Survival school... Corpse Party is a well-known series of video games in the land of the rising sun. Beyond the games, there are manga and anime. Known for being very ancient, only the first game was released in the bearded 96th on PC. However, this was a long time ago, and a more recent example is the two reboots, the first on Windows 2008, and the second, which I once played this game on PSP "Repeated Fear" was released in 2010. The restart really ignited this series, spawning a lot of ports on other platforms, as well as manga and anime, to review which now and go.
The story takes place in an elementary school that was demolished due to the murders and disappearances of its students and staff. The plot of the anime begins with new students who are students of the Kisaragi Academy - a school built on the sad place of the demolished old school. One night in a group of students of the Academy tell terrible stories about ghosts in the classroom, when suddenly an earthquake begins: the floor under their feet collapses, and the students fall into the abyss. A supernatural earthquake transported the students to another dimension of the same demolished school where some students were killed and tortured, and now vengeful spirits inhabit, pursuing by chance, or perhaps not accidentally, those who did not get here. Students of Kisaragi Academy wake up separately, trying to find their way home and survive the mysterious forces with which the school teems.
There are only 5 chapters in the game, which in themselves are not very long in passing time. Therefore, anyone who says that anime is short and wants 12 episodes is actually mistaken in saying that the chapters would be enough for a full-series anime. It is more appropriate to talk about 8 episodes or 10 at the worst end. Those who say that there is no backstory, they say that the heroes do not tell about the past, and the plot starts immediately from school. You won’t believe it, but everything in the game is exactly the same, and we will talk about the differences between the game and the anime a little later. The only advantage for the curious is that you can stop near the dead students of the school and read their stories or how they died. However, it should be understood that not all notes are relevant to the plot.
Thanks to the compressed plot, it looks fast and dynamic: you do not have time to yawn or blink an eye, as something important happens, then the ghost will get out, the door creaks and some hero will be nailed. It’s also remarkable that the narrative comes from the perspective of all the characters in the place (this is even more noticeable if you play the game), that is, there is no main character. All are equally important figures, on behalf of whom there is a shifting narrative and the development of history.
The development of characters is progressive: some manage to hide the feeling of fear for a long time. But they do, because there is no other choice. Others try to become a hero - realizing that the worst is ahead. In other words, one can only admire how their personalities are adapted to each scenario of the series - realism. This is an important comment that plays a significant role in the genre of horror. However, realistic behavior was deprived of some characters. For example, what kind of idiot would you have to be to leave your sister with a questionable identity and then leave the door closed? Therefore, when the characters in story 9, it is not surprising that some of them will play common types or just act as cannon fodder given the short duration of the series.
The animation was done by Asread Studio. If you don’t know who they are, the comrades who did the animation for another well-known anime horror movie, Mirai Nikki. The animation is phenomenal. The setting of the elementary school is saturated with an evil atmosphere that spread throughout the school and lurks in every corner, where there is only darkness and hopelessness. Therefore, in such a place, anyone can be caught by surprise, and what will happen next? The murder scenes are brutal, with emotional and psychological effects. The project justifies the genre of “horrors” in full, there is dismemberment, rot with decapitated corpses and so on. By the way, the characters in the anime are the same as in the game. Well, at least most of the voices I heard, and I can say that the voices are the same people. By the way, cool seyu.
NOTE: In this verse, I will show the differences between the game "Repeated Fear" and the anime. However, the basis of this anime is a PC adaptation. So in the PSP game, Naomi set her hair on the door on fire and walked out, and here she cracked off the door as if nothing had happened. The quarrel between Naomi and Seiko is different: in the game Seiko tries to calm her saying that everything will be fine, and tomorrow we will go shopping, eat delicious food and so on. In anime, the quarrel is played out differently. The body of Mayu Suzumoto, smeared against the wall, is stumbled upon not by the teacher, but by Yoshiki Chisinuma, and the dubious person is dragged away not by the teacher, but by Yoshiki. Further, I will not describe the differences, so as not to spoil again, because for a 4-series product, any plot mention is already a spoiler. It is clear that the works differ in a noticeable way. Pumping a game from a series of visual novels, where there are elements of the quest component and all this lasting over ~ 14 hours and add to this wrong end in 4 OVA episodes, each of which lasts no more than half an hour is an extremely dubious idea.
As a result, we have a rapidly-hurricane anime horror, which in anime culture is rare. There is only one sadness, only 4 episodes. Of course, I understand that 12 episodes is also a lot, but it did not hurt the authors to finalize another 3-4 series, which would allow adding more details to the plot. In the rest of the atmospheric-quality phenomenon. To all fans of the franchise and connoisseurs of horror anime, I advise you to familiarize yourself. But let’s not forget that everything could have been better if there had been more episodes.