Hundred Stories

Director
Tonokatsu Hideki
Production
Tokyo Movie Shinsa
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
25 min x 13 Episodes
Year
2003

Hundred Stories

By Bryan Hoang
30th Jun 04

This series deals with mainly stories about horror and people who have damned gods. These people, (and the main character), are punished by ghosts. As the main character goes venturing for 100 stories, he keeps running into these ghost like characters. I thought this anime had a weird/funky animation to it, but it's a nice change from watching the same anime I've been watching lately.

The main character's name is Yamaoka Hyakusuke and his goal in life is to publish 100 stories that he collects while traveling around Japan (I think in the Bakumatsu age). Yamaoka goes traveling along the country while collecting interesting stories. Then he witness's a crime. The more light that is shed on the crime the closer Yamaoka is to knowing the criminal, and then all of a sudden he meets these ghost people named Mataichi of Deception, Ogin of the Puppets, and Chouji of the Bird Calling. This gang of ghosts or whatever they are, they have been hired to solve cases that are forgotten, unsolved or just plainly buried in shadows. By using trickery and deceit, they find criminals and they judge those humans that have committed the crime and bury each criminal one job after another.

I think this anime is worth checking out, since it has a strange twist to each episode and is pretty much different from most kind of anime. Though 100 Stories doesn't explore one single story line much, it's still interesting to see the weird crimes that happen. Some can be so weird and have such a strange twist, it makes no sense, but it's entertaining enough to watch none the less. Though this anime doesn't have much potential to it, I say it's worth checking out, but don't expect too much from it. Maybe you can get a kick from this show, but I sure can't say it's one of those anime that I would buy.

Finally, 100 Stories is different from most series I've seen, so give it a try, it's only 13 episodes long anyways. The opening and ending theme songs for it aren't really spectacular; most of the lyrics for them are bad. The drawings are different, but the appearance isn't bad, and the characters are pretty cool and mysterious. So check it out if you want, but I would rather recommend watching this if you got nothing better to do or you want to experiment new anime.

-- Bryan Hoang 30th Jun 04

Hundred Stories Images