Do you know about “lore”?
A lore is an urban legend. These stories are spread by spoken word, so no one knows which ones are real and which ones are fake.
The stories you know.
The stories you don’t know.
Can you tell…
if they are fact or fiction?
There is a site, Lore no Mori, that collects urban legends. But the site can only be accessed if you’re invited and the URL supposedly is changed all the time. However, the ones that has accessed the site is said to be struck by misfortune…
Forest of Lore (Lore no Mori)
Eiko has accessed to the Forest of Lore site and is looking into a ghost story that could be from her school. She gets her friend Hiiko involved and eventually Shiomi Nakura, a classmate of theirs, too get involved. Eiko shows him the website since he too has access to the site, and he tells her it’s a fake. Where did the site come from from…?
Facade of the Backside
Tsukasa Fujitsuka‘s father died not long after Tsukasa saw a woman behind him. Now he has moved to his grandparents on the countryside. There he starts hanging out with the children, among them Shiomi Nakura who also is from the city, and learns the local shrine has a ritual including the song Kagome Kagome and that is you mess with it, you will be touched by a god, which is bad. At the same time he feels the woman he saw before, is now behind him. He thinks it’s his mother, but is it really?
Lost at Home
Two years ago, Noriko and Naoto‘s cousin Kanae died. Now their father has committed suicide and Naoto is burying himself in occultism as he wishes he could see and speak with the dead. One day Noriko comes to think of an old manhole and climbs down. Worried, Naoko follows. After walking for a while they come out at the same place as they entered, however the people they meet are only dead people. Naoto wants to stay as Kanae is there, but Noriko isn’t sure, and on top of that, she sees Shiomi Nakura there, which she had been introduced to on the side of the living…
A Blade of Leaf
This is more of an epilogue to the volume and is entirely about Shiomi Nakura.
This is a very interesting collection of stories by Ichiha. It can be interpreted in several ways. One is that Shiomi has gone crazy and is imagining himself in the situation, or that in fact he is part of it. In the first story it’s clear that something has changed him and that something happened. Based on the epilogue most likely his parents have died – but as the story can be interpreted in several ways, it’s actually unclear how, as what we see could be the result of the Shiomi’s imagination.
You can also see how the supernatural events escalate with each story. In the first one it’s all explained as Hiiko doing a prank to get back at Eiko, while in the third the story jumps between the dead and the living. This could be interpreted as Shiomi spiraling down into madness.
My analysis aside, as this collection is a very interesting work, it’s a good collection of horror. It makes you wonder about the base of urban legends and where they come from as well as giving you chills. I found the first and the episode – Forest of Lore and A Blade of Leaf – the most disturbing.
Recommended read to all horror fans and fans who like psychological stories out there! I really liked this.
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