Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai 10

Alternate Titles

闇芝居 十期
Yamishibai Season 10
Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

Background

Theatre of Darkness, also known as Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories, is an ongoing Japanese TV anime series. The series is a short anime centered on urban legends and Japanese folklore told through the kamishibai method of story-telling.

The series was created by Tomoya Takashima and has aired since 2013. Takashima’s initial aim was to create the series with a messy touch as if it was drawn in crayon, but due to animation studio ILCA’s involvement in a wide range of genres, including anime and video games, each episode ended up having a different style. In season 4, live-action images were also used, which can be attributed to the director’s previous work on horror games, to which he was quoted as saying, “One of the things I wanted to do was see how well I could recreate the techniques I used for the horror game.”

The 10th season of the anime is once again being animated by ILCA and features Akira Funada and Kenichi Sugimoto as chief directors, Koichi Hirata, Yosuke Inoue, and Megumi Yokoyama as episode directors, Hiromu Kumamoto, Kanako Ishigami, and Mitsuhi Sasagi handling the script, and Rin Kame, jimmy, Koichi Sugaya, Hiiragi Watanabe, Momoka Higure, and Fugetsu credited as animators. The anime’s ending theme song is “Kudaranee na” by Wasureranneyo. The anime will be broadcast on TV Tokyo and will be streamed through Crunchyroll as part of their winter 2022 season.

A TV drama adaptation titled Yamishibai: Iki was broadcast from September to November 2020. It featured a unique style and is told through collages of photographs with voices post-recorded. The series was directed by Noboru Iguchi, who has also worked on the anime and was dedicated to recreating its unique style of telling stories through pictures. The series ran for 12 episodes.

A manga adaptation was serialized in three consecutive issues of Monthly Big Gangan in 2014 and a comic version by Isao Sakamoto was published in the January 2016 issue of Chao DX and later in book form by Chao Horror Comics. A smartphone app was also created for the series themed after capturing characters from urban legends, and was released in time with the first episode of the anime in 2013. A spin-off anime titled Ninja Collection has also been broadcast since July 2020.

Cast

Kanji Tsuda
Tsubasa Kizu
Taiga Fukazawa
Ryo Shinoda
Keisuke Sonoyama
Masaki Sawai
Ponzu
Toshiko Sawada
Issei Futamata
Reiko Mori
Sayaka Senbongi
Risae Matsuda
Natsuna Yamazaki
Nene Naninu
Aoi Mizushina

• Anime Site (Japanese)
• Twitter (Japanese)

• Chief Director: Akira Funada, Kenichi Sugimoto
• Episode Director: Koichi Hirata, Yosuke Inoue, Megumi Yokoyama
• Script: Hiromu Kumamoto, Kanako Ishigami, Mitsuhi Sasagi
• Animation: Rin Kame, jimmy, Koichi Sugaya, Hiiragi Watanabe, Momoka Higure, Fugetsu
• Planning: Tsuneo Yamakawa (TV Tokyo), Takuya Iwaseki (ILCA)
• Producer: Satoshi Umetsu (TV Tokyo), Akira Funada
• Production Cooperation: yell, DRAWIZ
• Animation Production: ILCA