An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Werewolves versus Cirtus Fruit – Okamikakushi: Masque of the Wolf Spoiler Review

It’s still October and the relative low quantity of horror anime be damned, I’m doing all spooky shows for it this year! Well, we’ve seen ghosts, vampires, and… weird Victorian soot faeries, guess we might as well give werewolves a shot as well.

Okamikakushi is a show that kind of looks like a game of Werewolf: you’re in a town, there are wolves, and it seems like somebody gets murdered every night under the perpetually-full and always blood-red moon while by day we try to solve the mystery.

In some ways, though, the traditional pattern is placed in reverse.

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Soot, Shadows, and Secrets – Shadows House Spoiler Review

It’s still spooky time, but this week we’re taking a look at something a little less conventional: a gothic tale not about any familiar ghosts or ghouls yet still, on at least one side, still familiar to its genre.

Shadows House takes place within the confines and grounds of an ambiguously Victorian mansion. The lords and ladies of the House are the Shadows family, who are notable for being absolutely black, such that no features can be discerned upon their surface. Because of this, the Shadows have “living dolls”, attendants with what the viewer would regard as normal human features who, among other things, act as the faces of the Shadows, giving expressions to the otherwise unreadable entities.

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At Least it’s not Collect – Call of the Night Spoiler Review

Well, while we’re in the month of maximum spookiness, what better subject could there be than Vampires? I’ve talked about the notorious nosferatu before, notably in the lamentable A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives and the somewhat less awful Lunar Legend Tsukihime. In fact, I even referenced the vampires here in the opening of the former review. So it only seems fitting that now that we’ve come around to everyone’s favorite season for vampires (your mileage may vary), I ought to take a look at Call of the Night.

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Comfort Harem Buffet – Date a Live (Seasons 1-4) Spoiler Review

Oh, Date a Live, how have I gone this far without reviewing you? This is a show with a majestic four seasons, an iconic design in the form of one of its leading ladies (Kurumi Tokisaki) getting mountains of attention and her own spinoff, and a legendarily goofy premise: a seemingly normal high school boy must date apocalypticly powerful supernatural girls, because the only way to seal their powers rather than killing them or letting them wreak further destruction is with a kiss.

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(Holmes + Edge)^SocialCommentary = ? – Moriarty the Patriot Spoiler Review

Moriarty the Patriot is a show that walks a ton of fine lines. Somewhere between adaptation and subversion, tawdry vengeance and cunning capers, message fiction and adventure – at the intersection of those dividing lines, you find this show. That puts it in a promising yet perilous position, since balancing on any one of those lines is also balancing between success and failure.

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Pudding Ghost – Nanana’s Buried Treasure Spoiler Review

A boy moves in to a new apartment, only to discover it’s haunted! The ghost wants to find her (unknown) killer and kill them back, and in the meantime can help the boy find a number of mystical artifacts that are hidden throughout the setting, hidden behind any number of ridiculous puzzles and traps.

It’s nowhere near as exciting as it sounds.

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