A father's disappearance sends a young girl chasing rumors of gods and monsters in Oni: Thunder God's Tale, a 2022 animated series built around Japanese folklore.
What is ONI: Thunder God's Tale about?
The series follows a girl growing up on the edges of a world where spirits, thunder gods, and half-remembered legends are treated as fact rather than myth. Her father vanished while chasing answers about his own strange abilities, and his absence shapes how she sees the villagers, the forest, and herself. Rather than a single quest, the show builds outward in episodes, letting folklore, family history, and small-town secrets surface gradually as she tests what she can and cannot do. Directed by Daisuke Tsutsumi, the show leans on a distinct visual language, mixing stop-motion textures with digital animation to give its spirit world a handmade, tactile feel rather than a slick, generic anime look.
About the cast
The English voice cast draws from Momona Tamada, Craig Robinson, Archie Yates, Brittany Ishibashi, George Takei, Anna Akana, and Charlet Chung, alongside director Robert Kondo, giving the show a lineup that spans comedy, drama, and family animation backgrounds.
Context & significance
Made as a Japan–United States co-production, the series sits at an unusual crossing point: Japanese oni mythology filtered through a visual approach more associated with Western stop-motion studios than traditional anime houses. That hybrid production style is part of why the show reads differently from most folklore-based animation aimed at family audiences, favoring texture and mood over fast plotting. The result plays more like an illustrated storybook brought to motion than a conventional Netflix animated series, with each episode adding another layer to the girl's understanding of her father and the spirit world he vanished into.
Watching ONI: Thunder God's Tale on Ktime
Oni: Thunder God's Tale streams on K-Time with a free account login, no separate purchase required to start watching. The series is available with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so viewers can follow the show's folklore-heavy dialogue in Farsi from the first episode, on the same account across devices.