Mononoke

A wandering merchant who calls himself a medicine seller travels Edo-period Japan carrying a sword he cannot draw until he learns three things about each spirit he meets: its Form, its Truth, and its Reason. That rule structures all five arcs. Each haunting is really a buried human cruelty, usually against a woman, that festered until it took shape. Directed by Kenji Nakamura at Toei, this 2007 series is the Medicine Seller spin-off from Ayakashi, and it is unmistakable on sight. The screen looks like washi paper and woodblock prints, flat and patterned and loud with color, closer to a moving scroll than ordinary animation.