Otogi Zoshi

Hikaru disguised as her brother (right) and with her hair down (left).

Otogi Zoshi is an Anime produced by Production I.G, which follows the story of Hikaru and a number of people surrounding her. While at first it may look to nothing more than Historical Fiction with fantasy elements mixed in, that's only true of the first half. Halfway through, the series goes through a combination Time Skip / Genre Shift to present day where strange Urban Legends keep coming true. The two plots do overlap, and as a whole it's Better Than It Sounds.

The first half (episodes 1-13), labeled the Heian Arc, appropriately takes place in the city of Heian (modern day Kyoto) during the Heian Period. Heian is becoming a corrupt and run-down city. Selfish Samurai and onmyoji, who care only about gaining political power, are everywhere. To make matters worse the city is suffering from famine and widespread disease. To combat this, the Imperial Court decides to send Minamoto no Raikou, a famous samurai well-known for his archery skills, to recover a legendary gem (a magatama) said to hold mysterious power to save the world. However Raikou falls ill, so his sister, Hikaru, disguises herself to make the journey in his place. Traveling along with her guard, Tsuna--though she's quite combat capable herself--she meets many people and learns that the situation is more complex than it first seemed.

Most of the story's second half (episodes 14-24) makes up the Tokyo Arc. It follows the same group of characters from before, except they've been reincarnated into modern day Tokyo. There Hikaru lives the life of a mostly Ordinary High School Student. She also acts as the landlady for the Villa Minamoto apartment complex, where her friends and tenants Tsuna, Sadamitsu, Urabe, and Kintaro live--though timely rent payments are left to be desired. But one night, on the one year anniversary of her brother Raikou's disappearance, Hikaru suddenly gets a lead on where he went. While following Tsuna on an odd job based around an urban legend, Hikaru spots her brother on a phantom train... Though Tsuna saw nothing, she's determined to investigate. The next day she gets an even bigger set of clues in the form of strange photos taken by Raikou. Like clockwork, incidents happen one after another in the photographed places, with Hikaru (and her friends) getting involved each time. At the same time, a mysterious man in a trenchcoat keeps appearing, warning Hikaru to stop.

The series finishes off with two "Special Arc" episodes that takes place before the start of the Tokyo Arc proper. One follows Urabe, and the other, Mansairaku.

It was later adapted into a two-volume Manga.

