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In spite of normally hating short things, this is amazing. Normally It's painful just to sit through the first episode of an anime, but this manages to hold what is up to 5 animes worth of goings ons. But rather than feeling rushed, it reveals just how padded and hollow most anime are anymore if not always.

The story is very beautiful. A proper mystery should be one in which there is actually something to uncover and that thing is uncovered in a reasonable time frame. However it goes a step further and you don't expect what is actually revealed, which is something very few ... things manage to achieve all of.

The characters are lovely without falling into stereotypes. They manage to develop depth, explore different emotions, perspectives of life, all without falling into some box or another that are common anymore.

I usually think nothing of animation or art style, but in both cases it's amazing. More amazing is that 3d always gets me snirking, but this has the most beautiful 3D animation and backgrounds I've ever seen. They look like they were intended to be 3D, not just money saving. The entire thing looks better than most videogames in many ways. It creates a great atmosphere all over. Even the sound feeds into the atmosphere.

On the last note, I have to include a spoiler~ When he realizes where they are and looks out onto the Earth, it's just perfect. Especially in reflection to everything that had gone on. So despite seeming grim-dark or devoid of hope as most people would be put off by, it actually harbors a very hopeful message.

This series confuses me. I see no way to write my opinion on this without spoilers.

1. Start with a guy on a train, girls head in a box, HAVE MY INTEREST. Suddenly 20 minutes of twisted yuri romance which will obviously lead to death due to the whole flash forward of strangling. Along with two wholly unlikable characters.

Episode 2. HEAD IN THE BOX AGAIN. Me: Alright, lets go! Story: No, detective's talking about the deaths? YOU'RE A PUBLIC SERVANT! Know your place! Ok I'm done.

Unfortunately attaching big names like CLAMP or MADHOUSE to something is not enough to make me like it. The ... art is pretty, but that's not enough to keep me watching anything. I'd rather watch a good story and characters with ugly art and bad music, than have great music and amazing art. I guess I don't fit into this generation of anime lovers who need their 10-bit bluray encodes on shows from the 80s that haven't even been remastered.

The only other negative review on here is written by someone who clearly hates horror or dark things in the vein of this movie, so I figure in counter to the good reviews AND that review, I will write this.

Is this movie for you?
Do you see a lot of horror/psychological drama? This is a very obvious plotted movie, easy to guess everything. Worse yet the first half is more drama than horror, played with an obvious mental breakdown. It may have been unique in its day (though I don't believe so), but more likely a lot of Moe and Shounen or Magical Girl fans have ... just never seen anything like this, and most people didn't expect this from anime at the time.

Why I dislike it? (Spoilers)
The plot is pretty obvious. That's say that I DROPPED the movie halfway through, about 2 anime episodes worth of movie, and then read ahead in a plot description to find I had correctly guessed everything that would happen. I paged ahead in the movie to see that it does get a bit more graphic, but the first half is painful to sit through. It's like a lifetime movie production, or some cheap paperback you pick up at a yard sale. Every element has been done 1000 times since, they've been done in the same movie, I'm pretty sure they were done before hand also based on movies I've seen from the 80s.

The art style is ok, however there are a few errors here or there. It's worth noting all the bad people are ugly, all the good people are pretty. I liked the costume designs. I did not enjoy the sound track though.

The characters are hardest to sympathize with. I appreciated that her manager, the male one, was doing his best for her. However the main character herself is a dolt. At literally the exact same year she was learning to use her computer, me and a class of 20 other 2nd graders were learning to do the exact same. But it's not just that. She takes all the worst advice from everyone, has almost no ability to see what's going on "Haha, this person really knows me!", even when things are literally blowing up she doesn't have the presence of mind to get help. So yes, she's stupid. It doesn't mean I want her to get murdered, but it doesn't make her an interesting character to watch.

