Uchida Shungicu no Noroi no One-Piece (original) (raw)

I can't help but wonder if the object of the horror on display, a yellow dress, fretted with red roses, was given this color as a nod to the Victorian short story The Yellow Wallpaper. It was about a lady cooped up in a room by her husband, writing diary entries that gradually become madder, as she displays her obsession with the texture, color, and smell of the peeling yellow wallpaper in the room. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story was a bland feminist-oriented psychological "horror" short story that has remained influential in literature and english classes.

This TV special omnibus of three shorts, around 6-8 minutes apiece,... doesn't possess the pioneering tedium of the aforementioned story and is another cursed item horror, though instead of being merely psychological, there is a ghostly presence and supernatural aura. The dress acts something like a parasite, making the girls beautiful to would-be suitors but bringing out either terrible aspects of their personality, becoming a cause of fear and anxiety, or a catalyst for obsession and tragedy. It's dull, plodding, and repetitive, but the psychological aspects lend the coming of age elements a degree of depth.

More importantly, there are incredible aesthetic touches, which the staff employ wonderfully to create atmosphere and reinforce the psychological elements. Different moods are created by using a mixture of vignetting, monochrome, and experiments with color and shading. Characters and objects are often isolated against a dark or bright background to add emphasis, usually accompanied by eerie sound design and positioned around heavier moments in the narrative. The ghost is presented as a disintegrating silhouette. They'll take time to show the reflection of background animation in the closeups of eyes. Psychedelic swirls of color will spiral onto the screen, often forming a rose or breaking into petals, reminding us of the dread of the dress that seems to always appear and seemingly can't be gotten rid of, each short building upon the last, the dress becoming more ravenous, even predatory, as ridiculous as that sounds.

Therein lies the main problem. While the omnibus has sort of a spooky atmosphere, decent psychological musings, and a few striking bursts of stylized art and animation, it's still just a fucking ghost dress, preying upon thinly characterized archetypes. These shorts are too basic, although the merging of sound design, writing, and imagery combine in the concluding episode, providing a much-needed touch of emotion, though far too late. This is a pretty pointless collection of shorts. I'd suggest Yumemakura Baku Twilight Gekijou instead, as the shorts are more solid, distinct, and possess a stronger aesthetic, often pushed to greater heights with an even more expressionistic animation style.