Yami Shibai 4 Review

Plot: A continuation of the horror anthology told as a series of kamishibai productions.

Breakdown: When I first went into the fourth season of Yami Shibai, I was met with a tidal wave of negative comments and reviews. People hated this season with a passion, but I was more than open to it because, well, I really love this franchise. While they have had their share of bad stories, I wasn’t ready to write off this season from the start.

Episode 1: Tongue Clever-ish twist, but confusing to the point where I can’t make much sense of it at all. It’s also not that creepy or scary.

Episode 2: Fish Tank Not scary, creepy or clever. It has the most cliché of all horror story plots and only kinda gets points for using a monster that I’ve never seen done before.

Episode 3: Sewing Shears Again, not scary and very cliché. Points only go to the kinda creepy monster and the aspect of shears.

Episode 4: Red High Heel  Good idea, nice start, poor execution. Disappointing. I still think my suggested ending would’ve been better.

Episode 5: Night Bus Best episode so far, but still not very strong.

Episode 6: Guess Who? Getting better. This one is creepy, off-putting and clever, but the only thing that gets me is the logistics of what exactly happened and who that girl even was.

Episode 7: Footsteps Middle of the road. I should dock it off for reminding me of the toilet episode, but I feel nice today.

Episode 8: Cassette Tape I really enjoyed this episode, even though the animation is even more sparse than normal. It’s mostly just the shots of the tape recorder. Creepy, amps up the tension nicely and uses its concept very well. I just wish the box had been better explained.

Episode 9: Grinding Teeth Creepy focal point, cringey (in a good way) sound effects, not too bad about halfway in, drops the ball and falls flat. Disappointing.

Episode 10: Calling Crane My favorite of the entire season. While the game itself is just weird, this is a very beautifully drawn and colored episode with plenty of creepiness and atmosphere.

Episode 11: White Line Clever and creepy with a unique enough premise and freaky visuals. A lack of live-action shot is distracting due to the break in continuity, though.

Episode 12: Snow Hut I still can’t decide on how much I really like this episode. It’s clever, but not scary. It has some creepy visuals, but it makes me sadder than anything else. Plus, it really bothers me that they never explain why this snow hut needs someone occupying it.

Episode 13: Underground Walkway You ever have those moments where you’re watching a horror movie and you want to yell out to the screen ‘Don’t go in there! Who the hell would go in there?! Turn around! Does this look safe!? Go back! You ran into a scary person! Turn around! What is wrong with you?!’? That is this episode in a nutshell.

Is it the worst entry? No. But it does require major stupidity to pull the plot off and the twist isn’t that scary at all. Being a disappointing season finale, especially when you’re following up the awesome season three finale, is just not cool.

Bottom Line: Despite shaking off the naysayers, this season is, by far, the weakest of the seasons so far. Each season has had their problems. Season one was the strongest, though was damaged by the stupid toilet monster story. Season two had plenty of good ideas, but ultimately ended up a largely ‘meh’ season with poor execution. Season three relied a bit too heavily on monsters for my taste and changed into a format that was slightly difficult to get used to, though ultimately paid off very well.

Season four didn’t do anything different except made the narrator tell the whole story, which has its ups and downs, and include one live-action shot per story, which is largely pointless. It had many silly or meh stories and ended with absolutely no fanfare.

Additional Information and Notes: Yami Shibai 4 was produced by ILCA and is currently licensed in the US by Sentai Filmworks.

Episodes: 13

Year: 2017

Recommended Audience: No worse off than any other Yami Shibai season. 10+

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Animating Halloween: Yami Shibai 4 Episodes 1 and 2

Episode 1 – Tongue

I want eyeballs, I want liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix please deliver

Plot: A man takes pity upon a dead cat in the road and moves it onto the sidewalk. He and some nearby boys decide to bury it and make it a proper grave. However, things tend to follow those who show them kindness.

Breakdown: First and foremost, holy shit people hate this season. I was pleasantly surprised to see this as a recommended anime on a streaming site and lo and behold the first page was tons of people saying what complete and utter garbage it was. I thought they trashed YS3 badly. There was nary a kind word about this season on that page.

But, hey, I pretty much liked YS3, so maybe I’ll like this season too.

Second, we’re back to having proper intros and the narrator. However, this narrator seems like a different guy and he has a different voice. This voice is deeper and more menacing, which I guess sets a better tone, but I think I have to get used to it.

He also narrates each and every bit of the story, which didn’t happen much in the first three seasons. I don’t know how many times he’ll do this and I’m not sure if I like it.

Finally, before the episode review anyway, the ED is somewhat bland but catchy. It’s a happy-go-lucky forgettable song that would fit in nearly any other anime and it contrasts a lot with the EDs of the past three seasons. Hopefully they’ll do something creative with it over time.

