Akayama no Hanabira [EN]

Japanese Feudal Period; Sengoku Jidai - 1490 b.c

An evil spirit puts a village at risk, now two rivals must team up to save the ones they love.

In old Ise, Yusuke and Tetsurō were best friends, but ancestral conflicts between their families led them to take different paths: Yusuke abandoned everything to become a samurai, while Tetsurō followed his selflessness in pursuit of being the best healer in the region.

Before return of war, Yusuke finds the village ravaged by a mysterious plague. Exhausted and with no way out, Tetsurō doesn't know what else to try when the epidemic puts his younger sister at risk. The last alternative is to seek the cure for the curse at the top of Akayama Mountain, where popular belief says there are yōkai. Yusuke doesn't believe these legends, but something doesn't allow him to let Tetsurō go alone - be it an affective memory or a call of fate, it's impossible to say.

The books make it clear that no one who makes it to the top of the mountain returns, but they go there together for Ise's salvation. The answer to that problem seems to lie in a treacherous creature, a kitsune sentenced to a penance for his deeds: helping them return to the human world. Or at least that's what he says...