Kakurenbo

There are 2 reasons to write a review.

1. Is this anime for you?
A: If you are easy to trick and get lost in atmosphere quite often, or don't watch horror much or are frightened easily then yes.

Now part 2 is justify why you hate something to the people who love it. (Fair enough since you should at least provide good reasoning for liking or hating something.) Past this part has SPOILERS.


It is a game of 7 children. There are 8 children. This is the start. Gee, WONDER WHO THE 8TH IS!? Also, she looks exactly like the one kids sister (despite wearing a ... mask), and they all wear fox masks. Now they spend 16 minutes running around the city looking for the girl (8th child) as well as being chased by monsters. During which period, they find a poster with 4 monsters and a fox in the middle.

Right then I stopped the movie, walked to my brother's room and explained to him That I'm watching a OVA in which there are kids running around with a fox mask, an extra kid pulling a Silent Hill 2, and that the fifth monster was a fox. We said IN UNISON "She's it". She literally is "It" btw. To catch the children. Then after 16 minutes elapse, we get to see that SHE IS THE MONSTER! Oh wow, shocker on shock street. They still feel the need to then explain that however. Then she says "When we play Hide And Seek the city gets brighter, but only for a minute". Right then I said "She's using them as batteries" then that's revealed, as if that's a surprise. Then it's revealed the last child is it, go figure.

So in addition to being 100% predictable, how is the atmosphere since that's a key aspect of horror! It's not great. The music is poor, it's often annoyingly dark despite being animated, the creatures are not that scary, the characters are not particularly likable. They're UNLIKABLE CHILDREN, how is that possible!? Probably because they're soulless, in a 20 minute production, designed primarily to serve as fodder for the monsters.

The only thing it does well is somehow make 3d cell shading not look horrible for 20 minutes.

So I guessed the plot, I wasn't afraid or creeped out despite watching it at midnight in a dark room, and it didn't entertain me. Enjoy! I am being generous with my rating.