Shadows House 2nd Season

After the resolution of the debut, Kate and her Doll Emilico have officially become residents of the Shadows House. However, they are under constant vigilance by the Star Bearers—an elite group in charge of the children's wing. In order to escape from their surveillance and the morbid methods they use to keep everyone's loyalty in check, Kate and Emilico must be wary of who to trust and aim to become Star Bearers themselves.

Meanwhile, the Star Bearers have encountered their own problems. A mysterious robed figure dubbed "Master Robe" has trespassed and roams around the children's wing. At first, Master Robe is deemed harmless, but more incidents start occurring that endanger the Dolls' lives—all of them pointing to the suspicious individual.

To improve her reputation, Kate decides to solve the mystery herself. Yet, with so few clues and so many suspects, searching for Master Robe and their motive for attacking the mansion proves more challenging than she imagined.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kate Main

Kitou, Akari Japanese

Emilico Main

Sasahara, Yuu Japanese

John Supporting

Sakai, Koudai Japanese

Shaun Supporting

Sakai, Koudai Japanese

Barbie Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Patrick Supporting

Kawashima, Reiji Japanese

Lou Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Maryrose Supporting

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Ricky Supporting

Kawashima, Reiji Japanese

Oliver Supporting

Enoki, Junya Japanese

Matsui, Yuuko Producer

Kitazawa, Shiryuu Producer

Furuhashi, Souta Producer

Tsuji, Toshikazu Producer

Reviews

Sep 27, 2024

Dompa112

Recommended

Really want to like this more than i do but…. No. It just doesnt resonate to me in its content. The setup for the story is pretty cool. The story and mystery surrounding this castle. The shadows and dolls themselves. Whats hiding behind this mystery and all. Im still kinda interested in seeing where its going so i might stick around for more season.

But overall i just find the characters very bland and uninteresting. The pacing is so slow. Theres just not much happening to drive the mystery forward.

The only thing i enjoyed more of S2 was the new OP. The rest was ... kinda stagnant from first season. Not much actually happened in regards to the story. Just more everyday stuff in the castle.

So i continue to give it a 7/10 for the premise and hopes for the future it will pick up the pace.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 24, 2022

JoexySun

Mixed Feelings

Short Review (Spoiler-free):

Shadow House Season 2, like Season 1, is a great production with attractive main characters, beautiful art design, a unique gothic-styled song and some impressive action sequences. Its weakest department is the writing. This season's story is still recovering from the last seasonal finale's premature revelation of the core mystery on which the entire story is built. Fortunately, the 2nd season has a somewhat tighter narrative focused on the "Master Robe" case. Most of the issues I had with Season 1 still apply here, as Shadow House continues to closely follow the formula of "Qing-dynasty Palace Drama" popularized in Asian countries.

My ... expectations/reasons for watching:
Since I watched Season 1 out of curiosity, I was at least motivated to find out about Kate and Emilico's fate after their last face-off with Edward, though I did not have very high expectations for its story. I was also curious to know what new mystery they have in store for driving this season.

Baseline quality:
6.5-7/10. Not a bad production. The "Moe Gothic" OP song is pretty good. But I am still not a fan of all the palace infight drama. The allegory to real-world class warfare is a little too on the nose for me. There are clues of brilliance sprinkled across the episodes, but the detective procedure is pretty much by the numbers.

Recommended to:
Fans of "palace infight drama"; people who believe in the cosmic conspiracy that earth is just a giant prison for humanity; fans of "moe torture"; fans of Victorian aesthetics.

Not recommended to:
Those who don't like palace infight drama and those prone to be depressed by suppressive hierarchy.

What worked for me:
+ Good art direction throughout. Facial art is consistently good throughout the 2 seasons.
+ Interesting worldbuilding with commendable attention to details in the structure of the castle, social institution, etc.
+ Emilico is still adorable throughout the season, her relationship with Kate serves as the backbone of the story. I admit that is solid enough to warrant my continuous watching.
+ More focus on the narrative than Season 1.
+ Great OP song.

