Yami Shibai
English title: Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai
Japanese title: 闇芝居
Type: TV
Episodes: 13
Premiered: summer 2013
Source: Original
Genres: Avant Garde, Horror, Supernatural
Studios: ILCA
Producers: TV Tokyo
Duration: 4 min per ep
Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

The mysterious, yellow-masked Storyteller is a man whose true name and origin are both unknown. He appears at dusk where children gather and recites sinister tales based on Japanese urban legends, to which his young audience eerily intakes. However, the Storyteller is no ordinary teller of tales. He incorporates a kamishibai, a traditional paper-scrolling device, to add visuals to his already demented narration.

A series of short horror stories, Yami Shibai begins with a bachelor who, after moving into a new apartment, immediately starts sensing a malevolent glare being pressed into him. A single talisman rests on his ceiling, but he has no way of knowing it is one of the few safeguards that separate him from a bottomless pit of suffering. Each story is more terrifying, more appalling, and more sickening than the last as the Storyteller's audience find themselves being sucked into the vicious world of his words.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]