"Do not toy with the supernatural."
The Curse of Kazuo Umezu, known in Japan as Umezu Kazuo no Noroi, is a 1990 horror anime OVA directed by Naoko Omi from a story by Kazuo Umezu. The OVA consists of two atmospheric creepy separate stories: "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?" and "The Haunted Mansion". In the former, a transfer student named Rima arrives from Mexico causing great agitation into the life of a classmate named Masami. In the latter, four girls adventure into a sinister house on their neighborhood.
Produced by Takahashi Studio in association with Yuwa, the OVA was released by Nippon Columbia under their Columbia Video brand on VHS and LaserDisc in Japan on 1 March 1990.
This work contain examples of:
- Actually Not a Vampire: Masami starts developing a strange, sometimes bloody neck wound when the fascinatingly beautiful Rima Ogawa moves into town, and starts having strange dreams at night of holy symbols and violent attacks. Is Rima a vampire? As you might expect, since you read the trope name, Masami has developed a severe case of Demon of Human Origin and has been feeding on Rima's blood with the mouth she grew on her throat! On the other hand Masami does become more beautiful as she feeds on blood, so it may be a case of Our Vampires Are Different.
- All Just a Dream: Zigzagged in "The Haunted Mansion" in which the girls are all killed and Miko wakes up and goes to school, only for she and her friends to be uncertain whether or not they even went to the place, decide to visit and find out, and then get killed once more. The narrator implies at the end that the whole last part was just a Dying Dream of fleeting escape as the ghost kills them.
- An Arm and a Leg: And heads, too. The ghost in "The Haunted Mansion" kills people by making seams appear on their joints and having them fall apart while still conscious.
- Body Horror: Pretty much of it in both of the stories.
- Can't Spit It Out: Umezu is so freaked out by what he sees in the video he made using a camera to monitor Masami while she's sleeping that he can't bear to tell her what it was and says she needs to see it for herself.
- Contrived Coincidence: In "The Haunted Mansion" Nanako decides to check out the eponymous edifice on the spur of the moment, dragging Miko with her. However, when they get there, two of their school friends have also arrived at roughly the same time, which leads Nanako to decide to actually go into the place.
- Death of a Child: Heavily implied in "The Haunted Mansion" as one room has a crib and a bunch of baby toys and some tragedy is known to have taken place there.
- Demonic Possession: Masami in "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?". An interesting variant in that Masami's jealous feelings seem to have turned her into a Demon of Human Origin without her realizing it.
- Didn't See That Coming: Masami somehow didn't see having a demon come out of her throat to feast upon the living every time she slept in the cards for herself.
- Dope Slap: In "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?", the teacher does this to a student with a book.Teacher: Come now! Don't think you can sit there drooling just because she's beautiful!
- Driven to Suicide: At the end of "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?", after seeing Masami have a demon come out of her neck upon seeing a scary video recorded from his video camera and then being present when said demon finally devours Rima, Umezu is so terrified of her that he leaps out the window when she approaches him.
- The Dreaded: Rima, a transfer student who had previously been studying in Mexico in "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?". Despite her beautiful looks, Masami gets easily scared of her and causes great agitation into her life.
- Dying Dream: Played with in "The Haunted Mansion" as Miko "awakens and goes to school" after her friends are killed as mentioned above and sees them with the wounds they incurred. They decide to see exactly what happened at the mansion, and get killed again, with Miko seeing her own body. However, it seems this wasn't the Dying Dream of Miko's body, but her soul which had briefly reawakened within the ghost that had absorbed her.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: The girls suffer from this at the end of "The Haunted Mansion".
- Eye Catch: The end of "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?" has the humorous one, showing the girls and the boy recording with a video camera fleeing from the ghost, only for the ghost to be eaten by Masami's demon neck.
- Flat Scare: One girl does this to Miko by covering her eyes behind her back in "The Haunted Mansion".
