In honor of Filipino American History Month, I wanted to talk about my favorite anime show called
Trese. The show takes place in Manila where a detective named Alexandra Trese deals with
supernatural crimes happening in the city. We get to see a few Philippine mythological creatures
being introduced in this series. Two of them I was interested in seeing were the aswang and the
nuno. I was familiar with the aswang ever since I was about seven because it is one of the most
common mythological creatures known in the Philippines.
An aswang is a malicious shapeshifting creature that shares the features of werewolves,
vampires, witches and ghouls combined. The Nuno sa punso is usually depicted as a short
elderly man with a beard. In the show, you will see Nuno with the appearance of having green
skin, yellow eyes, and long hair but no beard. He likes choc nut, a popular Philippine candy bar,
which Alexandra keeps in handy so she can give him the snack in return for helpful information
for her job. The term Nuno sa punso translates to “ancestor in the anthill” in the Tagalog
language.
Alexandra Trese is played by Shay Mitchell (in English), Liza Soberano (in Tagalog) and Ryoko
Shiraishi (in Japanese). The show is available on netflix and first aired on June 11, 2021 with six
episodes so far. I didn’t hear of it until September of 2022 when my best friend introduced me to
the show. I thought it was so good that I started binge watching all six episodes in one day.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Akron chapter.