Kakurenbo (Hide and Seek)

[DB]

"This is film is best watched in the dark"

That's what opens this piece, and there's no doubt it helps set the mood. H+S has won several awards at animation festivals, and it earned them.

The story is simple. Hikora's sister went missing a few days ago, supposedly playing a game of hide and seek, but not just any game. Urban legend has it if you follow several signs, you'll end up on a street where no one lives. The games is played with seven kids, all in animal masks in the middle of the night. And if you do it, demons will kidnap you. His sister played the game, now he wants to play it to find her. Only when he gets there with his beast friend, the group numbers eight. But that doesn't stop the game from starting....

I saw this at a con where it was making its debut. A nice big auditorium in a darkened room, and boy did it impress me. While I've seriously cut back on watching shows at a con, I was glad I saw this one. Made me want to go out and buy the thing right now. Central Park Media has had a number of crap releases over the years, but this isn't one of them.

The pros to this. The artwork is the best I have seen in a while. likewise with the character designs. Since all of the kids wear fixed animal masks, only their voices give them personalities, and it works very well. Even in te dub, for those that don't like dubs. The designs are successfully moody. One gets the impression of the game taking place in an ancient, decaying part of the city where nothing is welcome. Watching it at night, the thing is incredibly creepy, at least for me. And the ending threw me. I really didn't see it coming, though the clues were there. But it definitely felt like a quality horror story. If only Hollywood, and well, a lot of Asian horror films for that matter, took a lead from this the quality would go up a lot.

The lone downside is it's incredibly short: 25 minutes. But it's a great 25. But that makes its price a bit steep, but I was able to buy it at a store that was going out of business and snared it at a great price. Even so I probably would have eventually broken down and paid top dollar for it. It was that good.

I give it a 9 out of 10. It loses one point due to shortness. I thought it could have gone another 10-15 minutes, but given how high a quality the artwork is, their budget was probably blown by that time, so it's excueable