Aooni The Blue Monster

I was pleasently surprised and disappointed by this series. It's kind of like a "Pop Team Epic" for horror. The characters seem to look and act like how they do in the game (even though Takuro is protrayed nicer than in the game) and are pretty spot on. Story-wise the shorts aren't always the best in quality. While some are genuinely funny, some are really bland and unfunny. The ending was surprisingly scary, and really came out of left field. It was a welcome surprise. The animation was well-done and super cute. It's not the best short "comedy" one-shot series out there, and Iwouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't played the game, but it's a decent show.

I watched this as a joke because I'm familiar with the game, manga, and live action movie, not to mention the episodes are shorts, so you can finish watching the whole thing within an hour...... But WHY? Why does this exist? The animation is poor, the story tries to be funny but it comes off as cheap, and after about 3 episodes in the voice acting just sucks. Save your time and eyes, once you've watched about 3 episodes you've seen all that this anime has to offer. The anime tries to make a joke of the game and characters by having them die ineach episode in weird ways. It's supposed to be comical but comes off as cheesy. The animation honestly looks like something that can be done with a cell phone app. I honestly want to know just how this anime came to be lol.

So, I knew about the original game this anime was based off for years, having watched multiple let's plays of it and planning to do my own series on the game in the future. It's a pretty basic story, four friends going to try to solve an old mystery of their town in a way that basically makes it feel like a Scooby-Doo episode that has an ACTUAL monster rather than a disguised person, but has it's scary moments and has always been rememberable to me. This anime, however, takes it in a more comedic route. And honestly, I'm perfectly okay with that, but I don'tthink it's for every fan of the game. It's basically putting the characters in these scenarios for crude humor, as multiple times they get killed in various comedic ways. Art is okay, not much to say on story as it's episodic and each episode's only three minutes, and the characters are about the same as their game counterparts; Hiroshi is the skeptic, Takuro is the hot-head, Mika is the token "girl" character, and Takeshi's still a coward. A few jokes fell flat for me, but all in all, it wasn't a bad time and did manage to make me laugh. Which is a good thing; I was in a pretty bad mood going in and it managed to fix that. The only "dud" episodes I had were episodes four and six, but that's probably because my sense of humor just doesn't match up to those. If you watch this, don't expect to be wow-ed by it or anything as it's nothing special and doesn't have the same anxiety-filled tone as the game, but some might get a few chuckles out of it if they take it at face value and just use it as something to turn their brain off to for a bit. Story: 5 Art: 6 Character: 6 Enjoyment: 7 Overall: 6 (Sorry if this wasn't a good review either, kinda my first one.)