Based on the same novel as the
Satomi Hakkenden drama, which is supposedly one of Japan's most famous books, Hakkenden is the story of the spirits of the eight half-dog children of Princess Fuse of the Satomi clan.
Years ago, the lord of the Satomi Clan ordered the execution of an evil sorceress who had bewitched her husband into being evil and...you know...killing his buddies and such(it was a sudden flashback with little lead-in, so I was still adjusting.) With her dying breath, just before getting her head lopped off, the sorceress cursed the lord, saying that his grandchildren would be half-mongrel. Years later, Lord Satomi was losing the war against another evil lord(and they continued to plague him for the rest of his life.) After his soon-to-be son-in-law, Daisuke, is lost in the battle field, he jokingly tells the family dog(who is not normal dog) that it can marry his daughter, Fuse, if it brings him his enemy's head. The dog brings him the head, of course, and the lord treats him like a king, hoping he'll forget the promise. The dog doesn't, of course, and when Fuse learns the truth, she insists that her father's word must be honored, and leaves with the dog as his wife.
Fuse vows that it will be a marriage in name only, and doesn't allow him to consumate the marriage. The sorceress, of course, refuses to be satisfied with this, and uses sorcery to impregnate her anyway. Meanwhile, Daisuke did not die in battle, but barely survived, and when he learned of the marriage, he went off to save Fuse. He shoots and kills the dog, but the bullet goes through the dog and kills Fuse, as well. The spirits of her eight unborn children leave her body and find new homes, some almost immediately in young boys, some such later in unborn children. Each enters into a family with "Inu"(dog) in the family name, and each boy has a peony-shaped birthmark and a blue bead with a character on it. When they grow up, they encounter each other on their vaious adventures and vengeance quests, and eventually learn their origins and set off to save the Satomi from yet another evil lord to honor Princess Fuse.
