Mononoke - a stunning, but drawn out, anime

  Unique visuals, inspired by Japanese theater, tell the story of a hunter of demons, or mononoke. It's not action as it is basically a procedural, where the hunter needs to determine the root cause of the appearance of the demons. A bit too drawn out, but very nice otherwise. The weird graphics, the sounds, the weird symbolism all work together to build an unsettling feeling that evokes the supernatural without ever trying to fully explain it.

  Mononoke has twelve 20 minute episodes, where a story is told in two or three episodes at a time. It is a spinoff of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, by the same studio, that I have not watched. I just rewatched the Mononoke series - of which I remembered nothing - because Netflix just released a film called Mononoke - Phantom in the Rain (or Paper Umbrella?) and I wanted to know the context.

  The plot is as follows: an elfish looking person carrying a mysterious sword and advertising himself as a Medicine Seller is always in situations were mononoke appear. These are like ghosts "supernatural disease" created by the intertwining of the fates of people or whatever. There is a catch, though. The sword can only be drawn when the Form, Truth and Regret are known: the true shape of the demon, its physical manifestation and its spiritual manifestation. In other words, one cannot vanquish a demon without understanding it completely. Pretty therapeutic.

  In the entire series we don't learn who the mysterious hunter is. The stories, though, happen in different historical eras, thus implying he is not human.

  I can't say the anime is perfect, though. Scenes seem to be drawn out, kind of like Japanese theater itself where they move, say something very slowly, then everything stops, then they do it again. Maybe that would have been fine if not for unexplainable moments of verbosity when, after an episode and a half of saying a few words syllable by syllable, the hunter was suddenly dumping pages of wiki lore before doing anything. But I liked it and maybe the film will be more refined. Just have to see.