Nobody talks about this one. Mizuki Shigeru takes Yanagida Kunio's field recordings of Tono folklore and animates them as something stranger than straight adaptation, a visual encyclopedia of yokai that moves with the logic of dreams instead of narrative. The movie treats these creatures not as monsters to defeat but as presences that occupied the same world as farmers and fishermen, indifferent and utterly real. You watch it and understand why people believed, because Mizuki makes belief look inevitable.

Adapted from Mizuki Shigeru's manga, this 2010 anime film draws on Toono Monogatari, the classic collection in which folklorist Yanagida Kunio gathered the oral traditions of Toono city. Its stories center on yokai, among them tengu, kappa and zashikiwarashi. The result is a fantasy adventure rooted in Japanese folklore, bringing old local tales of supernatural creatures to the screen.