Kagewani

A video blogger attempts to fake cryptid sightings to boost his views, but gets more than he bargained for when his crew is slaughtered by a real monster. Elsewhere, students find themselves preyed upon by a sandworm-like beast, initiating a desperate struggle for survival on their own school grounds.

With more of these attacks from mysterious creatures occurring, researcher Sousuke Banba tasks himself with delving into the mystery. With nothing but the keyword "Kagewani" to lead him, he scours the sites of recent attacks in hopes of finding a lead to eradicating the creatures for good. However, Sousuke finds that these threats to humanity are even closer to home when the pharmaceutical company, Sarugaku, starts to encroach on his investigation.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Banba, Sousuke Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Kimura, Masaki Main

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Komori, Satoru Supporting

Satoshi Supporting

Kosugi, Fumiya Japanese

Detective Supporting

Miyazaki, Hiromu Japanese

Daiki Supporting

Saori Supporting

Shindo, Naomi Japanese

Kazuto Supporting

Shindo, Naomi Japanese

Haruko Supporting

Hirohashi, Ryou Japanese

Minori Supporting

Aizawa, Mai Japanese

Takashima, Tomoya Director, Original Creator

Kumamoto, Hiromu Script

M.S.S Project Theme Song Performance

Usa, Yoshiki Associate Producer

Reviews

Sep 24, 2021

Tafim

Recommended

I don't really enjoy short animes so I ignore them. But since it was tagged as Horror, Mystery, Suspense I couldn't resist my temptation.

Sosuke Banba is a scientist who has interest in researching unidentified mysterious animals. As the show goes on we can see those UMA. It may seem little boring at first but after a few ep it'll turn interesting if you're a mystery/suspense fan like me. Trust me you won't regret. Story was great. Art was fair enough. Sound could've been little better but okay. Characters were so good and each character seem perfect. Tbh I really enjoyed this. So overall it's a ... very good anime to me.

First ever MAL review pardon my mistakes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 2, 2016

GoldenDevilGamer

Mixed Feelings

Kagewani is one of those anime that has very little reason to impress as it is one of the shorts of the year. You’ll probably watch Kagewani while eating something or doing something else. However as a mystery Kagewani isn’t really that mysterious, and as a horror it’s not quite scary either. However it manages to be a decent way of spending your time if you have nothing else to do.

~{Story}~
Kagewani is pretty much a monster-of-the-week type anime series. Each episode focuses on some humans, they get attacked by monsters or cryptids, and they either survive the attack or not. The series is episodic, ... however the overall story is about Banba, a professor, who comes at the end of every problem for the first half of the series to do, well, nothing! But by the second half, the story starts connecting the cases together to find the overall truth of these monsters… well sort of. Most of the stories presented in this anime end up to be decent. It does use some horror clichés, however it does work well in this anime. The final arc by far is the one that intrigues the most, as it focuses on Banba. However, this anime felt very incomplete as it manages to leave more questions unanswered than answered. The ending makes you want more, not because you enjoyed it, but because you’re about to enjoy it. When it gets interesting, the anime ends, which is a shame.
Story: 5/10

~{Presentation}~
Kagewani is a short anime series, as each episode is only 7:50 mins, so it never feels like you are wasting your time. Also, monster-of-the-week format does have you wondering what they’ll present next. The production values in the anime aren’t much at all. As a horror, it’s not really scary, but it does have some creepy moments. The anime does a good job in making a proper atmosphere for its stories. As a mystery, it’s not really mysterious. The “secret” of the monsters aren’t really that special, nor intriguing. However, as a short series, it does its job as a tea break.
Presentation: 6/10

~{Character}~
As an episodic series, ever episode focuses on different characters, so no proper character development can actually take place. However, the characters that are present end up being doing the job well as they aren’t as generic as they may seem. In some stories, it might be the typical, helpless victim, but in other stories, characters are shown to be strong-minded. There is technically one protagonist in the series, Banba Sousuke, a professor who studies these monsters and pops up at the end of some stories to either help victims, or to investigate cases. His backstory ends up being somewhat well done for a short series.
Character: 5.5/10

~{Art}~,
The art style is quite unique, as it has this cardboard-cutout look to it. If I would compare the art to anything it would probably be Inferno Cop, however, Kagewani’s art actually looks like as if some effort was actually put into it. The art style is pretty detailed, and the cardboard look does look nice. One thing that is worth mentioning is that the art design for the monsters are great. Some of them end up looking very creepy and very well detailed. Character designs in this anime are decent.
Art: 7/10

~{Animation}~
There isn’t really much to say about the animation in Kagewani as its cardboard style animation prevents it from it looking smooth or neat. Characters move weirdly, use of depth isn’t proper, characters limbs feel weird. At times, it just feels plain distracting. It could have had better animations, even with that art style.
Animation: 2.5/10

~{Voice Acting}~
Kagewani has a lot of characters, though most of their seiyuu cast information is pretty hard to find. Most of the characters voice acted pretty well, as they manage to use good enough emotions for their part. Sugita Tomokazu, is a well acclaimed seiyuu, does Banba pretty well. Though he has the most demanding script in the series, it still isn’t much. Okiayu Ryotaro does Kimura pretty well too. Overall the voice acting in the anime ends up decent.
Voice Acting: 7/10