- Green-Eyed Monster: From what the possessed Masami is is saying when she attacks Rima, it seems her jealousy of Rima's looks caused her to develop a Superpowered Evil Side in the form of her neck mouth.
- Hate at First Sight: An interesting case in that Masami doesn't realize it. When she sets eyes on Rima she has a strange, powerful feeling she can't describe, and it keeps bothering her whenever she looks at the other girl, she just can't figure it out...But the demon possessing Masami screams about how she wants to steal Rima's beauty for herself, and demands she die, and turn to dust, and get out of her class.
- Head-Turning Beauty: Every boy in the classroom thinks Rima Ogawa is the most beautiful girl they've ever seen.
- Holy Burns Evil: Subverted. The ritual incense Rima wields to try and stop the possessed Masami from feeding on her does hurt...but that just pisses the demon off.
- Ignorance Is Bliss: Masami agrees to be videotaped during her nightly disturbances, but finds herself unable to watch, and so has no idea what her friend Umezu-kun saw on the video that scared him so much. When she finally watched it and learns the Awful Truth—that she's possessed by a demon which feeds upon the vitality of pretty girls—she decides she was better off not knowing.
- Knockout Gas: The demon in "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?" can emit this.
- Narrator: This OVA has one who exactly looks like Kazuo Umezu, yet voiced by Ikuya Sawaki. In the beginning of "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?", he is seen sitting on a chain swing while warning us "not to toy with the supernatural" and asking us to "recall any mysterious incidents in our past" and if we had "times where scars we had no memories of receiving impossibly appeared somewhere on our bodies". At the end of "The Haunted Mansion", he has his Losing Your Head moment while narrating this:Narrator: The girls fled the haunted mansion, only to return and confirm their fears. Or perhaps they did not truly return to the mansion; perhaps they merely saw a fleeting dream at the moment they perished at the hands of the ghost.
- Nervous Wreck: Downplayed, but Miko is really easy to frighten. Her friends find her reactions so funny they try to scare the poor girl all the time.
- New Transfer Student: Rima at the beginning of "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?". The teacher reveals that she has returned from Mexico and finds her beautiful.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Nanako in "The Haunted Mansion" loves horror movies and is the one who suggests exploring the titular house after seeing how creepy it looked from a distance.
- Red Herring: Rima is beautiful, ethereal and pale, and after one of her nightly disturbances Masami finds one of her long black hairs stuck in the strange wound on her neck—but it's Masami who's feeding on her.
- Shrouded in Myth: No one remembers just what makes "The Haunted Mansion" haunted. Was it a suicide by fire? A murder? Given the presence of a child's room and the ghost who looks severely burned...it may be both.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Masami's repressed jealousy toward Rima leads to her developing a demonic mouth in her neck whose consciousness takes over Masami's body whenever she sleeps for the purpose of stealing the other girl's vitality and beauty through her blood. Meanwhile, Masami's own head hangs off the back of the neck staring blankly at nothing. At first she has no memory of her nightly doings, but then she sees the video Umezu made.
- Transformation of the Possessed: Masami has a sharp-toothed demon that comes out of her neck in "What Will the Video Camera Reveal?", which apparently allows her to drain the vitality of others, giving her a healthy glow that makes her beautiful when the demon is inactive. Of course, she doesn't know what's going on.
- What Is This Feeling?: Upon first catching sight of the beautiful Rima Ogawa, Masami is filled with an overwhelming feeling she can't describe, one which makes her obsessed with the other girl, who constantly haunts her thoughts. What could these strange feelings be? Probably not what you might be thinking, right?
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Umezu-kun throws a can full of (fake?) spiders onto the possessed Masami, whose deep fear of spiders makes her freak out. Unfortunately, it doesn't snap her out of it.
- With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: As Masami's Superpowered Evil Side continues to attack Rima and drain her blood, it's noted that Masami becomes much more attractive than she did before.
