More than fifteen years since the Mononoke series (2007) and following a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, director Kenji Nakamura returns with not one, not two, but three feature-length anime about a nameless travelling ‘Medicine Seller’ in the Edo period, who always appears just when a supernatural, vengeful mononoke, feeding off human grudges, needs to be exorcised.

In an even more exuberant style, with every room lavishly decorated with everything from traditional ukio-e woodblock prints to modern abstractions and, once the fighting starts, an extraordinary excess of shapes, movement and expression – all drawn against the fibrous background of traditional Japanese washi paper. The Mononoke trilogy undoubtedly belongs on the list of ‘most overstimulating animated features ever’.

It’s surrealist, bordering on psychedelic, and some reviewers remarked that at home, you’d probably be reaching for the pause button to examine all this visual overload. Well, yes – but what could be better than letting go of this need for control and undergoing these fantastical explosions of images and sounds together in the cinema?

Meanwhile, in this first episode, you will also witness the tender blossoming of a hidden love between the young women Asa (serious, methodical) and Kame (playful, chaotic) within the Ōoku (harem) of Edo Castle, amidst all the court intrigue. A story about what happens when you sacrifice too much of yourself for the collective – and how the grudge will want its revenge.

This program screened as part of Kaboom Animation Festival 2026

Showing in this program

Mononoke the Movie – The Phantom in the Rain

• Kenji Nakamura
• Japan, 2024
• 89 min.

Wildly
designed, borderline psychedelic psycho horror drama is the first in
a trilogy, following the 2007 Mononoke series. Once again, a
mysterious ‘Medicine Seller’ is fighting mononoke: spirits
formed from human grudges haunting the Edo Castle harem, where young
concubines Asa and Kame are discovering the court intrigues and each
other.