What did not quite work for me:
- As the show follows the formula of "Palace infight drama" too closely, it also inherited a plethora of issues that bothered me in that genre.
- over-demonization of the villains coupled with over-idealization of the main characters. Pitting sunshine-like Emilico against this pitch-black evil castle and its demonic/alien rulers creates quite some drama, right? However, that makes the scenario for Emilico/Kate's winning in the end less believable. Unless the show finds a clever way to deconstruct the "pure evil" of the titular Shadow House, this is always going to be a major hurdle for the writer. Otherwise, the story apparently risks falling into the most egregious power fantasy. In the most popular palace dramas, the main protagonist (usually a low-level maid or concubine) gradually gains power by their sheer will and wits. In this season of Shadow House, Emilico and Kate are on the track to be a couple blessed with all powers. Sure the writer can add wrinkles to their journey, but this trend is very apparent.
- Formulaic. Like in most palace dramas, the protagonist gains sympathetic allies and friends, but they soon suffer/die in the hands of the ruthless and all-powerful ruling villains, making the protagonist more determined to tear down this palace. I am not saying this formula is inherently bad, but how Shadow House handled it feels a bit too on the nose for me.
- A few too many fake-outs hurt the suspenseful moments in the show. In an early episode when Emilico was showing her prowess, you'd think she's in some authentic physical danger, but not really. When the fake-outs become the norm, the audience is also conditioned to believe that the main heroes will never truly be in danger.
- Ends on a rather bizarre and uninteresting cliffhanger.
- Whoever puts "slice-of-life" in its genre on MAL still deserves Shadow Grandpa's coffee, the whole pot please. On my book this is a most depressing thriller/drama set in a society with extreme power distance and cruelty, most certainly not a "slice-of-life".

As you can see, I am neither the biggest fan nor a hater of the show. I can appreciate certain aspects of the show but my appreciation is limited by the aforementioned reasons. If you are a fan, please just ignore my criticism. If you are hesitating about watching it, just take my words with a whole pack of salt.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 26, 2022

Gsarthotegga

Not Recommended

Preliminary (8/12 eps)

Shadows House had an okay, somewhat compelling first season, with many thinking it was marred by the final few (non-canon) episodes, but the unique premise, the gothic or victorian atmosphere, the nature of the shadows and their "living dolls," and the world building and plot elements were interesting. Characters and writing were decent enough relative to most seasonal anime. Nothing was especially bad. It could get a little tiresome to look at, despite a decent aesthetic to build upon, as the budget was clearly not high, and the animation was mediocre at best (Clover Works had to save that budget for animating feet in Akebi). ... Animation saving techniques and tedious shots of people talking and the camera panning over everything is a near constant.

Season 2 possesses most of what made season 1 worth watching, but it's generally worse in most ways, and the plot is much clunkier. There's a bit of factional intrigue and further exploration of how the soot powers work, and the mains become more ingratiated with the elite of the house and the star bearers. Oddly enough, while the "living dolls" act as the "face" for the shadows, mimicking them, it kind of feels like the staff forgot about this element, and it's actually very rare that the "faces" do their job at all. I guess the lower level children/shadows are just lazy and get a free pass? I know there is a difference in perspective and experience for the younger children/shadows, but the series tends to be pretty inconsistent with this element all around, though devotion to the concept would be tedious to depict and observe, in all fairness.

The OP/ED are okay (although the OP sounds like gothic lolita pop for kindergarten), but the music in the show is painful. It's flooded with stock music: faux-intense battle music for the scorch encounter, hahaha this is soooooo funny comedy music for parts that are largely not funny, and suspense music from some boomer show like Matlock. This is kind of a show that should be relying on building atmosphere, but it's hard to craft it with music this lackluster.

Unfortunately, the budget seems even smaller now or the staff were forced to make choices that go far beyond the minimal budget available. Episode 3 was especially boring. The soot fight is badly animated and looks like a how-to-vacuum tutorial presented as a dramatic battle scene with soot monsters, so a five-year-old will stay interested; it seriously has an edutainment feel like watching Blue's Clues or Teletubbies or something. The characters just sit around and chill and explain how the vacuum works and the monsters politely wait for them.

