But there is a problem. As a 26 year old adult, I'm way too old to go out trick or treating, and as a shut-in anime fan whose friends live far away, I don't have any parties to go to. Which leaves me with only one traditional Halloween celebratory route: horror media. And I don't like horror.
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| My reaction to most horror media. |
Which leaves me in an awkward position. What am I going to talk about for Halloween? I can't go back and review the works of Satoshi Kon or Junji Ito because I'm too terrified by the prospect to go watch or read them. But if you are more interested in that sort of thing and want to know about scary anime stuff, these videos from Super Eyepatch Wolf are an excellent introduction to this sort of thing. But I remembered that while I don't like scary anime, I do like monsters and ghosts and such. So I thought that I would look for stories involving that sort of thing in my anime history that relate to the themes and aesthetic of Halloween but can be enjoyed by those who, like me, can't handle horror without embarrassing themselves by screaming like a five year old girl. So, without any further stalling, here are 5 spooky anime for non-horror fans.
Shaman King
First up, we have the shonen battle series Shaman King. Based on a manga series by Hiroyuki Takei and animated by Studio Xebec (who also did last season's spooky harem anime Yuuna's Haunted Hot Springs, so there's another Halloween recommendation if you're into that), Shaman King is something I like to rewatch a little bit around this time every year. Yoh Asakura is a shaman, who acts as an intermediary between the physical and metaphysical worlds and forms pacts with ghosts to fight on his behalf. He forms an alliance with the deceased samurai Amidamaru and seeks to become the Shaman King, a title bestowed on the winner of a tournament held every 500 years who gets the ability to commune with the Great Spirit and remake the world in his image.
Shaman King was one of my obsessions when I was younger, and it's one of those obsessions that I look back on with a strange mix of warm nostalgia and cringe. I discovered the manga first in Shonen Jump magazine in elementary school, at the same time as my first exposure to Naruto and One Piece. And because of the chapters that were in that particular magazine, Shaman King was the one that excited me the most, focusing on a climactic battle while Naruto was setting up an arc and One Piece was having a mostly comedy focused story. The aesthetic of Shaman King is also quite unique among shonen manga, drawing on the culture of the First Nations, hip-hop, and calligraphy inks, and exploring different cultures' beliefs on death and the afterlife. The Chinese Ren has a different set of views compared to the Ainu Horohoro, and their partner spirits are quite different as a result. Yoh is a good main character too, with a laid back slacker demeanor that hides a great deal of pain and conflicting feelings about the nature of humanity, which ultimately ties back well into the pacifistic message of the story. And some moments, like Yoh's first battle against the necromancer Faust VIII, can help scratch any horror itch you may still have.
But it's not perfect. The tournament nature of the story occasionally contradicts with the pacifistic themes that Takei is trying to convey, and many of the fights themselves can fall flat with several underdeveloped antagonists. And Takei agrees that it isn't perfect, actually having canceled the series out of frustration that he was losing the series's edge and becoming too "normalized", forcing the anime adaptation to create an original ending before he came back to give the story a proper send off. And if you are a dub fan, Shaman King was handled by 4Kids, who do have a well-deserved bad reputation for poor dubbing, though I think they did a pretty good job with Shaman King. And while 64 episodes is a respectable length for an early 2000s shonen series, it doesn't exactly have enough time to fully explore all the ideas it introduces. But I'd rather watch an ambitious show that doesn't quite succeed than something playing it safe, and I'm still hoping that Yoh gets added to Jump Force.
High School of the Dead
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| You have no idea how hard it was to find a picture without fanservice for this post. |
I mentioned Yuuna's Haunted Hot Spring before, but I didn't actually see it so I can't say if it's any good or not. But I can review this particular action-horror series with ecchi and harem elements, so we're all good. Based on a manga by Daisuke Sato and animated by Studio Madhouse, High School of the Dead is basically a Japanese take on zombie movies. No particular explanation is given for why zombies are walking around, and the show focuses on a group of high school students trying to survive the creatures and the breakdown of society.