New this season also is that, apparently, each episode also has at least one clip in live-action. It serves no purpose, not even horror-wise.

Now onto the episode. I was kinda torn emotionally as the episode went on. I didn’t want this guy to end up dead because he did something nice for a poor dead cat. I was also disappointed that an episode titled Tongue wasn’t creepier. However, I think the twist at the end was unexpected, albeit a bit confusing.

He is indeed being stalked by the spirit of the cat, but it turns out that it’s merely being used as a puppet by another spirit that is actually malicious. From what I could gather from the conversations, this was apparently the ghost of someone who died nearby where the dead cat was. Her spirit watched the cat get found and given a proper burial, but he didn’t find her and lay her to rest, so she got jealous and upset and attacked him for it.

It is clever, and I wish we could get a Side B to this story to get her view, but uh, if you were really murdered or left for dead or what have you, wouldn’t you have bigger bones to pick with whomever is responsible for your death rather than someone who merely buried a run over cat? Oh, hey, if you can communicate with him, why not tell him where your body is and ask him to give you a proper burial?

Episode 2 – Fish Tank

No. The answer is always no.

Plot: A boy and his friends break into an abandoned house and one of them finds a weird fish tank filled with murky water and plants. The house is abandoned, but is the tank?

Breakdown: So I guess the narrator is going to keep telling the whole story now. Still not sure if I like it or not. It both adds tension yet takes it away. They’re taking away the silent tension but replacing it with creepy story-teller tension. Also, this is more like what a real kamishibai would be like.

As for this story, it’s meh. Everything you expect to happen happens. Starting off with the ‘teenagers breaking into a creepy abandoned house’ trope is never a good sign, but the instant you see that tank you know that there’s some monster in there and you know it’s going to take/eat him.

They also sorta ruin the initial kill by having one of his friends go into the room (with the stool the boy used to look into the tank mysteriously back in the corner of the room) with him about to investigate a sound coming from the tank, indicating that he’ll be eaten then the other boy will be eaten too.

The creature isn’t even creative. It’s just creepified human arms.

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Yami Shibai 2 Review (Full)

Plot: A continuation of ghost and demon stories presented in kamishibai format.

Breakdown: Since I don’t have as much to talk about with Yami Shibai 2 as I did with the first season in regards to background, I will quickly run through my final thoughts on each episode.

Episode 1 – Taro-Chan: If I take these episodes as not being entirely horror related, I would say this episode is actually pretty good and memorable. It’s very sad to imagine what Taro-chan had to go through and, ultimately, what he still seems to be going through. It was a nice twist on the ‘possessed ventriloquist dummy’ story.

Episode 2 – Kitchen: On further consideration, this episode was lazier and less interesting than I gave it credit for. The creature looks a little creepy, but it’s predictable, and the absolute ending is just kinda dumb.

Episode 3 – Inside: This one is also just kinda meh. It doesn’t go nearly far enough to generate any sort of reaction, and the doll itself just isn’t that creepy.

Episode 4 – The Wall Woman: Another one that is just alright, this one has a decently designed creature, some suspense, but ultimately blows it by practically beating us in the face with warnings of a final jump scare.

Episode 5 – Locker: Doing better here with a relatable character, an actual urban legend-esque setting (urban legend within an urban legend?) a creepy doll and a sad ending. However, I really must emphasize how poorly this whole locker thing is set up. It’s just borderline ridiculous.

Episode 6 – Nao-Chan: Not scary, though probably not meant to be, this one is an interesting story with a slightly creepy visual and a confusing ending. Might’ve been more impacting with a longer story, perhaps allowing us to meet Nao-chan originally.

Episode 7 – Capsule Toy Machine: How creepy or scary this episode is really fluctuates on how much nostalgia means to you, I think. Though there’s a difference between getting excited over toys or games that you used to love as a child and certain people you knew and events that happened to you when you were younger. This episode includes both in a fairly clever way. I believe this one might connect with a wider audience than I first noted. No monsters or ghosts here, but it’s still a frightening concept.

Episode 8 – Farewell Confessional: An interesting idea, but the execution is a bit lacking. Like I mentioned in the review, there’s just something a bit silly about the secret that becomes the tipping point for the big scare at the end in comparison to one we hear earlier. Plus, you can see the jump scare coming from a mile away.

Episode 9 – Ominie-san: I still can’t figure out what the hell was supposed to be so freaky, creepy or weird about this episode. People like a weird food, a new person in town doesn’t want to eat it because it’s weird, and then she’s forced to eat it and gets a bit hooked on it. Outside of the meat looking weird and the people having terrible table manners, this one is the weakest episode of the lot.

