So for starters, the first thing you'll notice watching this, especially coming off the previous seasons, is the narrator. The narrator originally existed to give basic context for the setting, and they had someone with a distinctly creepy voice to do so, setting the mood. This one misses both of those marks by having a different narrator each time, and each of them not being that creepy, but also by having the narrator NARRATE ALMOST THE ENTIRE STORY. This by itself kills a lot of tension since you never are able to really get drawn in when every 5 seconds the narrator says "and she felt nervous". And the worst part is literally none of it is necessary. The characters could say what we need to know and we can infer from visuals a lot of this. In fact, it'd be better that way because we're using our imaginations to fill in the gaps and terrify ourselves. That's actually what the previous seasons did. But no, the narrator says almost everything that's happening in front of our eyes like we can't see it.
That might have been passable if the scenarios were legitimately creepy, but most of the time they aren't. When the series is trying to pass off the idea that footsteps outside a bathroom stall are creepy or that someone drawing chalk lines inside a school is creepy, you've hit rock bottom. And even settings that might originally have promise like an abandoned mansion get squandered when the scares themselves aren't creepy at all. Half the time the creature that appears just ends up not really doing anything and the other half I have barely any idea what I'm supposed to be scared of. In fact, some of the stories just straight up are confusing. I have no idea what they're getting at or what's even going on by the end, and in a way, that's impressive to manage given there's only 4 minutes of animation per episode and the entire thing is being described to me.
The artstyle sucks too. While this was a problem in previous seasons, I don't like how each episode has a different artstyle so it doesn't feel like a contiguous series. And it's not like the artstyle works well for each individual story either. One of them tried to pass off 30 something moms as middle schoolers. I know in anime age can be very misleading, but they looked nothing like that age, even for this series. And then there's all the cuts to live action, usually any time the main character holds something in their hand. I legitimately do not know why those are there, they are horribly out of place, they don't make the scene more disturbing, it's just.... there. It pulls me out of the experience every time, or at least it would if everything else didn't already do a wonderful job of that.
Oh, and as long as I'm tearing this show a new one, let's talk about that ED. Yes I will be this petty. It sounds like an ending to a shonen series. Yamishibai EDs have been a little J-poppy up to this point, but usually kind of off in some way as to still feel like it fit with a horror series. This one just does not at all, so you end up going straight from "was I supposed to be scared" to just straight up laughing because this song removes any tension that might've been left.
It amazes me that a series could fall so far so fast. While I'll say I personally believe each season got a little worse, they still had moments that were really effective and enough to them that I could say "there's something there". This one does not. Almost nothing about this season works. Some story ideas had potential, but get squandered by everything else I mentioned. The only reason you should watch this season is if you want to see a perfect example of everything just being wrong. Not funny wrong or over the top wrong, just regular wrong. That's ultimately what this series is to me. It's just wrong.
