Nearest Fearful Stories

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

Koichi takes care of his sister, who has recently returned from a trip abroad in the United States as she is not well. While caring for her, he records evidence of ghosts in their home.

When elementary school teacher Kobayashi investigates the absence of one of his young pupils from the classroom, he finds himself at the doorstep of an anonymous suburban house that harbours a horrible secret, and into which all who enter are doomed.

After trying to rescue a man on the subway tracks, two teens wake up in a room dominated by a mysterious black sphere that sends them to hunt down and kill aliens hiding on Earth.

Young art student Hideo paints an unnerving portrait of Tomie, who whispers that she loves him. Inexplicably, he reacts by stabbing her to death with a painting trowel. Two friends, Takumi and Shunichi, arrive on the scene and help him dispose of the body. To cheer him up, the boys take the unwitting murderer to the nearest bar for a party... but a mysterious girl named Tomie shows up, bearing a few odd physical resemblances to the dead girl in the ground.

The inhabitants of a small Japanese town become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals.

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

On the Hokkaido frontier, a war veteran and Ainu girl race against misfits and military renegades to find treasure mapped out on tattooed outlaws.

Kei Nagai dies in a car accident, but realises he is a type of immortal known as Ajin. Hunted by humans, Ajin is eventually found by the government and used as a subject in cruel experiments. He finds fellow demi-humans along the way as he escapes and goes on the run.

12-year-old Oriko Seki, who lost her parents in a car accident, ended up living in her grandmother's Onsen Ryokan "Haru no Ya." With the ghost "Uribou" cohabitating with her and all the other odds, she ended up training to be a young female innkeeper. At first, she didn't like the training, but gradually felt her admiration for her title and began to train seriously. Thus, the growth of the young warrior Oriko begins.

When a social worker is sent to check on a traumatized elderly woman whose family have moved in at the site of a notorious murder case, she unwittingly unleashes a cycle of terror that transmits via its victims.

A man witnesses a fatal traffic accident on his way home from work, and the victim is clearly killed on impact. A moment later, when the corpse stands up and walks away, it could be a hallucination or something far more extraordinary.