Anime Review: Kakurenbo

Review KakurenboWritten by WarpshadowRating good

The bad thing about short movies is that they don’t have a lot of time to flesh out or expand on a good idea. The good thing about them is that they don’t waste your time if the makers of a movie didn’t have an idea worth expanding on.

There is an abandoned section of the city with a secret game attached to it. It is called Otokoyo a strange variation of hide and seek. It is played in the abandoned section with seven children who wear fox masks. There is also the rumor that there are demons who capture the children as they play the game.

For what it is, Kakurenbo is a good short movie. It has a nice premise and is good at keeping an atmosphere of suspense. It was a really nice touch to put the characters in masks, making their words more important since you couldn’t see their facial expressions. Kakurenbo is also nicely animated using detailed computer graphics. For all it’s assets I wouldn’t place this movie above a rental. The reason for this the movie only runs for a half an hour leaving it little time to expound on it’s basic premise or to develop anything.