440http://pm1.narvii.com/6449/d733e52484b99fae1abfcc8ecb1a16be897e766ahq.jpg Yami Shibaihttps://anilist.co/anime/19383/YamishibaiJapaneseGhostStories is my favorite horror anime. But then Yami Shibai 2https://anilist.co/anime/20669/YamiShibai2 came and outdid everything Yami Shibai 1 did. When Yami Shibai 3https://anilist.co/anime/21473/YamiShibai3 rolled out almost every episode had me on the floor terrified out of my wits. Yami Shibai 2 then looked just like a bunch of baby shit NOT SCARY AT ALL. But wouldnt you know it Yami Shibai 4https://anilist.co/anime/97890/YamiShibai4 came along and smacked down all the Yami Shibai predecessors and became THE SCARIEST HORROR ANIME OF ALL TIME. ...Yami Shibai 5? Yeah Yami Shibai 5 isnt scary at all. I dont know why you would have thought Id say it was. ... BUT WHEN YAMI SHIBAI 6 STARTS AIRING? WHICH WILL CROSS OVER WITH ICLAS OTHER SERIEShttps://anilist.co/anime/98442/SekainoYamiZukan AND FEATURE PRIMARILY THE INVASION OF THE LIVE ACTION CLOWNShttp://i.ur.com/zcDNDGG.png??? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA COMING SOON TO ACCOMPANY THE TGG REVIEW SERIES: TGG YOUTUBE REACTION VIDEOS TO YAMI SHIBAI ALL SEASONS. WELL GET A BILLION HITS AS I FAKE SCREAM INTO A CAMERA WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY JUMPING OFF OF THE ROOF OF MY HOUSE IN AN ATTEMPT TO SPONTANEOUSLY GROW WINGS AND FLY TO ANOTHER PLANET. Introduction an overview of Yami Shibai as a whole Ahem sorry about that. The truth is apart from Yami Shibai 5 Ive only watched Yami Shibai 1 and 2. Ive done like one episode of 3 but that was about when 5 started airing and I figured thered be no harm in just jumping on that instead. The announcement of Yami Shibai 5 came not too long after Sekai no Yami Zukan finished airing which I also reviewed and... I was curious to see what a new Yami Shibai could do after witnessing that horror. Honestly just thought itd be another clear and cut Yami Shibai season. But there were some surprises they had tucked away Which are the sole reason why Im actually bothering reviewing this. If the entire season had just been... there is a ghost or monster and ghost or monster pops up at the end to spook the viewer I could wrap my head around Yami Shibai a lot easier. Because that I can at least understand. Its personally not my thing and while I think a jumpscare is absolutely not effective if from the get go youre going in EXPECTING IT that one series of movieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParanormalActivity do in fact exist and they made literally millions and millions of dollars. But before we go into Yami Shibai 5 I went over 14 and made a little guide thing. Because at the time of writing this so far it feels like theyve done the ghost/creepy girl thing an intolerable amount of times just in 5 alone. So I said hey what would the basic ideas of all of the episodes of all four prior seasons look like if put in a list thing? Would we actually be able to see the decline of imagination in a visual form? Its a bit long hence the spoiler. Admittedly for 3 and 4 I straight up just looked at the episode summaries on Wikipedia. So take those with maybe a grain of salt. Anyhow the way Im gonna review Yami Shibai 5 is just tackling it episode by episode like with Sekai no Yami Zukan but instead of just marveling at ICLAs insanity Im going to go into the problems and faults of each episode since Yami Shibai is slightly easier to take seriously compared to Sekai no Yami Zukan. 440https://i.ur.com/9Z7dRl6.png ...OR MAYBE NOT. WHERE DID I PUT MY MULTICOLORED RAINBOW AFRO ITS GONNA BE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE REVIEWS I GUESS. THANKS ICLAAAAAAAAA. 440https://i.ur.com/rHHJEHP.png 440https://i.ur.com/Bvg6xPg.png Domestic Distress Random Creepy Girl Friendly Old Lady Im a bit biased here since I havent even watched the majority of season three and four but I really found the first episode of season five disappointing and perhaps a sign of the things to come. Like I just cant help but think back to the first episode of season two and think man that was a pretty solid opening episode for Yami Shibai. Like a puppet was getting possessed by a kid that died in a traffic accident and this officer who was just doing a normal puppet show is freaking the fuck out and the kids in the audience dont know a thing. 440https://i.ur.com/SapGdLV.png With season five its just... a wife finds her son and husband BUT ESPECIALLY THAT BRAT HE WONT EVEN PICK UP HIS TOYS HOW DARE HE annoying and then she gets a phone call. I cant help but mention that every single time the mysterious person calls its the same exact drawing of the mom holding the phone. To be fair they were a lot worse with this in Sekai no Yami Zukan but... just... why not at least change the position of her face her expression at least changes in two of the calls I guess? Just because she answers the phone multiple times doesnt mean you HAVE to use the same exact drawing... 