Horror Collector anime lands NHK's 10 October slot

NHK General Television will begin the anime of Midori Satō and Norio Tsuruta's Horror Collector on 10 October, running for 12 episodes in the Saturday 23:45 slot. The broadcaster confirmed the date alongside the series' main visual, full cast and staff list and its first teaser.

Yōsei Ishibashi voices Chino Fushigi, the red-hooded boy who hunts down urban legends with a red notebook and takes no interest in anyone around him. Jun Fukuyama plays Jimmy, the human-faced dog in the yellow raincoat who travels with him. Saori Hayami is Himitsu, the girl rumoured to be a faceless child, and Nobuhiko Okamoto voices the blue-umbrella man who moves alongside her for reasons the series is not yet explaining.

A veteran team behind a children's horror series

Yūki Inaba directs and handles series composition at Studio Palette, with Kaori Yoshikawa on character design, Masato Kōda composing the score and Tetsuya Gunji as sound director. NHK Enterprises produces, with NHK credited for production and copyright, and Yon supplied the original character drafts. The source books are children's horror rather than gore, which shapes what the adaptation can do with its 23:45 slot.

Everyday rumours that turn into something worse

The premise is that ordinary rumours become dangerous once they take physical form, and Fushigi's job is to collect them. That gives each episode its own case while the travelling trio of boy, dog and the unexplained Himitsu carries the through-line. Satō and Tsuruta's original books lean on atmosphere and dread rather than shock, and the visuals released with the announcement follow them: a ruined fairground at night, a red notebook, a small companion who should not exist.

Our opinion

Public broadcasters are supposed to fund the things commercial schedulers will not, and this is that instinct working. A children's horror property has been handed 12 episodes, a proper late-night slot and Studio Palette, a studio with a track record of making small budgets look confident. The cast is the real tell. Fukuyama and Hayami do not turn up for filler, and placing Ishibashi beside them suggests NHK is betting the boy-and-dog pairing can carry a whole run of standalone cases. The risk is structural: anthology horror tends to lean on the week's monster and let its leads drift, and the fix here is Himitsu, whose entire appeal is that the show can keep withholding her. If the series forgets to, 12 episodes will feel considerably longer.