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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 24: Raven of the Inner Palace

I may have mentioned this, but over the last year my ability to keep up with new anime was severely disrupted due to health issues, so when it was time to prep for an anime convention I had a lot of catching-up to do. Usually when I end up in this situation, sacrifices must be made. There are always anime that I wanted to watch but didn’t have time to cram into my schedule, and I’ll realistically probably never get back around to them again. On the other hand, there are almost always some series that I take a chance on and end up loving. Raven of the Inner Palace was one such series.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 23: Dorohedoro

So far this month we’ve tackled psychological horror, comedic horror, and horror-adjacent titles and episodes. However, as far as I can see, we haven’t yet looked at the niche-within-a-niche that is “grotesque-yet-humorous urban fantasy where people are turned into meat pies,” so I wanted to make sure we had that covered by featuring Dorohedoro.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 22: Ayakashi Samurai Horror Tales – Bakeneko

Because I’m standing on the cusp of returning to work after an extended leave-of-absence, I thought I’d take today to write about one of my favorite pieces of media in order to soften the blow a bit. Many years ago, I happened upon a series called Ayakashi – Samurai Horror Tales (or Ayakashi Japanese Classic Horror depending on who’s translating the title). The anthology series adapts three horror tales from Japanese literature and theater. Or, more accurately, adapts a story and a play, and then spends three episodes on an original tale drawn from Japanese myth. It’s that original story, called “Bakeneko,” (“Demon Cat”) I’m writing about today.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 21: Shadows House

When I started this month-long project, part of the reason I’d had the idea in the first place was because I wanted to call attention to some lesser-known, older, and potentially out-of-print or unlicensed episodes or series under the guise of creating a Halloween listicle. Having said that, I think it’s important to note that not every overlooked series is older or even especially difficult to get a hold of. Take Shadows House. While I don’t think the show is a secret to anyone who’s kept up with seasonal anime the last several years, it’s a series that I think deserves to be more well known than it is.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 20: Shinsekai Yori (From the New World)

There are some anime each season that I watch, enjoy, and then mostly forget about after a few months. There are many fewer anime that I watch and never stop thinking about. Shinsekai Yori (From the New World) is one such anime series. Part of why I think it’s remained so front-of-mind for me is that my experience of watching it was very intense; it was fairly late at night on a weekend when I made it to the third act of the series, and I chose to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning to finish it. However, in despite any sleep deprivation that may have been involved, I think the truer reason why I’ve always felt a connection with the series is that it ends on such a shocking note that I would dare anyone who’s finished watching it to ever forget it.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 19: Golden Kamuy Episode 11 “Everybody, Get Together! It’s a Murder Hotel!”

I’m sure this goes for most fans of any type of media, but it’s a fact that there are certain anime series that I really enjoy that I have a difficult time recommending to anyone. In some cases, it’s because the material they cover is so extreme that to adequately warn for all the content would rightfully drive away most folks (I’m looking at you, Made in Abyss). In other cases, it’s more that the tone is so specific that it’s often tough to get a read on whether or not someone else might actually enjoy them.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 18: Level-E Episode 4 “From the Darkness”

While Halloween is typically thought of as a holiday revolving around spooky and scary things, I find that I have a lot more fun when there’s some spooky humor involved. Fear and laughter are often closely intertwined – how often have we experienced a jump-scare that leaves us laughing in the aftermath? It’s been a trend in my neighborhood this year for families to create funny scenes using the plastic skeletons that you can find for sale in the lead-up to Halloween. Some of my favorites have been a skeleton walking a skeleton dog on a leash, and a skeleton hanging off of a second floor balcony after falling off the roof during some roofing work (apparently). It takes a symbol of death and decay and makes it funny and fun!

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 17: Aoi Bungaku Episodes 11-12

When one hears the phrase “blue literature,” one might first believe that the phrase describes literature with a lot of inappropriate humor. However, the adjective blue or “aoi” in this context refers symbolically to youthfulness. Aoi Bungaku or Blue Literature then refers to stories considered evergreen classics within the Japanese canon, and this is what the series contains.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 16: School-Live!

As a long time anime fan, something I rarely experience is feeling “fooled” by something that I watch. There are certainly many anime with plot twists and turns, some of which spring up out of nowhere, but often enough the writing is on the wall if you know where to look (and if a twist is a complete and utter surprise with no clues whatsoever… well, that’s just poor writing). I do, however, enjoy being surprised by the media I consume, and then I further enjoy realizing that I could have figured out the surprise all along if I had just been paying better attention to the clues being dropped in front of my face.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 15: The Lost Village

In most cases, I’m perfectly happy to chalk up a difference in opinion as such and not get too hot-headed about it. As an anime fan, I’ve seen plenty of flame wars blow up over inconsequential nonsense over the years and I like to think I’ve learned my lesson. But there are still some times where I find myself grumbling over “people being wrong on the internet,” and the commentary surrounding the 2016 TV anime series The Lost Village was one of those situations.

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