440https://i.ur.com/PN5AV1f.png 440https://i.ur.com/xkBYPhv.png 440https://i.ur.com/xkBYPhv.png 440https://i.ur.com/JPs7Bxe.png Then finally the ghost woman its a ghost woman by the way just shows up at the door the mom grabs a knife and as hands are coming at her it goes to black. Fade to black endings are my favorite type of ending. Dont get to see the actual ghost dont get to see the mom try and stab a ghost... dont get to see anything. 440https://i.ur.com/iUMYDLi.png 440https://i.ur.com/E9zqWTX.png The fade to black before a spooky thing happens thing is probably a Yami Shibai staple Im too lazy to go back and see how many episodes in the original two seasons end this way but I know at least more than a handful do but I hate it all the same. 440https://i.ur.com/UnX6ULu.png Weirdly enough the second episode is probably one of my favorite episodes of this Yami Shibai season. The idea I thought was neat and could have worked if fleshed out but since every episode is only three minutes long... and the voice acting for the little girl was appropriate. Starts out mildy annoying JO DAI JO DAI JO DAI and then appropriately shifts into hammy creepy little girl voice. But they kind of messed up the landing with... like the reveal would have worked better if the little girls face hadnt been... 440https://i.ur.com/ZgzPpYM.png I mean I appreciate that they didnt over to the top with it and have her face be all demonic and shit but could have made it... a little spooky looking I guess. Additionally perhaps I just like this episode as much as I do because it doesnt end immediately with the reveal. Her hands slowly come out from the side around her boyfriend and you think its gonna end but nope now her face is also slowly coming out from the side. Didnt scare me but I do remember thinking genuinely: Okay yeah this episode wasnt a complete flatline. 440https://i.ur.com/keiLakb.png Also dont want to mention it but all the times she talks to the little girl its basically the same exact... 440https://i.ur.com/O88tyVI.png 440https://i.ur.com/1Ey7IiX.png 440https://i.ur.com/4IWMbp4.png Then the third episode gets a little weird because while it follows the theme of the last two episodes in the sense thats theres just a weird creepy old lady... 440https://i.ur.com/gxUW54V.png ...But this episodes intention kind of gets muddled. The creepy old lady doesnt get the daughter as the mother finds her in time right before the creepy old lady takes her and then... they just leave and the creepy old lady just waves at them. Oh... then the old lady really wasnt a monster and trying to take the daughter? Wow thats surprising. ...But then the daughter looks up at the tree where a bunch of crows are. 440https://i.ur.com/05YFYzM.png 440https://i.ur.com/z4QakTL.png ...Oh the crows are... spirits of lost children. But wait if the crows are in fact lost children souls who have been taken by the old lady then that means the old lady is in fact bad. Its not like the daughter had been lost for more than a few hours and the old lady sure did seem intent on taking her until right when the mom showed up. Also why would the daughter willingly want to join the crow children if theyre children who get lost and then get spirited away to become crows? It feels like they wanted to do a thing about lost children while still wanting to do the Yami Shibai thing and making the creepy old lady be a monster. It doesnt... you cant do both. You have to pick one. 440https://i.ur.com/wZGf4sg.png 440https://i.ur.com/RWz9Ayf.png I mean dont get me wrong. I like that theyre trying around with different things but trying to get messages across in a Yami Shibai episode... I dont know sure there wasnt a jumpscare or whatever but wasnt scared or creeped out at all. The children on the tree were just... goofy looking which should not be a thing that could be said considering theyre supposed to be dead/spirit children. Like the entire episode is they see a creepy old lady the daughter gets separated from the mother the mother finds her and then they leave. A Yami Shibai filler episode? Tell me it aint so. Copycat Shadow Women DialaCurse I cant imagine that a viewer whos actually stuck with Yami Shibai all five seasons straight through wouldnt actually just start trying to predict what happens in the episode. Because thats basically what I started doing. With the fourth episode I was close but no cigar. 440https://i.ur.com/lcDeHrD.png Two college students that are friendly with each other and one basically follows the other one around everywhere and copies everything she does exactly. Immediately I form the prediction that the copycat girl is a ghost which was a bit silly of me because the second episode already did the sort of ghost wanting to copy or imitate the living thing. 