What They Say:
Yamishibai is a picture-story style of animation whose motif is surrounded and based on the rumors, and urban legends throughout the history of Japan.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The penultimate episode of the season takes us to an old and familiar game that has plenty of ways to be utilized in horror. We’re introduced a relatively young father with his family at home in the apartment as his daughter plays the telephone game with him using two cups and a string. He finds it adorable until he hears another voice in the cup that’s calling to him and seems to believe that his daughter hears a voice as well with how she reacts to it on her end. That’s chilling in itself as his daughter, Moeka, just accepts it as normal and wants to play along. But for Tatsuhiko, it’s chilling and reminds him of a woman he knew before that he was having an affair with but broke it off. That just adds new layers of mystery to it that becomes even worse when the cup itself begins to ring late into the night…
In Summary:
The mistakes of the past haunt the present through the most curious ways here with the string telephone and watching Tatsuhiko’s meltdown begin is thoroughly enjoyable to watch. It’s a slow piece overall but it has the right kind of haunting element to it and shows that a short-form show doesn’t have to go fast and furious to work and that it can spread things out enough so that it’s engaging and disturbing.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll