Shadows House, however, stands out in its premise: living dolls and shadows! It's quite interesting how there's an entire plot built on these two things, and how their worlds are dictated by shadows. But, what exactly are shadows? What the hell is soot? What is the objective of Lord Grandfather. Like any dystopian story, there's a lot of mysteries that get slowly unfurled and uncovered as the story progresses.
The relationship between living dolls and Shadows are a lot more interesting that the dull, master-servant relationship present in a lot of fantasy stories, where there's a mystical beast, some sentient weapon bound to the hero or protagonist that acts as a companion. Even something like Navi and Link are just quite dull, because we all know that these things are just support characters and sometimes comic relief for the main character. Shadows house does something really interesting because despite it having a master-servant relationship between Living dolls and shadows, there's a lot more to the relationship than just that: they are two sides of the same coin. One cannot just discard a living doll if they dislike it, and likewise, a living doll is stuck with their shadow master. Such is the relationship, and thus, it makes for a very interesting way of viewing how shadows interact with their living dolls, how shadows interact with other shadows, and in turn, how living dolls interact with other living dolls and shadow masters.
Pair this pair-like relationship between each main character of the story with the set of mysteries in the shadow house, and also, maybe the unhidden horrors, and you really have a super unique premise and strong characters. I do admit, some of the characters could have been developed more, but just being able to see the different perspectives of how the shadows interact with their living dolls alone, pared with how differently they act when others are around is more than enough for decent characterization. Again, I wish that there was more time focused on that, but the story must progress, I suppose, and I still find most of the characters to be likable. Rum not being one of them, by the way. Of course, our main characters, Kate and Emilico are also decent. Kate's a good character, period, but Emilico is clearly the "protagonist" of the story, with her likability among shadows and living dolls alike, as well as her unyielding desire to never give up, make sure everyone's happy, and so overall, she's quite a dull character, but at the same time, to be expected. Kate, like many of the other characters in this show, does not get as much screen time as I liked for being the shadow master to Emilico.
At the same time, there's just that semblance of tension present in dystopian stories that is not just present in Shadows house. Whether it be during the debut, where supposedly, characters should be struggling to survive, or when they break rules to achieve an objective or find out a secret, as all dystopian stories tend to have, there's no real high tension risk. Even when these characters get caught in the act, it feels more like a "oopsie, I ate a cookie from the jar" done by a kid rather than the risk being literal death and execution. This is the one problem that I find to be rather glaring. While there are some violent undertones, and the shadow house a myriad of lies and horrors, the overall theme of the story is really happy and lacks that tension something like Promised neverland creates quite well with avoiding the caretaker. I did not find much of that tension even with direct confrontation with Edwards. I don't really care that the shadows and living dolls work together when they are supposedly enemies, as that's a clear theme in the story, but it does seem like a lot of obstacles that they encounter that should be difficult and challenging are trivialized and always go their way. And that's another problem with the story. On one hand, you have a "Lord grandfather" that has the all powerful control over the shadows, but on the other hand, there are clear cracks in the system that he creates, perhaps on purpose that are excessively exploited by everyone in the house that has half a brain. He clearly advocates for complete loyalty, yet at the same time, allows for disloyalty. There's essentially too much freedom given to the shadows and Living dolls that I find to be a bit contradictory to the entire theme of the story.
However, that being said, I enjoyed the story. It's a fresh perspective of the western dystopian genre with a uniquely japanese twist