Like any good zombie story, High School of the Dead works really well as a surface level action story while also having a good deal of thematic depth. As the YouTuber Mother's Basement argues in this video (beware of spoilers), zombies act as a metaphor for the dangers of conformity and the story suggests that the only way the world can be saved is for talented young people to reject societal pressures of school and career and pursue their passions with as much vigor as possible and that adults should stay out of their way and follow their lead. And the anime adaptation (directed by Tetsuro Araki of Attack on Titan and Death Note fame), further reinforces this by celebrating sex and violence in a way that can only be fully appreciated by an adolescent. And while this is the closest to a traditional horror story that I'm going to talk about today, the focus on action makes it feel more like I'm playing House of the Dead than anything else. But unfortunately, the anime only has one season and will probably never see a proper sequel to finish the story after the untimely death of Daisuke Sato in 2017.
Soul Eater
Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I haven't finished Soul Eater, so I'm not going to be talking about the series in any real depth. But I can say that this series is well suited to some spooky fun. Soul Eater takes place at a school for students who can transform into weapons and the meisters who wield them. In order to reach the goal of making their weapons worthy of being wielded by Death itself, the students work in weapon and meister teams to reap the souls of evil humans and witches.
I like Soul Eater quite a bit, with it sitting on my list at a 7 out of 10 with just under half the episodes completed. It's got a unique look to it that I can only describe as what you would get if Tim Burton directed Harry Potter, which you cannot quite get anywhere else in anime. The nature of the weapon and meister systems means that every fight is a team battle, and I don't think that action anime has enough team battles, so that's awesome. And coming from Studio Bones (aka my favorite anime studio), the animation is top notch and the music rocks. I can't really say that all the characters are well developed though. The drawback of having weapons and meisters working together means you have twice as many characters that you have to develop, and Liz and Patty in particular are left wanting.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
"What are you talking about, Patrick?" you may be asking. "There's nothing even remotely horror related in JoJo? What do Stand battles and goofy poses have to do with Halloween?" I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader. Because while JoJo's Bizarre Adventure did move into a more fanciful and goofy direction, JoJo's Part 1: Phantom Blood takes on a classic gothic horror aesthetic. Well, sort of. It's like if Mary Shelly tried to write Fist of the North Star. Telling the story of a feud between Jonathan Joestar and his adopted brother Dio Brando, the creepiness gets turned up quite a bit when Dio uses a cursed Aztec mask to transform into an immortal vampire.
People tend to forget about Phantom Blood, since the story was still a bit restrained and hasn't fully embraced the bizarre quite yet. And while I haven't fully caught up on JoJo yet (currently halfway through Part 3), I can still say that Phantom Blood is worth watching, especially since it's only 9 episodes long and then gets really good starting in episode 10 when Part 2 starts. And I'll be totally honest: I only included this section here to tell you to go watch JoJo if you haven't already and that the gothic tone of Part 1 makes this a perfect time to do so.
Zombie Land Saga
If you're following my weekly roundup, you would already know that I'm currently watching Zombie Land Saga and why it fits as a horror-themed anime that doesn't actually try to scare you away. With the bizarre premise of a crazy person gathering zombie girls and training them to be idol singers in order to revitalize tourism for the Saga prefecture, Studio Mappa decided to get weird, and I'm enjoying nearly every minute of it.
The show makes me laugh out loud all the time, and the unconventional performances, drawing on metal and rap on top of traditional idol pop, are always fun to watch. Is it perfect? Not at all. The manager Kotaro is funny as hell, but he can get annoying very quickly and I think he should be used a bit more sparingly, and the character dynamics can be improved greatly if one or two of the zombie girls weren't here (I nominate Ai and Lily). And with only three episodes out so far, it's hard to recommend when I don't know where the story will be going. But this is a lot of fun, and I do think that if you approach it with an open mind, you will enjoy yourself.
And there you have it. Five horror themed anime that even non-horror fans can enjoy. I hope you have a great Halloween!
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