Corpse Party: Tortured Souls (Review)

You know… There are times when you abandon everything you were planning to write just for the sake of writing a review of something groundbreaking.  Something that happens once in a while in Japanese animation. Something that turns you into Fist of the North Star character with how tough it makes you. But most importantly, something so full of sheer amount of shit you just can’t help but enjoy it despite being horrible on every level. What is so special about this reverse masterpiece? In this review, I’ll try to explain it all.

srehtorB oiraM repuS GOTY Edition

Gore films are quite hard thing to state your opinion on. They’re technically in adult category for good reason, but they’re always too immature to someone who isn’t 15 anymore and doesn’t consider Grindcore music the epic poetry of vaginas gushing with pus. There are films that try to be meaningful despite their gory nature, like SAW series. These actually succeeded at first, but failed ultimately with how lackluster the explanation of Jigsaw’s motives were. Then there are movies like Martyrs, a 2008 gore film by Pascal Laugier, which end up being downright insulting. The director spends most of the screentime showing pointless violence which isn’t even pleasant to look at, and then at the very last minute decides to throw in a “meaningful” scene which suddenly makes all critics praise it as the best horror of the year. Then we get movies that aren’t even trying, like Hostel, Frontieres and other shit that would make you fall asleep, if only the screams would’ve been quieter. Why such long introduction, you ask? That’s quite simple – gore films are hard nut to crack, balancing between fun films you can watch for laughs (Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police) and Baroque-like fascination of guts where the author tries to convey something. You could imagine my shock when I’ve seen guts in Corpse Party, given that Japanese law decided to tone down the violence in the animated films, because of the children who have seen those by mistake. Of course we can all agree that cheesy violent OVAs like Devilman: The Birth or M.D. Geist were actually fun to watch. And if you’re still not convinced how violent the anime were back then, just take a look at Genocyber – a perfect mix of really solid animation and nonsense writing. Still worth watching if you’re feeling nostalgic…

…and we don’t have to deal with moe. While these OVAs were basically B movies which were supposed to feel ridiculous, Corpse Party does treat itself as serious as the likes of Martyrs and other “super meaningful” gore films. Such difference is really strong if you’ll ever compare Evil Dead movies. I’m a huge fan of the first three films, but the last year’s reboot was nothing else than HYPER REALISTIC BLOOD and nothing else. No cheesy comedy, nothing. I may be already too old to enjoy blood splattering everywhere, but violence needs to be handled with a specific approach in fictional work. This approach isn’t present in the title reviewed here, though.

The box Psyche, you need a box…!

The story of Corpse Party is about a group of High School Students conducting a ritual in their abandoned school. Right off the bat you’ll know how bad this title is – lightning strikes constantly in spooky-wooky way and the amount of ridiculous dutch angles makes you wonder if they were even intentional, or the person in charge of the camera was just drunk or falling asleep from boredom. It doesn’t take long for our lovable retards and their overly moe teacher to fall into the alternate world filled with blood, corpses, blood, despair, blood, loneliness, blood, violence, blood, ghosts, blood and most importantly, mystery blood. If you’re getting Silent Hill 1 vibes at this point, you’re more or less right. Just like in SH 1 we get a young girl responsible for everything and school full of tormented souls. The only difference is that in SH, the school was just one of the locations and, most importantly, the Japanese Team Silent wanted to scare you with sex and violence  WITHOUT showing you these thnigs. they were hinted, but never shown in your face. Here… Not so much.

Oh, I can tell you, what’s wrong. Everyone here can, actually. Also, are you spooked yet? :3

The anime definitely feels like it’s being written by a complete sadist who considers Higurashi no Naku Koro ni a way of life and masturbates with a vice. Without any reasons, the protagonist and her friend start talking about lubricant to make their asses shiny (fagservice explained in one scene, I guess), then share a yuri moment together, only for the friend character to leave our heroine alone to get her part of a torn paper doll used as a catalyst of the ritual. What follows is a mix of a panty shot, tentacle rape and soon after, gore. I know that the tradition of horror films is to make the cast dumber than they already are in order for the interesting things to happen, but Corpse Party ruins everything with moe heroines. While it is explained that the windows cannot break in this world, before it happens, our heroines don’t even think of using one of the many boxes or tables to break these. They’re squeaky, super delicate and hopeless while facing the hostile ghosts. It goes even further, though. The author thought of adding a loli character as well…

Pedo Whistle. HEAR ITS CRY.

