Yami Shibai definitely does that.
It is a simple collection of stories of the supernatural, varying from ghosts, curses, witchcraft, and other paranormal activities. It brings about the feeling of the unknown, and invests heavily on the elements of suspense and typical horror genre plot devices. What I liked about the series is that each story did not beat around the bush, (which is probably imperative within the given time frame of each episode) and got to the main point of the plot. The mystery element was there, and each story leaves a striking impression by forcing the viewer to think beyond what was shown - which was a key element in mystery. Some people would complain how stuff weren't explained well, but I think it was justified and to some extent, intended. The time frame was four minutes to begin with, and with that limited amount of time, a plot would develop better by focusing more on what happened, rather than why it happened, because what generates the mystery and suspense is not the complicated explanation for what happened, but rather the peculiarity of how events were presented, something that is unconventional and beyond the ordinary. Therefore Yami Shibai's strategic presentation of stories complemented well with the atmosphere it intends to show. Moreover, the episodic collection of stories, aside from continuously sustaining the element of creepiness and suspense, contributes to an overall impression of the viewer by not actually driving the horror from the creepiness and scaring ability of each plot individual episodes, but rather by emphasizing that the myriad of paranormal activities boils down to one thought: that stuff we normally see everyday are not as what they seem to be. Some stories actually are very interesting and mind-blowing, and the lack of explanation for such paranormal activity intensifies each individual episode. The art and sound were also great in complementing with the overall story, the art personally makes me feel that the stories were more of urban legends and forces the viewer to think whether such happenings are possibly true or not (of course they probably are fictional works of art, but that vague feeling from the artwork contributed to my enjoyment so much).
So why did I give Yami Shibai a rating of being average? First of all, while some stories exceeded my expectations, some stories were downright failures in their own ways. Some stories do not make even sense, and instead of presenting a plot-wise progressive horror story, it presented a series of scenes so stagnant it becomes personally boring. Since the quality of stories range from bad to good, I would have to rate them as average. Moreover, some stories present details that as much as I wanted to appreciate, seem to forcefully join plot pieces together it didn't seem naturally fluid and smooth-going; to some extent, I felt that they are irrelevant and did not contribute to overall impact of the story. Finally, I felt that the strong points of the series, were already imperative to be done given the shortcomings of the entire series, i.e. the short length of time, episodic presentation and complete lack of explanation of the paranormal. I also feel that to some extent the horror value it offers is somewhat generic and present in every other average horror anime. Since it did not offer any marginal personal enjoyment because of the lack of development of each story, I would have to rate Yami Shibai as average. Do I recommend this anime? Of course I do.
