Anime: Kagewani

Presentation:
This is about the apparition of more and more bizarre creatures in a present-day Japan. There is no gory or particularly scary images to show, nor jump scares or the cheap tricks we find in horror films for teenagers (the graphical technique used anyway prevents this), but each episode builds up a deranging and oppressive mood until the episode's end twist.

The episodes are short (10 mn) which prevents from in-deep character build-up, and from an exaggerated elongation of the scenes. All in one, this is good thing.

Story:
The first episodes do not really do exposition, but present each time a weirder creature. These are one shot episodes, meaning that the story is almost not, if not at all used afterwards.
There is a single hero, (pretty bland at the beginning of the show), who do not have other role than explicitly linking the apparition in the mind of the viewer, and has a very limited role (if sometimes any at all). The first 2-3 ones are rather tedious, as the built up is slow, and the menacing creature has an air of deja-vu.

The show really begins, and finally hops from science-horror to fantastic, when the title monster appears. Which means that the main character becomes the hero of the show, and not the mere witness. Alas, this run of episodes only open the story for another season to follow, but at least we have a cast of characters and a plot line to follow. In other words, if one manages to overcome the beginning, it may get a fine show.

Animation:
It is not an anime strictly speaking, but one of the low budget, reduced staff animated picture stories that have been flourishing on the internet recently. It means that giving a notation to the animation is irrelevant, as there is almost none. All what you have is travelling, zoom and un-zoom over a picture, with some cell-shading like animation. It is very minimalist.

The graphical style is also not the clear cut one of the mainstream animes, but a more blurry one, which (once accustomed to) fits well with the atmosphere.

Conclusion:
The low budget sure did not allow for a realisation of the same level as mainstream animes. But on the other hand, once the story get started for real (the first half is really more about setting the mood), it is not unimaginative at all, and makes good for the limited means. Watch it as an experimental realisation.
Of course 10mn episodes do not allow deep background nor deep character development, but we have at least personages that react humanly against extraordinary (and very frequently fatal) encounters, which is a necessity to make the viewer sense that we are slowly going into a fantastic/horror show and not a strictly fantastic one, where the protagonists would be aware of the creatures that prey on them.