The World Yamizukan
Produced by: TV Tokyo
Genre(s): Horror, Suspense
Episode length: 4 minutes
Synopsis: The anime will be in an omnibus short format that will tell stories of the strange and bizarre in our world, including UFOs, cryptids, curses, ancient civilizations, supernatural powers, spiritual experiences, bizarre cases, different dimensions, and urban legends, told in a picture show style. The anime seeks to evoke the retro atmosphere of pulp horror stories that were popular in the ’60s and ’70s in magazines. – MyAnimeList
With only one episode of the 4-minute per episode anime series The World Yamizukan (aka Sekai no Yami Zukan in Japanese) there isn’t much to go on. But by way of first impressions I must say that I am not impressed. I was already weary of the animation style going in but after watching the first episode and finding that even the initial story’s intrigue a bit lacking I don’t know if I’ll continue watching this series after its third episode.
I don’t mind short-format series at all as the short-form anime series I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying (Danna ga Nani o Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken in Japanese) is one of my favorite anime series of the past decade. But The World Yamizukan just hasn’t done anything in the first four minutes to convince me to invest my time and emotions into this series.
And that’s kind of sad seeing as how the series is going to focus on some fun science fiction and horror stories featuring aliens, cryptid monsters, ghost, demons, and the like, and that is something that I would really enjoy exploring though this series. But if this first episode is any indication of what to expect from the series I’m really going to be disappointed is what is presented.
The animation style didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would as I generally hate those “motion comics” styles of animation, but the story and what happened in episode one was the biggest disappointment of it all. So, couple that with an animation style that I already didn’t like and you have a series that just isn’t impressing me in the slightest.