Tasokare Hotel
誰ソ彼ホテル
(Anime)
Supernatural mystery by SEEC, PRA
Era: 2020s
Rating: C
Plot: While returning home after a concert by her favourite idol group, highschool girl Neko Tsukahara lies on the street, bleeding after being stabbed in the back. She wakes up in a unfamiliar place, just outside the Tasokare Hotel, a place where souls go to when they don't remember who they are or know if they're supposed to be dead or alive.
Length: 12 episodes
Thoughts: Well, it looked interesting, saw it was adapted from a mobile game, decided to have a look, and it's not available on my region. Great start. The adaptation ran free in YouTube, so here we are. The concept looked interesting, and the first episode did confirm it, although wish it had a bit more... flair to it.
While at the beginning it looks just a show where a mystery would be solved and the person return to life or move to the great beyond, episode three introduces a character that pierced his back on a spiiiiiiiiiiiike, who happens to be Masaki, an actual murderer. Warned that killing someone at the Tasogare Hotel is a sure one-way trip to hell, he decides to stay and put that to the test with two friends who had a bit of a strained relationship, and the "slap in the face" conclusion to this episode, after chill initial episodes exploring the concept on a mostly ok but somewhat unimpressive manner, felt more like a mid-season gear shift with Masaki's continued presence, although he becomes less menacing, but always unnerving. Because, you know, murderer. I kinda wish it did a better job of obscuring things, something like this being a place that doesn't follow the rules of time, because the big plot reveal that launches the last three episodes felt it was going in that exact direction for a while, although the end is well executed, in spite of taking a few deus ex machina to make it work. As far as the characters go, it uses them all pretty decently, but wish it did a bit more with Ruri, she mostly disappears into the background and I think that cheapens her decision to help in the last episode a bit.
Visually it's not the most exciting thing you'll see, from the get-go it does kind of have a feeling of a mobile game, so I'm guessing it at least accomplishes that, and the character design is perfectly good. It's not the most exciting thing on air, and it's certainly a way to spend 25 minutes, so if I'm breaking a streak of covering "the show that goes free on YouTube on It's Anime", it won't be because of it.
Recommended to: light mystery fans.
Plus:
Interesting as a concept, even if the execution isn't quite there.
Minus:
It's not exactly the biggest mystery
Looks s bit meh
