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Man, it’s been a while since my last Article Commentary post; a whole year! A large reason for this is that blogs on MAL were down for about 4 months, and also because I was largely pre-occupied with my Anime Watching Challenge last year. But somewhat recently an anime video was released on YouTube that I found interesting enough to talk about:



Geoff Thew of Mother’s Basement is my favorite anime-based YouTuber, mostly by default. As I believe he is an actual student of film, I find his very analytical approach to anime commentary to be interesting. I also find him generally amusing and easy to listen to. In this recent video, Geoff talked about the challenges faced by anime when trying to produce horror content that is legitimately scary.

While I’m not a very big fan of horror in general, I still found this analysis to be very interesting. And as I’m usually willing to give nearly any story a shot when it’s in anime form, I’ve actually seen nearly every series that Geoff talked about. So as I give my counter-commentary on the subject, I’ll do it largely based around the different anime that were touched on....

Shiki: I’ll start off with the series that Geoff spent the most time talking about. He mentioned that Shiki was the only horror anime that has actually scared him and that it was largely on a psychological level. While I liked Shiki well enough for it to get a 7 from me, I definitely wasn’t in love with the series and it didn’t scare me on the same level. I think my issue with Shiki was that I never had any characters to latch onto and care about. Also, the ridiculously silly hair was kind of distracting. I remember feeling kind of disturbed during the first major human-against-vampire kill scene, but I also remember that I was starting to mentally check out during that time, too. I think I should probably give it another watch eventually, though.

Another: Geoff mentioned Another as a horror anime that, due to its inability to properly convey believable horror imagery within the limitations of a TV anime budget, ended up just being funny (like a cheesy live action horror movie with bad special effects). These visual limitations are the primary reasoning behind why Geoff thinks horror anime struggles in being truly scary. Animation inherently looks fake, because well duh, it IS fake. When an anime like Another tries to pull off visual gore horror, it mostly ends up just being funny because of this. I thought the gore in Another was mostly okay all things considered and that it actually did rather well when it came to the look of sliced/punctured/stretched skin during deaths, but I’d say the death scenes still looked kind of silly overall. Sadly I couldn’t even enjoy laughing at Another because nearly all of the death scenes were spoiled and meme’d to death ever since some of the later AMV Hell releases. All that was left was me being bored out of my mind while watching Another.

Corpse Party: Geoff mostly brushed off the Corpse Party OVA as being boring and used it as a spring board to talk about the difference between how video games can have an easier time at producing scares within limited art because of their interactive nature. While I definitely understand where he went with the discussion, I feel like he might have brushed off the Corpse Party anime a little too easily, that he might have had a bias against it due to having played the video game already. Personally, I thought that Corpse Party had the most effective gore imagery I’ve ever seen in an anime. The fact that my ex-wife absolutely loved this anime is something that I see as confirming this view as she is a bit of a gore-porn horror fanatic (big fan of the Saw movies). I found the gore in Corpse Party to be extraordinarily disturbing. The only thing that kept the anime from being truly effective horror for me was the lack of character investment. While the imagery made me feel genuinely uneasy, I didn’t really care about what happened to any of the characters because there wasn’t enough development for me to connect with them.

School-Live!: This brings me to what actually has worked for me in the world of horror anime. Geoff mentioned School-Live! and how it used the turning of the moe genre on its head to create some effective horror, but that he wished it had done more and “said” more. But as a huge fan of slice of life shows and character focused stories (and yes, moe bullshit), this is exactly the kind of stuff that I need in order to feel fear in a story: I have to care about the characters; I have to feel something before the scare comes in order for it to be effective. Live action horror can get away with being scary without caring about the characters because the realism alone makes it scary. The viewer can see themselves in that situation and get a sense for how much some of the things can hurt in the case of gore/torture-porn material. But as Geoff mentioned, those tactics don’t work so well in animation. Anime has to work extra hard and use different tactics in order to be scary. For me, that “different tactic” is making sure that I’m able to care about the characters before the bad stuff happens. Going back to Another, while I almost started to feel a connection with the two main characters, I never cared at all of the people who actually got killed or anyone else for that matter. But in School-Live!, the slice of life moe angle really worked for me. I really didn’t want anything bad to happen to these girls and whenever it seemed like something bad might happen, I was really scared for them.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: And now for a series that Geoff didn’t mention in his video. Higurashi is not only my favorite horror anime, but my second favorite anime period! Considering that he didn’t mention the series or even show a single clip of it in his video, I’m curious if Geoff has never seen the series (if this truly is Geoff’s MAL profile, he at least hasn’t logged it). Some of the most uneasy feelings I’ve ever had from a piece of entertainment came while watching Higurashi the first time. There were quite a number of disturbing and legitimately scary moments in the series. This again came largely from me growing to actually care about the characters, but I think it also did a great job in conveying horror on a production level. The facial expressions went a long way in showing a sense of insanity in the characters, even if things went a little far at times to hit those kind-of-silly levels (especially in the first season). The voice acting was just great all around, expressing great fun and excitement during the good times of the characters and then complete terror and dread during the bad times.

CONCLUSION: So what are my overall feelings about this issue? I’d say that for the most part I completely agree with Mother’s Basement. The inherent “fakeness” of animation makes it difficult for things to be scary from a visual standpoint. Anime has to work harder to achieve the same effect that even the worst live action horror schlock can. For me, the easiest way to get around these limitations is to make me care about the characters, but I think other techniques can be implemented as well. While Geoff mentioned how some trippy visuals in western animation is able to be legitimately unnerving, I think anime can also produce atmospheric horror well if it really tried, taking notes from one of the creepiest pieces of horror-style animation I’ve ever seen: the “Dark Harvest” episode of Invader Zim.

But those are just my feelings on the matter as a guy who isn’t all that into horror in the first place. I just thought it was an interesting discussion and I’m curious to see what anime producers might do in the future when it comes to this genre. We shall see!!