“Intruder,” or as the story is also known, “Trespassers,” is a story revolving around a young boy named Toru Oishikiri, who reads in Class C. He is introduced as a boy living alone in a secluded big mansion; his cousin and the few friends he makes are the only ones visiting him in that mansion. The introductory scene of “Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre” Episode 5 shows a frantic Oishikiri digging up what seems to be a corpse but is actually another Oishikiri who opens his eyes after the current Oishikiri finishes digging. The pose in which Oishikiri stands before digging is a reference to the manga “Hallucinations,” which introduces the character of Oishikiri to the audience. In this manga, he killed and buried his best friend Kajima because he had hit a growth spurt, and that had made Oishikiri jealous and insecure about his short stature.
In the anime, Oishikiri is shown to be in the library, and the anime does not mention the conversation that he has with his cousin Takayuki about him hearing footsteps upstairs. Takayuki suggests that he call the police so that they can check if it is an intruder, but Oishikiri refuses, telling him that he hates the police. The anime picks up in the library scene, where Oishikiri makes new friends after they approach him while he is reading a book. The book was based on the Bermuda Triangle, and the group was interested in paranormal or strange activities, so a new friendship was formed between Oishikiri, Kamiyama, Watanabe, and Koizumi. Oishikiri had made friends after a long while, which was visible after he removed himself from the situation when two kids started whispering about him.
Oishikiri’s new friends were very excited to visit Oishikiri’s house after he told them about hearing footsteps. He invites them over, and they are in awe when they see the mansion. Oishikiri invites them in, and they explore the mansion, which looks like something straight out of a creative illustration book. The mansion gives off a rather peculiar aura, which has the four of them always on guard. As soon as the clock strikes 4 in the evening, they hear the footsteps Oishikiri was talking about, and thus they run toward the noise. The group finds out that another Oishikiri is burying a corpse in the garden; this compels the real Oishikiri to scream a warning at the other Oishikiri. Kamiyama claims that the other Oishikiri might be from another dimension as the other Oishikiri disappears. They go down to the garden and uncover their bodies, which leads them to believe that the other Oishikiri might be a full-blown murderer. They are quick to reassure the real Oishikiri that he could never be a murderer and that they believe in him. The four friends then make up their minds to hide their bodies further into the ground so that others cannot find them. Meanwhile, the other Oishikiri from a different dimension sits still in a weird way while the rest of them continue to hide the corpses.
The story of Oishikiri could be chalked up to his hallucinating these incidents, or his hallucinations may have been the causes that made him frantic enough to carry out the killings on his own. In his hallucination, his friends may help him hide the evidence, but it’s all him. Or if the incidents are purely in his imagination, it could be because of the years of neglect and the insecurities he has to face alone. Oishikiri lives alone in a distant and secluded big mansion, which gives off the fact that he is rich. His staying alone in that mansion, with nobody to keep him safe or assure his safety, does speak of neglect and loneliness. His parents don’t seem to be in the picture, and staying alone and having to battle his insecurities alone from an early age has taken a toll on the kid’s mind. This has made him daydream, have nightmares, or hallucinate more often. If we consider dimensional travel, then, as mentioned in the other story about Oishikiri, “Further Tales of Oishikiri: The Wall,” Oishikiri’s other alter egos seem to be dealing with the same insecurities as the real Oishikiri. They are both insecure about their short stature, and thus the other Oishikiri carries out experiments on his friends and, if they go wrong, dumps their bodies in the garden of the current dimension.
The second story “Long Hair in the Attic” begins with Hiratsuka breaking off his relationship with Chiemi and asking her to find someone more serious as he coldly drops her off at home. He also tells her to lose his number and not contact him yet again as he drives away. In the manga, however, he said that Chiemi had tried her best to suit his needs; however, it was not enough, and they didn’t belong with each other. Chiemi is brokenhearted by the abrupt ending to their eight-nine years of relationship. She enters her home and finds her sister Eri, who asks her about her date and when Hiratsuka will ask for her hand in marriage as they have been dating for a long time. These questions only seem to put Chiemi in an even more miserable state. The questions stop when both the sisters hear rats running around in the attic, and Chiemi tells Eri to ask their father to set up more rat traps in the attic. Eri then leaves her alone as Chiemi starts reminiscing about her memories with Hiratsuka at sea and how she had started to wear her hair long as he had suggested. Chiemi ends up burning their picture and then crying herself to sleep. As she wakes up, she gets the shock of her life as she witnesses a dead rat tangled in her hair. She decides to cut her hair to get a fresh start in her life. However, as Eri runs to find scissors, Chiemi’s decision becomes the last one as she dies tragically beheaded. Eri runs to find her sister’s corpse lying in her room while her head is missing.
In the manga, the viewers are told about how beautiful and lovely Chiemi is. As the news of her death reaches the neighborhood, everyone gathers to check up on their family while the police arrive to check the situation. The anime picks up a week later when Hiratsuka gets a call in the middle of the night, and the noise on the phone reminds him of Chiemi grinding her teeth while she sleeps, and he immediately thinks it is Chiemi but later remembers her death. He is shown to be in bed with another person, and that kind of points to the fact that he might have been cheating on Chiemi, and once he had had enough of two-timing the other person, he broke it off with Chiemi. Later, during Chiemi’s funeral, while her father was sitting near her photo, Eri came to borrow the flashlight to check up on the rats. Her father did not let her, and he himself went to the attic to check the traps, only to not return for a long time. He already had a pre-existing heart condition, so when Eri went to check up on her dad, she found him dead, staring straight at what seemed to be Chiemi’s head. The head jumped off from the attic wall as soon as Eri tried to get it down, and it rolled over to the entrance, stumbling down the stairs as it made its way to Hiratsuka’s place. As it arrived, it killed Hiratsuka with the hair that he used to love, marking the end of the story.
“Long Hair in the Attic” does talk about how awful Hiratsuka was to Chiemi and does show his controlling side, as he had wanted her to be a certain way. He immediately lost interest after his way of using Chiemi had made her a little cold. The breakup was especially hard for Chiemi, as she had been overly dependent on Hiratsuka and had followed his orders to a tee in order to please him. She could not cope with how used and distraught she felt after he dumped her. She also could not get over the loss of her identity after she had given in to each of his whims. She could have committed suicide out of sheer desperation for not being able to deal with herself and the grief she felt over losing an almost decade-long relationship. Therefore, even after her death, she took revenge to make up for the years she was used to. Here, a little psychopathic tendency of “if she could not have him, nobody could have him” could also be observed as a similar theory in the way she sought him after her death and killed him. Her hair had literally crushed Hiratsuka in a similar way to how he had suffocated and crushed her identity replacing it with a new one, an identity she could not even recognize as her own self.
