Medicine for Ghosts

Two women trying to make careers for themselves in the women's section of a castle find themselves confronting a demon in 2024's Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain (劇場版モノノ怪 唐傘). This is basically a feature length episode of the Mononoke television series from 2007, which in turn was a spin-off of another series, none of which I knew when I hit play on the movie's Netflix thumbnail. I guess that explains why the animation seemed slightly cheap and the plot felt somehow incomplete despite being a self-contained story. I kind of enjoyed it. It was relaxing.

Asa (Kurosawa Tomoyo) is an ascetic young woman who surprises the gatekeepers of the Inner Chambers (the women's section) when she reveals she has no attachment to objects in this world. This marks the beginning of her meteoric rise in the ranks of these ladies who abjure all worldly things to focus on looking beautiful and being demure. Asa befriends a more free spirited new girl named Kame (Yuki Aoi) who has lots of precious keepsakes from her hometown. In the spirit of going with the flow, though, she gamely tosses her precious snacks from home into the ceremonial pit.

There's a demon afoot and it's up to the travelling Medicine Seller (Kamiya Hiroshi) to investigate and sort it out. I found out later he's the main character of the series but like the women there's not a whole lot more to his personality than his looks. The anime's aesthetic is flat and brightly coloured with few, if any, shadows. I think it was meant to look like a mural painted on a screen. It reminded me of some of the experimental scenes in Shaft anime series though this comes from a studio called EOTA. It's interesting at first but becomes a bit dull after about fifteen minutes. I do like the idea of a demon residing in the relationships of people in a place, though, as this ends up being. Well, there's also a haunted umbrella.

Despite being set in what is essentially a harem, this is a modern Japanese movie so don't expect any sex.

Mononoke the Movie is available on Netflix. This is not to be confused with Miyazaki Hayao's Princess Mononoke. A mononoke is a kind of ghost or monster.