Apr 19, 2015
I've decided to review this since there seems to be only one other review for it on MAL and I have some time on my hands after watching this. But this is my first MAL review so beware!
The first and most crucial thing to note when reviewing this, is that it is definately not an anime in the conventional sense, to quote:
"This is a collection of 3 stories from the influential horror author, H.P. Lovecraft, namely 'The Dunwich Horror', 'The Picture in the House' and 'The Festival'. Done in claymation, and directed by Ryo Shinagawa as part of the Ga-nime series.
Ga-nime (画ニメ, Ga-nime?), a portmanteau
...
of "illustration" (画, ga?) and "anime", is a relatively recent trend in Japanese animation to create highly aesthetic short anime films using non-traditional animation techniques, often directed by artists who have limited involvement with the anime industry."
"Highly aesthetic" is correct, the claymation alone is highly unsettling, it is crude, awkward and ugly but absoloutely appropriate to the tone and atmosphere of lovecrafts stories.
The claymation in combination with the haunting background music and unsettling narrative styles together create an experience that is as creepy and horrifiying as the source material.
However, one of the few criticisms I have with this is that the claymation, although stylistically appropriate, can sometimes look noticeably cheap and almost like something that came out of a childs science fair diorama, although this was only noticeable for me in the second part of the second segment, and usually only came about with a significant lighting or angle change.
Another criticism is that there is ocassionally a sustained lack of any sort of dialogue, leaving the viewer to piece together the story only through the provided imagery, which does make the unfolding onscreen horrors more potent, but can also make it more difficult to understand what's happening, especially if you don't happen to be familiar with the source materials. However, the music used was haunting and again, very appropriate to the stories and atmosphere.
Overall, this genuinely creeped me out, there were a couple of moments where I got goosebumps or shivered. However I am somewhat interested in lovecraft and as such had some idea of what I was getting myself into.
I would recommend that unless you have some sort of interest or rudimentary knowledge of lovecraft, or happen to be interested in creepy little claymation showcases you give this a miss. If you're unsure either way it is very short and in three segments, the first segment is only a couple of minutes long and how you find that should tell you how you'll find the rest of the OVA, love it or hate it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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