440https://i.ur.com/Q98uKbM.png 440https://i.ur.com/2RCpcVH.png No it turns out I guessed wrong on out of the two characters of which one is the ghost. It turns out that the copycat girl only made it into the college her friend wanted to go to because she died and therefore created a new spot but then the copycat girl just finishes off her copying the way she died. 440https://i.ur.com/pYI56Rr.png 440https://i.ur.com/ikyYdMI.png But it also treats the copycat like the creepy character which... like if the ghost girl genuinely wanted to stop the copycat girl from copying her exactly then why didnt she just say please dont walk out into the street when the sign is clearly dont walk and also she smiles when copycat girl dies so... the twist is pretty muddled at this point and I cant even tell whos the good one and whos the bad one anymore. And thats not exactly a good thing because sure the copycat girl could have just been acting insane because shes talking to the ghost of her friend who recently died but why does the ghost smile when her friend dies despite the fact she was trying to get her to not copy her to the grave??? 440https://i.ur.com/9AR9rwR.png 440https://i.ur.com/QBmZXog.png Next episodes just an incredibly distrustful wife believes her husband is unfaithful and then its just a bunch of shadow women are clinging to him. She then proceeds to get converted to a shadow woman as well and the episode ends. Typical clear cut Yami Shibai episode with no twist or moral quandaries. Creepy women are creepy we get it we understand horror. 440https://i.ur.com/4VFdOxL.png Sixth episode is about a girl whos all torn up because she lost her boyfriend to her friend or whatever and then she just happens to read a book saying that if you dial a number into a phone exactly at midnight you can make a ghost or something return your boyfriend to you. But if you dont call back the following night something bad will happen to you. How this episode fails is... she does this her friend dies of course and her boyfriend returns to her and then shes supposed to forget about calling back. Thats the way its supposed to go. Instead she remembers and then returns to the phone booth in time to make the call BUT theres her friends ghost using the phone already which prevents her from using the phone in time. Then it cuts to black and gore sounds and then it shows the bloodied phonebooth. 440https://i.ur.com/W5JCvJ7.png I suppose the implication here is that her friends ghost used the phone and dialed the number for the curse to happen to her friend but theres one major problem here. Apart from the goddamned cut to black ending happening AGAIN. GHOSTS CANT USE TELEPHONES ICLA. Wait... the entire first episode of this season was a ghost using the teleph 440https://i.ur.com/WfvNAUu.png Hide and Seek and Creepy Women Apartment The hide and seek episode were onto episode seven was a fine Yami Shibai episode for the most part theres a spooky and decrepit house and a bunch of kids decide to go play hide and seek in the house. Then theres a albeit random monster who joins the game of hide and seek. The monsters arm comes in and grabs the straw doll resembling a boy and a moment of uneasy silence before the monster opens the door again to grab the real child. 440https://i.ur.com/LKCzjc0.png The problem is why did the parents just forget entirely about their child? They go to visit grandmas with their son then leave without their son. And... the grandmother seemed kind of aware of what was going on with the house and also didnt forget about her grandson? Why wasnt she more prudent in helping prevent her grandsons demise? Why are you nitpicking the plot of Yami Shibai episodes? Youre supposed to just watch for the spooks and the scares and the AAAAAAAAAAA Im scareds. Then why do they have plot at all? 440https://i.ur.com/FbQ34A2.png Episode eight and perhaps more or less a bunch of the later episodes of Yami Shibai 5 are where it gets fun. Or at least weird. Like watching Yami Shibai Ive always wondered WHERE are all these creepy or ghost women coming from? There just seem to be so many in the Yami Shibaiverse. Episode eight is when we finally get the lore. See there are so many of them in this universe that there are entire apartments for ghost women to live and hang from the ceiling to periodically drop down and jump scare in. Its great I cant believe ICLA has finally upped their lore game and finally showed us where all the ghost women go when theyre not scaring or murdering people 440https://i.ur.com/C2yR5Ji.png My friend just taught me how to see ghosts. 440https://i.ur.com/RWFlKGh.png 440https://i.ur.com/r4mmEMo.png Here we go the episode that caused this review. Just like how the live action clown episode of Sekai no Yami Zukan suckerpunched me and caused me to temporarily be unable to breathe because I was laughing so hard out of disbelief ICLA yet again caught me completely offguard partway through one of their shows. Okay we start with two college students and one of them turns to the other and tells her that she can see ghosts because her friend taught her how and she can teach her present friend how to see ghosts as well. She tells her friend to look into her eyes and oh no theres a white blobbish CG ghost. 440https://i.ur.com/IWihADf.png 440https://i.ur.com/ZYoBMCA.png Now since her friend has seen a ghost reflected in her friends eyes she herself will now see ghosts as well. But literally two seconds after teaching her friend to see ghosts she realizes that after her past friend taught HER how to see ghosts she never saw her again and immediately puts two and two together for a result of five. 440https://i.ur.com/3L88LKQ.png 440https://i.ur.com/WoNDgSc.png Despite the immediate horror dawning on her face the friend she just taught how to see ghosts leaves for a seminar plainly ignoring her friends pleas not to leave her alone. 440https://i.ur.com/m3700fU.png 440https://i.ur.com/W2DeQvY.png This episode is a farce. This episode is a farce. This episode is a farce. This episode is a farce. This episode is a farce. 440https://i.ur.com/uiIGGO3.png Then she immediately goes and talks to two of her other friends and the ghosts come up in conversation and she says to HER two friends: Hey look into my eyes. Do you see ghosts? So then THEY become capable of seeing ghosts. But the original girl realizes the CG ghosts that were previously white are now turning red and are approaching her and EVERYONE KNOWS THAT RED IS THE SPOOKY COLOR TO INDICATE SPOOKINESS. 440https://i.ur.com/GLkX3r5.png 440https://i.ur.com/ZRoPztB.png So she runs. She gets the fuck out of there and QUICK but CG ghosts are coming from every which way. She has spilled the beans of how to see ghosts to new people and therefore she must be punished BY BEING FORCED TO BECOME A GHOST. She runs to find her friend whom taught her the ways of the ghost finding BUT SHE IS ALREADY DEAD AND HER CORPSE JUMP SCARES HER OH NO. 440https://i.ur.com/PQ4rUUW.png THE RED CG GHOSTS ARE COMING FROM EVERYWHERE AND THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE TO RUN and then it just fades to red and a bunch of voices of people spreading the secret of how to see ghosts and that is how Japan fell as a country. Ghosts murdered everyone in Japan. ... ...This is the most clumsiest and shoddiest attempt to do a well you can only keep a secret among three people if two of them are dead story Ive ever seen. Like the live action clown I simply cannot believe this is an episode that exists. Clearly the implication of the last thing being seen is the the ghosts reflection in the girls eye is that oh no now everybody who watched this episode of Yami Shibai are going to be haunted too. What a fucking joke. Wait... oh fuck. THE GHOSTS ARE COMING THROUGH THE WALL I HAVE TO VACATE THIS AREA UNTIL I CAN REACH A PHONE TO CALL SO WHILE I KNOW ITS ABRUPT THE REVIEWS OVER. 440https://i.ur.com/riWbe9R.png Out of Place Heartwarming Ghost Story No I was of course just joking. I already have ghosts living inside of my brain thats why I do anime reviews. The review continues unfortunately Because theres actually more ICLA weirdness to discuss. The immediate next episode is so tonally out of place that it was an equally unexpected but much less intense slap to the face as the previous episode was. 440https://i.ur.com/wJeHtpH.png Basically a businessman encounters a weird creepy girl who is doing flower fortune telling. You know pulling one petal and going he loves me and then the next he loves me not until all petals are gone. The moment the businessmans wife was brought up I immediately predict that his wife is now a ghost the way the businessman speaks about her obviously implies shes dead and that the whole thing is shes coming to get her husband despite the fact hes still alive. The flower girl is doing her fortunetelling of whether or not his wifes gonna come and get him and shes almost out of petals and she ends with your wifes gonna come for you. 440https://i.ur.com/OzBcaUb.png Immediately you expect a monstrous or at least spooky woman to appear but no his wifes ghost is all bright and emotional piano music is playing and the husband sounds as if hes relieved and willingly goes with his wife. The flower girl starts doing another flower of whether or not the guy is dead and I guess you could still interpret her final reading of youre dead to mean he died when he went with his wifes ghost but... 440https://i.ur.com/mloXKie.png The episode starts with him being caught within a rainstorm and waiting for it to stop and him watching a couple leave while musing he was like them once. Therefore I think the most logical conclusion is with this and the presentation of the wife ghost being not a spooky Yami Shibai ghost at all that the husband himself was actually dead as well and he himself was crossing over after being reunited with his wife. 440https://i.ur.com/wAKmdUO.png ...This episode is a lot better than the last one and honestly a lot better than the other episodes. The issue is and I immediately thought this after watching the episode what the fuck is it doing in Yami Shibai? No jump scares no creepiness or spookiness really just a heartwarming story about the ghosts of a wife and husband moving on with a completely random and unneeded fortune teller girl who is undetermined whether she herself is a ghost or not I wont go home.. I really would love to know any of the creative decisions for why these two episodes of Yami Shibai 5 exist. But... I never will so lets move onto the final three so we can end this already 440https://i.ur.com/98QGlKm.png A Womans Creepy Reflection TwoinOne Preying Mantis Woman Episode eleven is pretty clear cut. I usually like psychological stuff and the idea of the girls massive vanity taking a life of its own works. 