~{Music}~
The anime doesn’t have any OP, however it has an ED, which is used for the last five seconds of each episode. The ED, “Arrival of Fear” is pretty decent as it has some catchiness to it. The sound effects for the monsters are okay. However the background music, which should play a fundamental part to a horror series, ends up feeling lacking. It doesn’t build up suspense whatsoever.
Music: 5/10

~{Enjoyment}~
Watching this anime didn’t feel like it was hurting me as it was 8 mins per week. It was a good enough anime to watch while I was eating a snack or two. The anime lacks suspense and it isn’t really scary at all. However, its unique art style and monster designs and Sugita Tomokazu’s voice made things more enjoyable than it should be.
Enjoyment: 5/10

Kagewani should really be watched if you have nothing good to do or you want to watch something short. However with its art and monster designs and its length, it manages to become bearable. If you’re here for scares and thrills, don’t expect too much as the poor animations and lack of proper background music can halt your experience. Overall, Kagewani isn’t an anime that would be remembered at all as it is strictly average.

+ Unique cardboard-cutout art style and well designed monsters
+ Surprisingly nice backstory for Banba, and Banba as a character is interesting.
+ Voice acting was pretty good with Sugita Tomokazu doing justice to his part.
- Not really scary, nor really thrilling
- Some story cases were misses, and the “ending” is unsatisfying.
- Awkward animations, especially character movements.

Overall: 5.4/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Oct 5, 2016

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Welcome, to the start of horror anime month. Where most of the series I review will undoubtedly have the horror tag, not because they're scary in any way, but because they have monsters. Kagewani is a thirteen episode series that was written by Kumamoto Hiromu and brought to us by Tomovies. You may not recognise the studio name and wonder what else they've done. Well, there's this and its currently airing sequel. That's it. The studio is really new. How does their initial venture into anime production hold up? Let's take a look.

Story:

Kagewani follows Professor Judas Traveller*, a crypto-zoologist. You probably think of cryptozoology as ... that field where a bunch of people with no credibility waste time trying to find fictional creatures which it is, in reality. But this is a work of fiction and, in the world of Kagewani, those fictional creatures actually exist. Virtually every episode covers a different encounter someone has with a cryptid while Judas observes or listens to the story without actually contributing anything, except for a few isolated cases where he actually does something.

The biggest issue with Kagewani is that it attempts to be suspenseful horror but it fails miserably on both accounts. Each episode is under eight minutes long and they cover different cases, which doesn't allow for any suspense to be built up. We also see the monsters right away in most episodes, which is also detrimental to the suspense. The horror aspects also fail. Most of it is just based around goofy looking monsters chasing people we know nothing about and don't have any investment in seeing come out okay. We also have an underlying story about the titular kagewani and it fails about as badly as the one-shot stories. The series also suffers from characters gaining knowledge they shouldn't have. The big example being the wampa*1 episode and the person its chasing escaping because she somehow knows how its vision works. I guess she looked at the script.

About the best thing I can say about the series is that it's actually kind of funny. It's like Corpse Party or Galerians in that it's so egregiously incompetent that a lot of the “horror” moments just come across as laughable. If the series was a deliberate parody of B horror films, it would actually be pretty decent.

*Yes, I know that isn't his actual name but it amuses me to call him that.

*1 I know it's really supposed to be a yeti, but either one is fictional so it doesn't really matter.

Characters:

The characters are a big part of why the series fails. In order for suspense horror to work, we as the audience need to have some level of investment in the characters and their well being. In this series we get thirty seconds with a character, if that long, before they're being chased by some monster or other. None of them come across as complex, interesting or fleshed out. We don't care what happens to them because they're like the generic background characters with no real personality that show up once from an action-oriented shounen series that runs for hundreds of episodes. Judas Traveller isn't any better. He's just a generic obsessed dude who's mostly relegated to the background where he can watch events unfold without actually contributing to them. The Precure they added in Max Heart was more developed as a character and she was the very model of a modern mundane magical girl.

Art:

The art is a big reason for the series' unintentional comedy. It's at Spider-man and his Amazing Friends levels of the studio just not caring. The animation is janky. The characters look like badly made paper dolls. The posing is frequently really unnatural. Did the studio literally give every episode the animation budget of a convenience store boxed lunch?

Sound:

The performances in this are quite flat. I can't really blame the actors. They cast some good ones. I think the problem really does stem from the characters being duller than the original characters in a bad fanfic. The music isn't very good. It's not badly done, but it's just kind of weak.

Ho-yay:

There isn't any. Having ho-yay would necessitate that the characters have strong enough interactions and personalities for chemistry. Which they don't.

Final Thoughts:

Kagewani is an incompetent series. Like Galerians and Corpse Party, it fails miserably at what it's actually trying to do. But, like those series, I kind of recommend it for the unintentional humour. Still, I have to give it a 2/10. Next week we'll continue this year's horror anime month with Danganronpa 3: The End of Kibougamine Gakuen Mirai-hen & the sequel special Kibou-hen. Look forward to that and maintain your fabulousity.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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