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Time for Another review of a P.A. Works show that I absolutely despised that was equally beat to death, this time attempting to do a horror series and resulting in one of the most beloved unintentional comedies of all time within the medium, that nowadays is remembered as a better Mayoiga, a title that was almost universally mocked to death and that I didn’t watch because if this is supposed to be the better version, why bother with the other one?
Anyways the studio definitely delivered with the visuals in some regards and didn’t with others. The overall artwork is clean and consistent with no major issues, and as usual for them, the backgrounds are very well made, the rather dark coloring fits the attempted mood and tone well, and the special effects are very good as well. But again the problem is the completely uninspired character designs that seem to have been taken from literally anywhere else, not only that but unlike the last show I covered, this time they don’t even have a distinct hair style or color or accessory to at least stand out from the other characters within the same show, outside of the main girl with an eye patch. It goes for a kind of realistic approach in that regard but the result ended up being completely unmemorable and dull to look at, plus the style of faces it went for went against that idea of realistic looks.
The motions are a bigger issue in the visuals since the characters in this series are seen only in three ways during its whole duration: 1-Completely still and emotionless. 2-Barely moving, and emotionless. And 3-Moving so much and in deformed ways for the sake of being unnerving that instead comes off as a joke. Since the overall aesthetics are quite plain and flat for a horror product, the makers tried going for crazy faces and exaggerated movements as an attempt to scare the audience and the result was, once again, one of the most cherished unintentional comedies within the medium.
The directing is pretty average as well, nothing regarding camera work adds to the atmosphere it tries to build, and the quick cuts the series does to broken dolls, or other things like a particular part of the body of someone about to die, to feel random and, for the third time, unintentionally funny.
Similar things happen with the sound department, the sound effects are good and fitting and the background music is a typical albeit well made horror soundtrack. It’s just that, again, the directing doesn’t use them properly in the least. The volume can randomly go up by a lot for no reason to make the sound effects seem intense, and the tracks turn to something like seem taken out from Silent Hill, and what might be happening on screen when they are used is just the characters walking to some place. In Another series it could have been a little bit scary but for this one, from the premise itself it’s clear that nothing supernatural is coming out at any moment, so it’s all both artificial and fake tension or interrupted by one of the most random death scenes that you’ll watch in the whole medium, making you laugh at best and be irritated, like myself, at worst. Which is a shame because the main theme is actually quite good, but it’s a bit long and repetitive for what it’s worth, and so overused and misused that it loses its effect very fast. I found the opening to be unfitting for the anime and quite crappy even on its own, and I can’t even talk about the ending song because I don’t even remember and I don’t care enough to check it out again for the purpose of this review. Voice acting is standard.
The series was always thought of as the anime equivalent of the Final Destination movie franchise, which people liked in the beginning but ended up hating as it went on, so right out of the bat the comparison warns you to better skip this title. In this case, the reason for all the deaths is a curse from a former dead student that kept ongoing for thirty years, as presented in the show in its first three minutes. This makes anyone from a specific class to die at any moment, meaning, anything bad can happen to anyone at any moment in any way just because the script says so, you already know what the result of that ended up being. Essentially, a butt hurt causes lots of innocent people die even decades after their death. What’s worse is that the main girl knows a lot more than she lets others know, making an otherwise simple resolution for an equally simple show being stretched out for way more duration than needed, especially when you consider that she is the main suspect, being accused just because of her appearance and rumors about her or some shit. And that’s not all, as the growing dementia because of the curse makes any character to change completely for no reason other than just because. A completely normal person can turn into a psychopath murderer the next moment, to kill everyone and soon afterwards die themselves, mostly because of the main plot device of the show, but sometimes because they lost their mind. Except for the two protagonists, every other character can get totally rewritten at any given moment.
Not that it makes much of a difference really, as there are no real characters in the series, considering how weak their presence and personalities are, and how practically nobody has a backdrop, even less so any development and catharsis. Only a few of them are alive at the end of the show, and they remain completely unchanged from all the horrible deaths and killings they witness and survive by a hair. Only the main girl has a pretty dumb backdrop, and is not present in the main series, it was released as an extra episode or ova. Forget about character archetypes, these don’t even reach that level of characterization, they are closer to mannequins which only difference with the dolls shown at some points in the anime is that these ones are kind of alive, as they kind of move and kind of talk. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this might be the worst cast of characters I have seen in my life, both in quantity and quality, as there are a lot and not a single one of them isn’t terrible.
The absolute worst aspect of both writing and characterization is how the curse can make everyone forget the information they gathered and, at the end, the person responsible for it, in what’s essentially the worst excuse for delaying the plot and any kind of character progression whatsoever ever written. Not only that but despite all the deaths and killings going on for thirty years, nobody in the little town the show takes place in does anything about it. Even when is known that only a specific class is cursed, nobody investigates, nor tries to close the class, nor change the numbers of the classes, nor moves the students to other classes, nor close the school, not even tries to alarm others, nor moves on from the town on their own to avoid the possibility of being caught in all this tragedy. By comparison, last year I read Uzumaki, where it also takes a lot of time for people to react, but at least they do at some point, and the setting ends up explaining why no one could do anything, I found it underwhelming as essentially the characters weren’t any better nor had any more of a real option than this cast, but at least they try and there is an explanation, over here there’s absolutely nothing. This is easily among the highest positions on the worst written shows I have seen in my life, dragging on with no excuse just because it has to.
There is only a half positive I can say about this anime, which is that it anticipates at some point who the dead person is, it’s just that it’s quite subtle and easy to miss, since every other second in the show is completely different than how that information was given. And the reason for why it’s only half a positive, it’s because it ends up being a huge plot hole, sice that character was nowhere inside the class during most of the whole show, which was a rule that the series established earlier.
Oh, and I almost forgot, since it doesn’t happen much, but there a few scenes that are meant to be funny and are even more random than any of the deaths. Also, this series somehow managed to have the most unfitting and out of place beach episode of any anime of all time, whether its setting is a school or not
Bottom line, this is an even worse anime than the last one I covered, and I hate it even more than that one, easily one of the worst written and directed products I have seen in my life, with no sense of logic and rationality within the script whatsoever, and with one of the worst, if not the worst cast of characters I have seen in my life. It looks nice but that’s about it. Remembering about it only made me drop its score even lower, I’m afraid, making it earn a place among the worst titles within the medium that I have seen in my life.
1/10
