What attracted me in the manga was the whole dark and lonely premise of being trapped in a skyscraper maze with dozens of killers. Okay, we got a high school girl wearing skirts as the MC (be prepared for many random panty shots), but that was not a problem to me, actually, I was curious about how a defenseless girl would survive in that world.
Considering all that, I was expectating an equally dark atmosphere in the anime, something like Hellsing Ultimate, maybe? but no, it was not. We recieved a colorful anime, I mean, a REALLY colorful anime, it is something that I would expect in a comedy show, not in an "horror" tagged one. But okay, I mean, "If you want a grey color pallet, go read the manga", right? So yeah, ignoring that, I was hoping that at least we could get some cool gore scenes with terrifying killers and breathtaking situations, did we recieved this? You right, no. I mean, in the first encounter of Yuri with a killer (ep 1 minor spoilers), the man point a katana to her face and the girl puts out the SAME expression that a rom-com girl do when the MC says something lame. Like, hello? you're about to be decapitated by a katana, girl, wtf.
While watching it, I couldn't feel Yuri's fear, I couldn't feel any emotions at all, I think the approach taken by the studio was not the best for this show. What should be a story filled with thriller, mistery and blood, ended up as an "okay" show with some dumb comedy traces.
And don't get me wrong, Yuri really is a tough girl, however she took some chapters to put everything togheter in the manga, but in the anime the girl is already playing midgames with killers in the first episode, and that happened cause the pace is awful, so awful that you can say it's an original story, they JUMPED from chapter 3 to 21 in the first episode, I'm not even joking, it's like they wanted to put 250 chapters into 12 episodes.
The animation is ok, the art is ok, the dub is ok, the OST is ok, but looks like a SOL studio was not the best choice for an horror anime. In the end, Tenkuu Shinpan is an average manga that got an even more average adaptation, it's sad cause they could've pulled out something amazing, but that dumb, "funny" and - panty shots - atmosphere plus the rushed pace are just lame.
