A mysterious man wearing a yellow mask, known only as the Storyteller, appears at dusk in a children’s playground. His true name and origin are completely unknown. He sets up a small wooden box and uses a kamishibai, a traditional paper-scrolling device, to narrate sinister tales based on Japanese urban legends and folklore to a small audience of children.

The series is an anthology, with each self-contained episode lasting only about four minutes. The framing device changes subtly across the long-running series. In the earliest seasons, the Storyteller is an old man. The third season features a young boy on a playground slide who draws illustrations and sings a cryptic chant. Later seasons return to the masked figure, placing him in various unsettling locations such as a dark apartment, a busy city intersection, or a forest, always gathering listeners to hear his latest tale of horror.

Individual episodes focus on ordinary people who encounter supernatural phenomena in their daily lives. One of the first stories follows a bachelor who moves into a new apartment and finds a protective talisman stuck to his ceiling. He removes it and soon realizes it was the only thing separating him from a malevolent, staring woman and a room filled with ghosts. Another tale involves a man who wakes up in a rural hospital with amnesia, only to discover that his fellow patients are performing a reverse cheer called Zanbai, a ritual meant to trap him in the village forever. Other stories feature a cursed family whose ancestors force the adults to wear smiling masks and laugh through the night to ward off an evil spirit, and a teacher working late who is terrorized by long, creeping hair.

The show is notable for its distinct visual style, which mimics the look of kamishibai theater with limited animation, paper-cutout characters, and grainy filters that make the footage look like an old projector. The series relies on slow-building tension, eerie sound design, and sudden shock moments to create fear. While the Storyteller is a recurring figure, the voice actors for the characters in each individual tale change every episode. Each installment functions as a short, punchy ghost story designed to leave a lingering sense of unease long after the four minutes have ended.