Animating Halloween: Yami Shibai 9 Episodes 7 and 8 Review

Episode 7: Mr. Rooster

Plot: A punk rock band gets a new bassist named Mr. Rooster, but he’s a bit…off.

Breakdown: Hmmm. This one is interesting. Not sure I’d go so far as to call it scary, especially since the supernatural aspect technically wasn’t malicious, but it was somewhat creative and the imagery made it a little creepy.

I don’t much care for the ‘It was all a dream….?’ ending, but eh.

Episode 8: Rocking Horse

Plot: A man’s sister sends him his old rocking horse for his son to play with. His son loves the toy….but so does someone else.

Breakdown: Wow, this was probably one of the best episodes of Yami Shibai. Not reaching the peak of quality, but still fairly high on the list.

Rocking horses aren’t really one of those old toys that typically gets used as horror story props, but they took the idea and ran with it. The rocking horse on its own looks weird enough to seem both realistic as a toy and yet very creepy. The episode has some really eerie vibes to it, a really intriguing story and a frightening end.

My only real gripe with it is the fact that the story just stops. It sets up this mystery so well, but right as it starts getting really interesting, the episode ends. I am well familiar with Yami Shibai’s system. Their episodes are four minutes long at most, and that’s barely enough time to tell a coherent story from start to finish. Many times, this results in the episodes having very abrupt endings that, many times, also end in cliffhangers. But this was one of those episodes where I felt like it was more of a cliffhanger middle than a cliffhanger ending. This story definitely needs a part two, but they haven’t done that in Yami Shibai in a long, long time so I’ll probably never get proper resolution to it.

Great episode, but I really needed like one more minute to get a satisfying ending.

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