Episode 10 – Bugged: I really, really, really don’t like bugs, and I liked the progression in the main character from being a grumpy ass of a person to being out of his mind. I figured that, in the end, he started out as a grumpy jackass and probably got worse on his own as time went on, but the bugs influenced him to get increasingly worse until he was no longer in control of himself. I almost feel like him angrily trying to kill the bugs was a subconscious way of trying to make himself better. It’s not a great episode, but it’s alright.

Episode 11 – Picking Up: Another bit of laziness. A cautionary tale against plagiarism/art theft, but the visuals are lame, and this is really only slightly frightening for people who have committed/thought about committing this act.

Episode 12 – Netsuke: Great on the visuals, scares and atmosphere, a little light on the story for my tastes.

Episode 13 – Bringer Drums: Suspenseful enough, jump scare got me, but the story still fails to make any sense to me in the end.

As you can see, this season definitely suffered from a lot of ‘meh’. Plenty of good ideas met with equal amounts of wasted opportunities and poor executions. I think this season shows how badly the four and a half minute run time really affects these shorts. With just a few more minutes and more details to the stories, they could be much stronger.

Additional Information and Notes: Yami Shibai 2 was directed by Noboro Iguchi and Takashi Shimizu, and was written by Shoichiro Masumoto. It was produced by ILCA, and is currently licensed in the US by Sentai Filmworks.

Episodes: 13

Year: 2014

Recommended Audience: There is some gross imagery in Bugged, but nothing that bad. Other than that….really nothing. Scary situations and whatnot, but still no gore, sex, swearing or anything. 10+

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Yami Shibai Review (Full)

Plot: A series of short four-minute ghost and demon stories and urban legends presented in an animated kamishibai format.

Breakdown: I’ve already given my opinions of each of the episodes of this series, but I thought I’d do a quick wrap-up review for organization sake.

I really love short stories. They’re quick, fun and usually impacting and memorable. I especially love short horror stories. Those stories that instantly put you in front of a campfire with friends and family in your mind. Those urban legends that get passed around from person to person, leaving whole areas of people slightly on edge. They’re just awesome….when they work correctly.

This series is based off of an old Japanese street theater technique called kamishibai. A kamisibaiya, kamishibai narrator, would travel around with a butai, essentially a fold-up mini-theater and paper slides that would be interchanged to show passage of time and movement throughout the story.

This type of entertainment was very popular in the 1930s and post-war Japan, entertaining audiences of children all across the country. In order to make money on these shows, the showrunners would sell sweets to the children as their fee for the show.

As you can probably guess, while kamishibai did enjoy a period of great popularity, it was eventually all but snuffed out by the advent of television. Somewhat ironically, in Japan, television was referred to in the early days as denki kamishibai or electric kamishibai.

There are stray kamishibai shows in Japan today, but it’s mostly just a memory now. However, it is fondly remembered for its impact on Japanese children and society as a whole during the harrowing period in the 1930s and ’40s.

It is also greatly respected for its influence on the development of manga and anime. In fact, some of the first manga and anime started out as stories in kamishibai, such as Oden Bat, and the manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, creator of GeGeGe no Kitaro and Akuma-kun, started his career as a kamishibai artist.

Yami Shibai presents each episode as a kamishibai show with a mysterious masked narrator showing each story. While kamishibai typically showed a wide variety of stories, Yami Shibai focuses entirely on horror, ghosts, demons and monsters.

Since, like I mentioned, I’ve already discussed each short in full, I will just give my masterlist of the episodes.

Episode 1 – The Talisman Woman

Episode 2 – Zanbai

Episode 3 – The Family Rule

Episode 4 – Hair

Episode 5 – The Next Floor

Episode 6 – The Overhead Rack

Episode 7 – Contradiction

Episode 8 – The Umbrella Goddess

Episode 9 – Curse

Episode 10 – Moon

Episode 11 – Video

Episode 12 – Tomonari

Episode 13 – The Tormentor

The animation style is something I feel compelled to warn some people about, though, since I imagine this animated kamishibai format, which is basically paper dolls and everything animated in puppetry style and stop-motion, would get on the nerves of some people. I really believe this style greatly helps the storytelling aesthetic, but it appeared to annoy some people, so fair warning.

Additional Information and Notes: Yami Shibai: Japanese Ghost Stories was produced by ILCA. It was written by Hiromu Kuramoto and directed by Tomoya Takashima.

Episodes: 13

Year: 2013

Recommended Audience: There is a lot of ‘scary imagery’ but there’s not any gore, and the death scenes aren’t that bad. They usually cut away to the credits right before the big death happens. There’s one episode that touches upon suicide. There’s no sex, nudity etc. No swearing. 10+

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