天下制覇

I blame Harry Potter.

Season Premier Disclaimer:

I like to check almost every new show out. The value of a show is in its execution, not its premise. That said, my tastes are mine and mine alone. Some things bother me, some things don’t. I will attempt to be as cogent as possible as to my complaints or compliments for each show, but be aware that my views skew heavily towards the center. Nothing is perfect, nothing is irredeemable. That said, my tastes and my opinions are mine and mine alone and should not be construed as fact or, god help us, some kind of erudite critical analysis of the entire series based on the show’s first 20 minutes. Feel free to leave your own thoughts on the show if you’d like, but invective and similar will be mocked or deleted depending on which amuses me more at the time.

Impressions:

The short version is that this is just Japanese Goosebumps. Low impact pseudo-thriller stories told in short chunks and aimed at people who are not terribly picky about what they watch. "Hey, Russian fetishism sounds fun. Let’s see if we can summon a kikimora demon with it! I see no way that this can go wrong." Granted, I guess they should get some credit for starting small and just trying to summon THE FORSAKEN SOULS OF UNBORN CHILDREN, but hey, I’m sure by the end of the season, they’ll work their way up to conjuring incubi.

It’s a kid’s show, so production is middling to poor. It’s also split kind of weirdly too. The first third 45% seems to be an ongoing story about the Thriller Restaurant itself… which so far is just your generic ghost house, the second third 45% is some other random ghost story using the same characters, while the final third minute and a half was Anko telling a ghost story over various stills. And yes, if you’re curious, that adds up to only about 18 minutes of actual show… 16 if you remove the last almost completely unanimated part.

Again, children’s show. Maybe if I was ten years old again, I might have liked this. Maybe if you’ve got kids, it’s something to watch with them in order to think up better threats to get them to eat their broccoli. Psychological terror is far more motivating than getting slapped with a ruler after all.