I don't care what happened in the manga. That's no excuse after the studio just made up the last few episodes of season 1. Be faithful to the manga when it's good, but it's absolutely necessary to present scenes like this in a manner that is palatable to the medium. And do not tell me how a vacuum cleaner works—cut the dialogue out, please. The vacuum cleaner was unwieldy and difficult to use due to how heavy and powerful it was, so there was a balance issue. It would make sense to get a strong character to use it, like the body builder. No, no, instead let's hand it to the series' tiniest moe kawaii desu ni sugoi lolimaid. It's played for laughs, but she realistically could have died very easily at various points.

There is also a mystery concerning the elusive "robe-sama," which is so painful to type, I have to put it in quotes so as not to feel like I'm a 4-year-old. Kate spends time pondering deeply about whom it might be, and our cast of ace detectives start snooping around for clues like this is Scooby Doo for several episodes. However, it's painfully obvious who "robe-sama" is. The mystery element is poorly written, and they could have easily built a lot of suspense around this with numerous characters eliciting greater suspicion. Not to spoil anything, but I've noticed plenty of people were reasonably getting this one wrong at first because they're jumping the gun with an appeal to Chekhov's gun (fallacy); it's still really obvious who it is, and it's very easily narrowed down, but it's a challenge to pay attention after the 1,457th slow panning shot over faces and random interiors, so maybe some people missed it, but the hints are in plain sight.

Episode 5 finally has the shadows working together more and bonding, and Episode 6 has surprisingly decent character interaction and speculation from the humans, considering this is a show that tends to be way too plot-driven or, in the case of season 1, devolved into plenty of desultory slime of life bits. Most of the revelations and theories discussed by the characters are very obvious, even before season 1 ended (like everything about Rum/Shirley, for example). I mean, I get that the characters sometimes have to come to terms with what is happening at a different pace than the viewer, but it appears to me that the writing is not tight enough, lacks subtlety, or the characters need to be quicker on the uptake, lest they end up handholding an audience that doesn't need handholding with sluggish scenes.

The series is already far too slow to begin with. The slow-pacing is very artificial as well—I never get the sense that the slow-pace is a deliberate choice because this is a slow-burn mystery—no, I get the sense that it's only as slow as it is because of required budget saving techniques. There's scene after scene of slow pans over the faces of characters as they snoop around and gossip—even worse, half of the faces they pan over are FREAKING silhouettes; it's amazing how low-budget this is when they have plot-motivated usage of silhouettes. The direction is mostly poor and plot points are seldom worked into episodes in ways that promote engagement. Comedy is sprinkled in to lighten the mood, often tarnishing the atmosphere, but also providing long, awkward stretches of unfunny bits about John wanting to marry Kate or whatever other shenanigans.

About the only compliment I can give, beyond whatever slight approval I gave above, is that it's interesting to see how the shadows and "living dolls" differentiate—as they're clearly meant to become monotonously in-tune with one another, but the differences are obvious, if sometimes subtle with certain pairs. Patrick and Ricky are probably the most interesting in this regard, especially with their romantic proclivities. I'm sure there's a lot of great potential to be tapped here, but I'm not convinced it's worth enduring the series' shortcomings to experience these developments in future installments.

The series works for one season because the idea is a semi-fresh dark fantasy interestingly tackling class structures in a kind of Victorian/gothic atmosphere, and we're just learning the rules of the world and the house. There's plenty of world building and mystery, but once we've gotten the hang of things and have a decent grasp of how the world works and we move away from acculturation and to unraveling mysteries and playing detective instead, then it's clear the writing is simply not up to snuff for such a slow, uneventful, and low-budget series, and I never want to see another camera pan over anything ever again after having watched it. The manga is probably a lot better, and would have the advantages of focusing on art and composition over camera pans and stiff animation, and the atmosphere would be better preserved without the poor music.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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