in-law without his wife's knowledge.

Although things should have gone smoothly with the couple reunited, the birth of their child causes Oiwa to become sickly and Tamiya gets increasingly frustrated with her and his life as he has nothing better to do. At this point, he happens to catch the fancy of Oume, a girl from a rich and influential family. Unknown to Tamiya, Oume orders her servants to send a packet of poison for Oiwa to consume and this results in the latter being disfigured. Despite having reservations about leaving Oiwa behind for the sake of his future, Tamiya chooses to make use of the chance to accuse Oiwa of adultery and even kills her.

On the night when Tamiya and Oume get married, he sees an illusion of Oiwa. He gets so panicky that he kills Oume and her family members in the process. Having nowhere to go as he's a wanted man, Tamiya even has to get his mother to create a tombstone so that people think that he's dead. However, that doesn't stop the series of nightmares and constant hallucinations plaguing Tamiya and he ends up being killed by Yogeshichi, the fiance of Oiwa's younger sister Osode.

Frankly speaking, the story isn't that complicated so I don't really see the rationale of using 4 episodes for this story. In fact, a major part of the 4th episode was even attributed to the history of Yotsuya Kaidan and the supposed curse of Oiwa over the years on the people who made the stage and movie versions. That section was rather eerie to watch because it makes me wonder if the string of happenings was really related to Oiwa or mere coincidences. Other than that, the presentation of the story was rather confusing because of the introduction of the author-cum-narrator. Last but not least, the quality of the animation especially the design of the characters left much to be desired. I was expecting more from this anime since it's made by a movie company, Toei and was in the Noitamina slot.

Nevertheless, I like the OP and ED despte all the flaws I picked out about Yotsuya Kaidan. The ED stands out especially with its Japanese style melody and the vocals of Hajime Chitose makes this song easy to remember. I just hope that the remaining 2 stories will be better though because the genre was what had attracted me to begin watching the anime in the first place.