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This Anime provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Hikaru, although notably less so in the Tokyo arc. Urabe, also less so in the Tokyo arc.
• Afterlife Express
• Anime Theme Song
• The Archer
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Hikaru and Mansairaku disappear after floating up in a pillar of light at the end of the Heian Arc. Mansairaku ends up ageless because of it, while Hikaru's case is a Double Subversion. She reincarnates and seems perfectly normal, but it turns out she's the only one who can fix the weird stuff going on.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: Blink and you'll miss it, but it happens to Kintaro in episode 10.
• Badass Longcoat: Mansairaku in the Tokyo Arc.
• Barehanded Blade Block
• Batman Gambit: Abe no Seimei manipulates Hikaru and the others into gathering the magatamas in a specific order, such that they can be placed in a pentagram of enmity, which will destroy Heian.
• BFS: Ivan wields one.
• Big Bad Friend: Mansairaku is actually Abe no Seimei.
• Big Eater: Kintaro
• Bishonen: Mansairaku, namely.
  • and Sadamitsu, in the second arc
• Bland-Name Product: Lucky Seaven cigarettes, Pizza Hot.
• Blood From the Mouth
• Bodyguard Crush: A reversed case - Tsuna is revealed to have a crush on Hikaru.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Kintaro
• Camp Gay: A background character in episode 25.
• ~Chekhov's Gun~: The piece Hikaru's flute chips off the magatama of fire ends up as the gem on her necklace in modern day.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Sadamitsu
• The Chosen One: Hikaru's the only one that can fix the distortions in the Tokyo Arc.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: The magatamas, according to their elemental associations.
• Contemplate Our Navels: The entirely of episode 26.
• Cool Shades: Subverted, as the shades Sadamitsu occasionally wears in the Tokyo Arc just make him look like more of a Rummage Sale Reject. Later played straight by Mansairaku in episode 26.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: The Ministers of the Right and Left.
• Creepy Child: Matsumushi, Abe no Seimei's mute helper. Namely when she murders Urabe. Not so much in the Tokyo Arc, though.
• Died Standing Up: Raikou and Tsuna.
• Disability Superpower: Averted. When Tsuna starts going blind in his other eye, he has trouble fighting, and eventually dies because of it.
• Dual-Wielding: In the Heian Arc, Sadamitsu and at least one Giant Mook wield two swords.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
• Episode Title Card
• Et Tu, Brute?: Hikaru is horribly torn up at Mansairaku's betrayal. In addition to Urabe. She is, as Tsuna points out, an onmyoji through and through.
• Eyepatch of Power: Not an actual eyepatch, but in the Heian Arc Tsuna always keeps his right eye closed, since he's blind in it.
• Eye Scream: Hikaru fires an arrow into a Giant Mook's eye.
• Executive Meddling: The Tokyo arc was made with a tight budget, on a tight schedule. And fourteen different directors.
• Fortune Teller: Urabe is one post-timeskip, though not the old Gypsy sort.
• The Four Gods: They even include the fifth one in the form of a yellow kirin.
• Genre Shift: Complete with a new theme.
  • The DVDs even serve as a Lampshade Hanging, changing from black labels (part 1) to white labels (part 2).
• Hachiko: Brought up when discussing an urban legend of a spectral white dog.
• Haunted Technology: The subject of an urban legend.
• Hero Stole My Bike
• Historical Domain Characters: Lots of characters take names from/are based on real historical figures.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The Tokyo Arc episodes are all named for places.
• Ill Boy: Raikou in the Heian Arc.
• In a Single Bound: Shuten Doji can jump quite high, even when badly injured.
• Invisible to Normals: It varies depending on what's going on, but more than once in the Tokyo Arc, Hikaru sees something supernatural while Tsuna doesn't at all.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Once the Tokyo Arc starts, it dips into this. Luckily it all makes sense in the end.
• Limited Wardrobe
• Love Triangle: Not as overt as some, but it's there.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Abe no Seimei.
• Manipulative Bastard: Abe no Seimei, see Batman Gambit above.
• Mineral MacGuffin
• The Mole: Urabe is secretly working for Abe no Seimei, though she doesn't know his goals.
• Mood Whiplash: After Heian is destroyed in episode 13, and Hikaru and Mansairaku disappear in a pillar of light, the scene suddenly cuts to the oddly cheerful Sadamitsu and Kintaro.
• Mooks, and a few Giant Mooks
• Mysterious Protector: Mansairaku
• Narm: Many of Shuten Doji's actions in episode 10.
• Not What It Looks Like: One episode of the Tokyo Arc has Hikaru and some others mistake Tsuna and Ibaraki for fiances.
• Off-Model: The art suffers in a few quick sequences, and the second half is generally of lower quality than the first.
• Onmyodo
• "On the Next Episode of..." Catchphrase: "Don't miss it!"
• Our Werewolves Are Different
• Parental Abandonment
• Pastel-Chalked Freeze-Frame
• Phenotype Stereotype: Ivan and his son are both blond with blue eyes.
  • Though it makes one wonder what actually drove him that far from his native Russia. Especially before the word "Siberia" was even coined...
• Pillar of Light: Five of them, Color Coded for Your Convenience, are part of Abe no Seimei's ritual to destroy Heian.
• Public Domain Artifact: The magatama (actually more than one in the end) that the group is searching for.
• Rain of Arrows
• Redemption Equals Death: Urabe dies after explaining that she only helped Seimei out of the desire to help Heian, but that Seimei's plan will destroy it. Then in the Tokyo Arc, Mansairaku dies after helping Hikaru to prevent the destruction of Tokyo.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Shuten Doji
• Red Sky, Take Warning: Earthquakes in one episode of the Tokyo Arc make the earth flash red once.
• Reincarnation
• The Reveal: What's behind Abe no Seimei's mask? Mansairaku. Then in the Tokyo Arc, though the audience knows it ahead of time, Hikaru's Mysterious Protector turns out to be Mansairaku. Learning that triggers her memories of her past life.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Sadamitsu in the Tokyo Arc.
• Samurai
• Shaggy Dog Story: Fairly early on, Hikaru and company manage to find the magatama, but by the time they bring it back, Raikou is dead. And not only that, they need two more for them to be completely useful.
• Snow Means Death: In episode 26, Mansairaku finds the old man beneath the tree he's been meeting him at before. The old man has passed away, with the snow falling on him.
• The Speechless: Matsumushi is mute.
• Story Arc
• Super Strength: Kintaro in the Heian Arc. Shuten Doji has it too - though fittingly - after transforming to his giant form.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Hikaru, of course.
• Talking Is a Free Action
• Time Skip: The Tokyo Arc takes place in modern day. The final chapter of the Heian arc is followed by a whopping 1000 year timeskip.
• Time Stands Still
• Together in Death: In the Heian Arc, Shuten Doji and Ibaraki die together, though there is the bump that Ibaraki killed him in order to help Hikaru's group.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: In the Tokyo Arc, of course. It's because the events at the end of the Heian Arc led to different capitals getting destroyed through the course of history, and Tokyo is the modern day capital.
• Untranslated Title: Otogizoushi means, according to That Other Wiki, "Companion tales".
• Urban Legends
• Weirdness Magnet: Hikaru quickly becomes one in the Tokyo Arc. It turns out that her necklace is the actual Weirdness Magnet.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Abe no Seimei wants to rid the world of suffering, but to do so, he destroys Heiankyo.
• Wham! Episode: Episode 12 in particular.
• White Mask of Doom: Seimei's Noh mask.
• Who Wants to Live Forever??: Mansairaku laments living so long, and thanks Hikaru when she frees him from it.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Deep red hair, actually. Mansairaku has two prominent locks of it in the Heian Arc, then in the Tokyo Arc all his hair is red. Everyone else has realistic hair colors.