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"Folklores are alive."
—Opening line
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When Distressed Damsel Kanae Hiranuma finds her sleep disturbed by a man with an axe under her bed, she follows a tip from an internet chatroom and pays a visit to the Allegory Detective, Daisuke Asou. Asou reveals that she has been possessed by an allegory, an Urban Legend that turns its content into reality and haunts the people who believe in it. With the help of Hanako of the Toilet, a benign allegory possessing him who assists him in hunting allegories, Asou rescues Kanae. In thanks, Kanae becomes Asou's assistant, and the three of them tackle the myriad allegory cases that come their way, while a deeper mystery of Asou's true nature slowly unfolds.
Provides examples of:[]
- Balloon Belly: Happens to the entire cast at the end of the Woman in the Gap chapter.
- Better to Die Than Be Killed: Horribly Subverted, the leader of the suicide club tries to kill herself quickly and "beautifully" rather than be captured by the police, but instead dies slowly, painfully, and grotesquely, screaming "this isn't the way I wanted to die!"
- Cute Little Fangs: Hanako
- Deal with the Devil: The Demon in the Mirror will grant one wish in exchange for the wisher's soul.
- Detect Evil: Asou gets the hiccups whenever he's near a person possessed by an allegory.
- Distressed Damsel: Kanae, multiple times.
- Dreadful Musician: Kanae can't sing.
- Ecchi
- Enemy Rising Behind: "This is Mary. I'm right behind you."
- Evil Phone: While Mary is stalking you, she calls you every five minutes to give you a status update. Which culminates in the Enemy Rising Behind mentioned above.
- Expy: In appearance only. Asou looks exactly like an older version of Yukiteru, and Kanae looks a lot like Yuno with different hair.
- Eye Scream: The urban legend of The Piercing Hole and the White Thread and the chapter that revolves around it.
- To elaborate: In the urban legend, a girl asks a friend of hers to pierce her ears. When the friend does so, a white thread, which turns out to be the girl's optic nerve, comes out of the piercing hole. The friend then unwittingly pulls the thread, causing the girls eyes to be pulled backwards out of their sockets.
- Ear Ache: An spin-off of the urban legend has the girl whose ears were pierced ask you if you are wearing earrings. If you answer "yes", she'll bite off your earlobes.
- Fan Disservice: Nozomi, Kanae's unborn twin sister, spends all her screen time naked. It's very creepy in hindsight.
- Additionally, the female fishmen have anatomically correct breasts.
- Full-Frontal Assault: The Woman in the Gap
- Gainax Ending: Sure, they all live happily ever after.. but how?
- Half the Man He Used To Be: Happens a lot in the Teke-Teke chapter.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind
- Kitsune: Kokkuri
- Lightmare Fuel: The Demon in the Mirror chapter quickly turns into a comic relief episode.
- Lost in Translation: There is a possibility the title suffers from this (The correct translation may or may not be Hanako and the Teller of Allegory). Tokyo Pop is going to have fun with the last couple of chapters.
- Made of Plasticine: Kanae's maids. One of them is cleanly scalped by a doll with a knife.
- Mirror Monster: The Demon in the Mirror.
- Monster of the Week: The Allegories
- More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, but only because her mouth is much, much larger than her face.
- Mundanger: In the Teke-Teke chapter, a suicide club rather than an allegory is behind the mystery.
- Nightmare Face: Lots of 'em, but the most notable is the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
- Occult Detective
- Porn Stash: Inverted: Asou keeps his vast collection of eromanga lying around his office, so Kanae takes it upon herself to stash it where potential clients won't be squicked out by it.
- Power At a Price: Asou can detect people possessed by allegories with hiccups, but if he hiccups one hundred times consecutively, he will die.
- Puff of Logic: Because allegories only exist in the minds of people, scanning them with a computer will destroy them.
- Ret-Gone: Because allegories only exist in the minds of people, all damage caused by the allegory will be reversed when it is eliminated. Except deaths.
- Slasher Smile: The Slit-Mouthed Woman.
- Suicide Pact: The suicide club in the Teke-Teke chapter
- Super-Powered Evil Side: Asou's allegorified self.
- Techno Wizard: Hanako. Her laptop is apparently waterproof.
- The Doll Episode: Mary, an allegory that manipulates discarded dolls, gets a three-part chapter.
- Urban Legends
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Allegories can only be created by people strongly believing in urban legends.