Interesting characters have always been the creative, bright ones who find ways through their situations in interesting ways. Sherlock Holmes to L, Or at least have tenacity. She's whiny, cowardly, makes bad decisions, doesn't seem to manage relationships well. I realize it must be hard to write a horror story (if this is indeed even intended to be one) where the character is not a ditz, but this takes it possibly too far.

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.

This anime is inconsistent from story to story, a problem with many anthologies. One moment you're reveling in darkness, the next you're watching a zany chase sequence in the next story. Truly the only thing that strings these together is that they are Japanese classics. They are not great stories though, the two I saw were fairly predictable if not painful to watch. At times in the very first story, it jumped so much in time that you were lost as to certain events, or why they might have transpired that way. Also, the draw in the more horror based ones seems to be "This ... could have really happened".

So if you like horror, thriller, psychological, were intrigued this was so clearly linked to Death Note in the promotional art and cover and thought maybe it might cover some similar stuff then you will be disappointed.

This series is primarily for those who enjoy Realistic Fiction, occasionally with Zany anime wackiness, as well as getting an insight into some Japanese fiction. It was not for me at all. The cover should not be a Light wannabe chilling in a gothic chair with an apple, since it isn't even reminiscent of anything displayed.

However it is really well drawn, the music highlights the stories. That enough will be all some people care about, I know. Personally I'd rather watch a cheaply drawn 80s anime that had a great story than a well drawn 20xx anime with only beauty going for it.

As I saw 1 episode, I will only be reviewing the series based off that one episode. It may seem unfair, but I will share why. Firstly this anime is by no means my kind of anime. I said to the people who recommended it that I hate romance, as well as fantasy, as well as some other things it includes. I put that aside thinking it might be alright though.

1. The motivations make no sense. Ok people who want money will steal the valuable item, but honor? There is a distinct difference between receiving an honor (holding the sword) and having honor (loyalty). These ... swordsmen were not honorable. It's like being knights is an honor, but not if you're at war with the country. Putting that aside, 2 is actually on the subject of motivation too.

2. On top of hating romance, I really hate forced romance. The plot is literally that she is forcing him (or trying) to love her, so he'll do what she wants.

3. The action scenes are actually more cut aways. Flash to the aftermath each time, most of the time.

4. The characters are very unlikable to me. I dislike them all.

5. The humor falls flat to me. I did not laugh at all despite clear attempts to be funny.

6. A swordless swordfighting style? No. It's just another martial art. That makes no sense.

The art is very good, though I dislike the drawing style of characters. The sound was good from what I heard. It is overall a very average anime that is executed poorly and has absolutely no logic behind it. If you like it because it's not "The usual" even though it is, try your hand at some older classics. Also 12, 50 minute episodes? That's a 25 episode series, okay?

I love the anime for Trigun, and I love the manga. Like LOTS of other people, I was beyond excited when I heard about a movie. It's one of my all time favorite Anime. I was only hoping for something as good as an average episode of Trigun though (so pretty amazing), but didn't even get a decent film.

The worst part was probably the story. It is very obvious, every little twist that is. And I don't just mean that Vash isn't dead. If that's a spoiler for you, you're just strangely not aware of the likelyhood of the main character of a large franchise ... dying before the movie is even close to over.

Following that, would be the original characters. Like in many films, they lack even the interest that you would feel for a character who was introduced for one episode or chapter of a manga.

Lastly was the music, which while fitting in some ways, was rarely used and not put to good use.

The pacing was also strange. Like many movie adapations, it forgoes most character interaction for extended scenes of nothing. Also, planet gunsmoke now has 3 moons, which I don't personally recall. It also has a very populated galaxy, which again I don't recall. There's like 20 planets on the zoom out, all within a planets distance of each other!

Of course, Vash was made out to be an idiot, rather than just somewhat strange.

While the animation was really good, it just lacked most anything that made Trigun good. And I did watch it subbed, unlike some reviews for it that rated it rather high.