In recent years it seems like all the best horror films have come from Asia.  With films like Audition, Ringu and Ju-on getting a lot of press (not to mention American remakes for the latter pair) everyone is looking to the East for their chills.  Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek is a horror anime show that I had high hopes for.  With the freedom to animate things that couldn't be done in a live action film and the Japanese penchant for horror, this should have been a really scary and edgy show.  Unfortunately it wasn't.

There is a story, told among school children, of a special game of hide and seek.  When the lights of the city dim, if you follow certain clues they will lead you a place where you can play O-to-ko-yo; a deadly form of hide and seek that involves demons and monsters.  According to the stories, some of the kids that play never come back.

A group of kids that hear the stories don't really believe them.  There isn't any such things as monsters!  It's probably that the other kids don't want anyone else going to their secret place.  So they follow the clues and discover secrets about the city that they wish they hadn't discovered.

This OVA starts off very well, with an eerie feeling of impending horror.  Unfortunately the show never really pays off.  Yes, the children do get chased by monsters, but there isn't the psychological horror or spine-tingling scares that we've come to expect from Asian horror.  This is more horror-lite.

Running at less than 25 minutes, the show has no time for characterization or plot development, which is too bad.  The only character we get to know anything about is young Hikora who is looking for his sister who disappeared while playing the game.  The rest of the children just act as warm bodies to be chased through the city.  Some of them don't even talk.  If they had spent some time letting the viewers know the kids, maybe I would have been more emotionally involved.  As it was, I didn't really care when a child 'lost.'

On the positive side, the show contains some wonderful animation.  The characters and backgrounds are lovingly textured.  The attention to detail in this show is second to none.  Even the garbage that's lying in the street looks almost real.  The whole show was created with computers, but they made the images look 2D and it worked very well.  At first you don't notice that the show is all CGI, and when you do it just leaves you even more impressed.

One of the neat tricks they pulled to give this show it's cell animation feel was to make all of the children wear fox masks.  Human faces are hard to animate using computers and having everyone wear a mask removed this problem in a nice way.  It also makes the show a little more spooky.

Another plus was the character designs.  The demons that inhabit this world were very menacing looking and other-worldly.  They gave the show most of its shock value.  It's just too bad that there wasn't more suspense and terror integrated into the script.

Audio:

I was very disappointed to discover that this DVD only has a stereo soundtrack, in either the original Japanese or an English dub.  Both tracks sounded very clear and crisp, and the voice actors on the English track did a good job showing emotion and getting into the characters.  There is a lot of low toned atmospheric background noise and music which would have really been helped by a LFE channel.  Surround channels would have helped a lot too.  As it was the front soundstage was used to good effect, it's just that with so many anime shows providing 5.1 audio, I've grown a little spoiled.

Video:

The anamorphic widescreen image was very good overall.  With such a short show they didn't have to worry about space on the DVD, so digital defects are almost nonexistent.  There was a little aliasing in the background, but it was minor.  There are a lot of dark colors and areas in shadows, and the details weren't lost in these.  The lines were tight and the shading showed no signs of banding.  A very good looking show.

Extras:

This disc has a good number of extras.  First off there is a making-of featurette with commentary by the director and art director/desginer.  This is not your normal making-of extra, it has three screens containing the storyboards, a rough CGI reel and the final product all playing at the same time.  The two commentators, along with an interviewer, talk about the creative process and some of the problems they had and techniques used to create the movie.  This was very interesting and informative.

There are also interviews with the director and designer, an art galleries of character designs and background art as well as the American trailer and two Japanese trailers.  Overall a very nice package.

Final Thoughts:

With this show only running a scant 23 minutes it is hard to recommend it.  That's short, even for an OVA.   The fact that the show really didn't deliver in the chills department is its biggest drawback.  Though I thought the monster designs and animation were outstanding, there just wasn't enough meat in this short film to really get me excited about it.  It is worth watching since the team that worked on it did such a good technical job, I just wish the show was a bit more scary.  Rent it.