What's Yonimo Kimyona Monogatari (Fall 2010) about?

The most recent Yonimo Kimyona Monogatari SP was the first I've seen in its apparent 20-year history. Judging from the 5 featured short stories, it seems similar to the American anthology series, "The Twilight Zone". And it's the 2nd installment of the 2010 anniversary release (first one was in April) which featured a lineup of A-list actors and screenwriters. Huge spoilers ahead.

Story 1 got off to a good start. It's about a white-collar worker turned homeless divorcé who accepts a deal to attain eternal well-being from a mysterious old man. Turns out, the term "eternal well-being", coined by the old man, had a figurative twist to it. And our lead finds himself in an inescapable viscous cycle that reminded me a bit of a cross between the movies "Back to the Future" and "Groundhog Day".

This ending was what made me realise the similarities of this SP with The Twilight Zone, thus I was pleasantly surprised by the unexpectedly gloomy ending.

Story 2 puts a comic exaggeration to the term "personal catch phrase" (or something one'd say too often out of habit) into the life of a young company employee. Where, a particular phrase of his has been overweighing his mentality and affecting the quality of both his personal and professional lives. Knowing the problem, his girlfriend of 5 years seeks help from two local shrine deities, who then made him swallow a magic ball, disabling him from ever saying that phrase. The cure was so effective and immediate, he even made his overdued marriage proposal to her soon after.

It was gonna be an "all's well that ends well" situation, until they revealed in the end that the effect of the magic ball would eventually transfer the problem to his girlfriend after it faded. I like this one; mild comedy with something simple to ponder upon.

Story 3 is a simple love story about a groceries delivery girl who finds a way to communicate with a man whom she has a crush on, through interchanging a bookmark placed inside a novel at a local bookstore. Only to discover that all along, the person reciprocating was actually the novel's dead author himself (when he was still alive that is), via the very pages that doubled as a time portal.

The ending and the revelation of that author's fate was really moving and plain awesome. Looks like the scriptwriter, Sakamoto Yuji, has done it again. Story 3 gets my vote as the best of all 5 short stories.

Story 4 started off at a very good pace, which got me hooked right from the initial few minutes. Our lead is a disgruntled ad agency employee who stumbles upon, literally, a "murder manual". Where, like a typical manual, it prescribes a step-by-step approach (troubleshooting inclusive) to killing someone... for the sake of it. I like how the story's narration switches to and fro, from him to that of the manual via a lady's voice. Also, if you like the drama, Zeni Geba, you'll love this even more.

A pity that towards the last couple of minutes, I could immediately tell how it was gonna end, killing the suspense. I wonder if Kaneko Shigeki could have written the ending differently to prevent that auto-prediction (or maybe it's just me). Anyhow, Tamaki Hiroshi gets my vote as Best Actor of this SP.

Story 5 is about an encounter between two office colleagues where it starts off with the woman offering her pyrokenetic ability as a means to help the man seek revenge on his sister's murderer. Things start to get a little complicated for the both of them when their relationship takes a romantic turn and they get caught up in their own choices and values that collectively formed a Catch-22. For the guy, he requires that she does not  partake in the revenge or his guilt would eventually get in the way of their relationship. For her, that the revenge was the very reason that brought them together, thus requiring her participation. So in the end, she goes against his will, kills the murderer and distances herself from him.

For me, this story required a conscious effort to suspend my disbelief a few times unlike the other 4 where the fictional parts occurred more naturally. Like why the murderer had to kill more people in addition to the guy's sister. I mean, wouldn't her death alone suffice the intent for revenge? Or was it to fortify the woman's justification of her vigilante act? How he continuously escaped prosecution even after being the prime suspect was a little too convenient too. The part of the woman's rejection leading to her job resignation, residential relocation and cell number change was rather exaggerated and contrived, because it wouldn't have changed the storyline if she were to just avoid him at the office and ignore his phone calls. I also felt that Hashimoto Hiroshi could've spent more time to characterise our leads and show why they couldn't have given way to each other and be together after the kill. If it was for the sake of the paradox, I thought it wasn't very compelling. Given the actors and writer, I had the highest expectations for this. Pity it fell short.

Overall, this SP was pretty good with most of the stories being well-written. Probably one of the better SPs I've seen in awhile too. Too bad this one would most likely slip past the radar of the majority.

Edit:
Watched the 2009 Fall release and it paled in comparison, except maybe the one about sukiyaki. So it seems that the quality of each story in every episode is not guaranteed.