YMMV / Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • A few of the creatures could be interpreted as benevolent (in a Pay Evil unto Evil kind of way), such as the one in "The Next Floor", who punishes the man for wishing that his wife and young son went away.
  • Since most of the episodes have open endings with no clue as to what really happens to the victims, it could be concluded that the creatures are just assholish pranksters instead of murderous monsters. The victim from the aforementioned elevator episode could just have spent a rather sleepless night in a creepy mall... Obviously this interpretation doesn't work if the episode clearly shows the fate of the victim.
  • The nature of the doll from the "The Reception Room" can be really hard to discern. On one hand, the condition of her 'parents' (an elderly couple that treated the doll like their daughter) were gradually getting worse the more they took care of her, suggesting that the doll's presence may be draining their life force somehow. When the husband and wife both ended up dying in the end, the doll finally manages to come to life, and the smile it sports implies that it may be a malevolent entity. However, at the same time, the first thing the doll does as it comes to life is to shed tears over the death of the wife, before calling her "mother" and thanking her. It's subtly implied that the doll may have come to life due to all the love and attention it received from the elderly couple, and that their deaths were simply due to old age and spending all their time taking care of said doll.
• Archive Panic: A new season has been released almost yearly since 2013, so though the episodes are short, someone starting from the beginning has a whole lot to catch up on.
• Heartwarming Moments: Surprisingly enough in a series like this. The season 5 episode "Flower Reading" features a Creepy Child who tells fortunes by picking flower petals. When speaking to the main character, she announces that his wife (who is deceased) will come to pick him up while he waits in the rain. Given the series formula, you'd expect her to show up as a rotting corpse or something else horrifying. Instead, she appears as a beautiful ghost, and the main character happily goes off with her as the little girl bids them a peaceful farewell.
• Narm: The Art Shift in Season 3 can result in this, with the bouncier animation and slightly more cartoonish style making some of the monsters look more goofy than scary. The huge mouths and googly eyes a lot of them have doesn't help. Special mention goes to "The Empress Doll" and "Merry Go Round" which, while still scary, REALLY suffers from the use of bizarre and googly eyes! Though it makes more sense once you learn that the all monsters that season were actually drawn by the boy.
  • In "The Fourth Man", the punishment of not shaking the creature's hand would be a lot scarier if it wasn't described as "crushing you entire body into a meatball".
  • Season 7 has an episode where the narrator is a refrigerator.
  • The Live Action season has the story Bag Woman, where the villain of the story is a woman with an upside-down rectangular shopping bag over her head. This is supposed to be taken seriously.
• Nightmare Fuel: Now has its own page
• Nightmare Retardant: Some of the creature designs could be this, depending on the viewer. Season 3 has more issues with this than the previous ones, as the Art Shift and focus on monsters rather than ghosts or curses is very hit and miss.
• Sequelitis: Each season has been received less favorably as the series goes on. While some episodes do get praise, overall fans think increasingly more stories come off as The Un-Twist and lack creative surprises like in the earlier seasons.
• Tear Jerker: Surprisingly for a series whose sole purpose is scaring the viewers, the episode about the vending machine was a big example. A middle-aged businessman happens upon the machine which begins showing him miniatures of things he once loved and lost a long time ago, like a beloved toy, his dog, his childhood crush. He becomes so overwhelmed that he doesn't realise that the longer he spends inserting coins and getting those glimpses the older he gets, as that thing feasts on his life-essence. Before the episode is over he becomes a frail old man shortly before crumbling into dust. That thing was so evil that showed you all the things you ever wanted and used them as bait to kill you!
  • The episode with the ventriloquist dummy becomes this, if you listen to the doll's dialogue. Its implied the doll is possessed by the spirit of a little boy who died while riding his bike and then got hit by a car. The ending line changes the tone a LOT if you see it as an expression of sadness rather than horror.
    High pitched voice: It hurt...it hurt...

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