Episode 1: Delivery
Plot: A man housesits for a friend and stays a few more days than initially promised to accept some packages for him. What exactly keeps getting sent to his house?
Breakdown: WHOO!! Another round of Yami Shibai goodness for Animating Halloween! And since the season finale has finally dropped, I can binge watch it. Yay!
The series opener this time around is creepy but also rather confusing. Why is the viewer in a creepy rundown building, and why is the narrator putting on a kamishibai show in the middle of this rundown building?
Anyhoo, if this episode’s plot sounds boring to you….that’s because it is. I would say it’s a lot of buildup for a big scare, but it’s not. I feel like spoiling this one for ya, so here goes.
This guy is housesitting for his friend. However, on the day he was meant to come home, he asks the guy if he can stay another day and accept a package for him. The guy accepts, but the package doesn’t get there until very late and the delivery man acts kinda creepy, but he moreso came off as tired, which is understandable if he’s still delivering packages at 9:00PM.
The friend asks him to do it for him again the next day, and the same thing happens. He decides to call his friend, and hears the phone inside one of the boxes. When his friend picks up the phone, the guy asks when he’s coming home, and the friend responds that he’s already home as the packages start kinda turning red I think. The delivery guy bangs on the door outside saying he has the rest of his packages.
The end.
Well, that was certainly was a heartstopper to start the show with.
I admit that it was an interesting twist, but I also have a ton of questions. How did the first package neither smell nor leak when he got it if it was filled with friend parts? Is this implying that the delivery man killed the friend while he was away on vacation or business or what have you, brought his body back to where he lived, chopped up his body, put it into convenient packages, tricked the guy into waiting all day, twice, taking one of the packages one night and keep up the farce until the guy figured it out? For what purpose? Why would you do that? It doesn’t make any sense.
There’s no indication that the delivery man is anything supernatural, so this just comes off as a psycho murderer dicking around with some random dude for two days.
Episode 2: The Sleepless Child
Plot: Left alone in the house overnight with her husband working late at work, Sawako gets her young son, Takeru, ready for bed. Sawako is very nervous when he has to be alone at night…and she should be. The night has a habit of bringing old, bad memories up to the surface. But one of those memories won’t be forgotten.
Breakdown: Well, at least I can say that this episode certainly made up for the first one.
This episode does a great job at both building up atmosphere and delivering scares. It also added a twist I certainly didn’t see coming. It was a mostly unique concept that went in a different direction than you’d normally think. I thought for sure the kid would be a demon or possessed or something.
I will mark them off a tiny bit for the jump scare at the end. Come on, Yami Shibai. I thought you were usually above jump scares.
If you enjoy my horrifying work and would like to show your ghoulish support, please consider offering a financial sacrifice at my Ko-Fi altar. Every offering goes to helping me combat evil money-sucking vampires known as ‘bills’ and keep this blog from becoming a ghost. Thank you! ♥
The Anime Madhouse 