440https://i.ur.com/02jJOJJ.png Its just... the end kind of sucks. Her reflection just comes out of the mirror towards her with a pair of scissors and the screen fades to black as we hear the pair of scissors cutting. The fade to black ending aside theyve already done spooky girl with menacing pair of scissors. Its literally the only episode of season three I watched. Kind of think someone at ICLA had a bad experience getting their hair cut once or something because I dont know why else theyd do the scissors thing twice. Scissors unless youve specifically had a bad experience involving them arent scary 440https://i.ur.com/F6PRk3j.png The second to last episode is pretty notable in the sense that its probably the most incomprehensible Yami Shibai episode. Genuinely was not sure what was happening for part of the episode which I guess is an accomplishment considering the episodes are like three minutes long. The idea of this episode was that two ghost stories were happening or like one of the characters was telling a ghost story with the presentation of a mini Yami Shibai episode to one of the other characters. Or something. I really dont know all I know is that it more or less ended exactly the same as many other Yami Shibai episodes do. The idea could have been neat I suppose but they did not do it well at all. 440https://i.ur.com/kntTqvj.png Finally we have the finale of the fifth season. Which perhaps notably or not notably does not begin with the opening of the Yami Shibai guy about to tell a ghost story to a bunch of children crowding around him. I guess the implication is that some detective is investigating into a Yami Shibai story. Which is fine sure but why is the episode itself about a woman just turns into a human eating preying mantis? This genuinely feels like something that should have been in Sekai no Yami Zukan. Theres no spookiness or creepiness she just turns into a giant preying mantis and eats a guy. 440https://i.ur.com/oEn0MZZ.png 440https://i.ur.com/bDzqx6N.png ...Then Yami Shibai 5 ends. What the fuck. Riding off into the sunset for another season...? 440https://i.ur.com/atkwlOt.png Okay so overall absolutely terrible. Season one and two were at least hit or miss and the art remained at least somewhat consistent and I think there was less clear laziness on ICLAs part. Less reusing the same drawings I remember characters and etc moving more rather than just gliding around which... can I be honest? It just looks bad. When one of the characters just begins to move without any of their limbs or literally any part of them doesnt also move... I just kind of sigh. Especially if the characters are supposed to be fleeing for their lives. I didnt even mention it because thats the least interestingly terrible thing about the episode but its REALLY BAD with the CG ghosts episode. Holy hell. But in addition to just the general quality going downhill with every additional Yami Shibai season if you just gaze back at season three... https://www..com/watch?v=KdUfJCMP7rI What the fuck happened? There were actual monsters and they actually could move There seemed to be actual weirdness or creepiness and just overall effort put into it Like as far as scariness goes season one and two Id probably guess is still better in that regard. I have zero ideas what season four was like but I cant believe its any worse than five is. Like I brought up in this review/was thinking of Sekai no Yami Zukan an upsetting number of times. This may as well as been Sekai no Yami Zukan 1.5. Like I dont know if the Yami Shibai guy taking his bicycle off towards the sunset at the end was supposed to be like ICLA saying... Okay well be back for a season six Or... Look guys we just dont have it in us anymore. Were clearly out of ideas. We only did a four and a five to have a four and a five. This is already a pretty weak note for Yami Shibai to go out on sure but what the fuck can we hope to do in a season six? We just... just need to let the mask guy ride off into the sunset for at least a little while. I mean while I may think the original season aka arguably when they were trying their hardest was largely hit or miss I do appreciate Yami Shibais existence. The horror genre of anime is a bit... lacking to be honest. Theres nothing much else other than Yami Shibai thats of this particular flavor of horror where scares or being creeped out is the purpose of the show. Theres plenty shows and series where yeah its tagged as horror but its more or less just because theres gore or people die. I mean if you actually build an atmosphere or you have some genuinely disgusting or revolting stuff should add that it has be to the good kind like thats one thing. But I dont know. There might still be some hopehttps://anilist.co/anime/99940/ItoJunjiCollection. Or Ill end up getting burned and just go back to waiting for Yami Shibai 6 or a Sekai no Yami Zukan 2. A 3 out of 10. ...Oshimai. 500https://i.ur.com/IccaVlj.png