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An Anime that has nothing to offer either Horror fans, or Junji Ito fans.

As of writing, I've only been able to stomach two episodes of this show, with no further desire to continue it- beyond the morbid curiosity as to how bad the rest of the episodes truly are. I will try my best to give spoiler-free impressions on what I forced myself to witness down below...


Whilst most likely not a representation of the show as a whole, the first episode "The Strange Hikizuri Siblings" is a text-book example of how to turn away your viewers in an instant.

This episode is based around a ... supposed colourful cast of characters, of whom do have very distinguishable personalities from one another- but let's not get this misconstrued with the cast actually being "good". Each of the characters personalities are surface level at best, which is understandable given the short 20-ish minute runtime of each episode, however the issue I have here lies in how the show tries to compensate for that. In order to make these characters "entertaining", the show decides to exaggerate their personalities to a level which I considered to be obnoxious. If you enjoy hearing a child constantly screeching for 20 minutes, then this truly is the episode for you- though I'd like to think you're the exception and not the rule.

However, there's probably another reason as to why the characters are behaving in such a way. The episode as a whole feels like it's attempting to be a dark comedy, yet its only outlet for humor is to be as loud as humanly possible and random- as for the dark part of it... well it fails that too. The episodes idea of "Dark Humor" borders on being childish, and nothing more.


If you manage to get past that dumpster fire, at the very least you're treated with a better, yet still mediocre, 2nd episode titled "The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel".

The episodes title pretty much sums up the plot going forward, it's a very basic concept that has potential yet is squandered quite a bit. There is something I neglected to mention for the prior episode that's also an issue here; This show has an awful habit of over-explaining everything. We tend to get a visual representation of X happening, only for a character to dissipate any sense of mystery by going "OH X IS HAPPENING BECAUSE OF THIS AND THAT" or something to a similar effect- why they felt it necessary to treat the audience as if they had the IQ of a rock is beyond me, but beyond it ruining the atmosphere it also merely wastes precious screen time.

Moving on from that, the shows poor visual presentation really rears its ugly head in this episode in particular. I don't expect every frame to replicate the meticulous detail that can be found on some panels in Junji Ito's works, but the fact that they don't bother even for key scenes is mind boggling- especially considering that at the very least the "Junji Ito Collection" attempted this every now and then. The low level of detail in scenes that're supposed to shock the viewer kills any potential to be horrifying; It fails to create any contrast between those scenes and the scenes in which nothing unordinary happens. It's dull and unimpactful. Oh yeah, and the CGI vehicle had me giggling to myself.

Aside from that, there's not much more to comment on when it comes to this episode. It's a very by the books camp-fire story that could be effective, but ultimately ends up being mid.


The second episode is also paired with another story, "Ice cream Truck".
I uh... I don't have anything to say about this at all. I'm pretty sure my eyes were open and were looking at the TV whilst this portion was playing, but I don't remember anything about it at all, save for the fact that the Ice cream truck man looks like he's in the wrong anime. Says a lot about the episode itself I suppose...


Considering all of this, maybe it's fair to say that this show is a "mixed bag", but that'd honestly would be giving it too much credit. Compared to other great horror titles, such as "Higurashi: no Naku Koro ni", this show clearly isn't consistent in anything that it attempts to do. With the stories being as simple and self-contained as they are, the show needed something else to carry it forward, and that should've been in the presentation of said stories, whether it be the visuals, the sound design, or the intrigue, yet it fails to do any of that even at an average level.

The only rightly good thing I can say about this show is that it got me to dust off my MAL account that's been inactive for years now just to write all of this and warn people not to watch it.
If you're new to anime and are thirsting for some actually good Horror themed anime's, here's some you can watch instead of this:
"Higurashi: no Naku Koro ni", "Danganronpa: Kibou no Gakuen to Zetsubou no Koukousei", "Elfen Lied", "Another".

Now excuse me whilst I unironically watch "Ghost Stories (Dubbed)".