Aoi Bungaku Series

Aoi Bungaku is an anthology adapting classics of modern Japanese literature, each telling of people facing a difficult moral, psychological or emotional choice. The first and longest story is Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. Since childhood Yozo Oba has been unable to feel part of society. He does not understand other people and fears showing his true emotions, so he plays the clown, always joking. At school he meets Takeichi, the first to see that his smile is a pretense. In Tokyo he falls in with Horiki, a painter who lives in defiance of social norms, and sinks into an ever more dissolute life. He then meets Tsuneko, a lonely young woman; they attempt a double suicide, but only Yozo survives, and his life falls apart completely.

Next comes In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom: a bandit living in the forest takes a beautiful woman as his wife, but she demands that he bring her new human heads every day, and he obeys, unable to resist her power, until love becomes a destructive obsession. The third story is Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, in which a young man befriends an enigmatic older man he calls Sensei, whose letters reveal his past with a friend named K and the girl they both loved. The anthology closes with Run, Melos!, The Spider's Thread and Hell Screen.