Orochi, a strange girl who wakes up for ten years at a time once every century, observes two sisters growing up in the mansion of their wealthy family. The older girl can do no wrong and the younger girl is constantly criticised and berated for not living up to her sibling’s exemplary standards. Years later, Orochi’s spirit returns in the body of another girl. The two sisters are now grown women: the younger sister is a bitter woman, forced to return to her family home after an unsuccessful marriage and the older sister is now a bed-ridden widow with a terminal illness. It seems the younger sister has been made bitter and sadistic by her traumatic childhood but maybe the seemingly angelic older sister isn’t quite as perfect as she seems.

Written by Hayao Miyazaki in 1969 under the pen-name “Akisu Saburo.”

It is a tragic tale of Tem, a boy who lost his family to a Kittarl raid.
It tells the sad story of how he makes and subsequently loses his friends and companions
while rebelling against the authoritarian Kittarls.