Of course, there are male characters here too. They are bland, stupid and get less screen time than the girls. One of them actually does bring his little sister along. It doesn’t take much time for a gripping subplot involving her having to take a pee start. Instead of letting the brat urinate int he corner of the destroyed bathroom, her brother decides to drag her around the corpse-filled school, then leaves her without a second thought to a creepy little girl, promises that he’ll wait, leaves this place and you can guess what happens next.

I don’t know what scared him, but it must be better than Corpse Party.

At this point, I was hoping that the author at least will have some dignity to not show us the loli urinating all over herself. Unfortunately, he went further. She urinates herself, takes off her panties, so we can get a close look at those (and for Otaku to start sniffing the screen) and stating that she’ll go on without these. You know, Japan… These are the situations where I really hate this country. Cultural differences aside, such scenes are simply distasteful. They’re not here to portray anything, they don’t contain shock value or development, they’re just here to appeal to a really horrible group of anime fans. and because it’s in title containing so much cruelty already, I can say that Corpse Party may be my contender for the worst anime of this year, just because of how insulting it is and people actually charged money for it. Even Silent Hill: Downpour, the game that doesn’t make sense at all, does put urine in a better use, by mentioning how the warden in prison the protagonist was in got framed by another corrupted warden and beaten up to the point he was mentally retarded. And even then it was simply a verbal mentioning. Here, the author basically tried to appeal to this:

And to think that Danganronpa, despite its flaws, is being hated more than this title, just because of grotesque character designs. At least the heroines aren’t children, let alone they don’t flash their panties nor pee themselves! Unfortunately, this is just one of the problems Corpse Party is suffering from. This anime is simply unpleasant to look at. At first, I was laughing out loud at how overused the lightning and dutch angles are. However, starting from the third episode, the anime decides to focus on boring expositions and repetitive torture scenes. And even if you can;t bear the sight of an eye gouged out, no worries, this anime makes you not care about it. Especially after showing such scenes about 15 times. Same goes to tongues being cut off, these are the two gore scenes you’ll see the most – tongues and eyes. I’m not asking for variety, but everytime you’ll throw a gore scene at the viewer, complete with loud shrieking, you better do your best at shocking, not boring. Remember the scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the heroine gets tied up to the chair and forced to eat corpse along with the demented family? This scene had much less gore and more shock value by simply using a visual filter and camera angles to portray hysteric terror of a character. What do we get here?

Are you spooked by our CG tongue #88756 yet? :3 No worries, we still have more!

Tongues. Eyes. Tongues. Eyes. Blood. Vomit. Eyes. There’s no build up, no tension. Simply because the violence is overused to the point you don’t care. And that actually stopped being funny to me. Instead you’re forced to sit through a marathon of the girls which look and sound like they belong in Idolm@ster getting violated. The anime also plays a lot of stupid cliches like the characters always spreading up instead of sticking together, or one of the guys going crazy tot he point he starts killing others. Everything just for the sake of more violence. From what I know, Corpse Party was supposed to be an adventure game with the emphasis on the atmosphere. Here, the two episodes contain more guts than a single story arc of Higurashi, which, to its credit, at least padded it out with some decent build up.

Sappy piano and dark colors – just what you need

The animation in this OVA is poor, to say at least. While I do appreciate the lack of censorship, which is a cheap way of selling people more DVD/BD copies, the actual quality of the animation is average at most. The characters look simple, like in most modern titles, the lip synching is off at few parts and some moments just look awkward. It’s like they wanted to make their violence stand out, and even this doesn’t look as good as in the old OVAs. As far as the sounds go, it’s really bad. While the male voices are passable, all females sound overly cute with obnoxious squeaky tone, no matter if it’s loli or a teacher. The music is a mix of ambience and piano, filled with depressing sounds working perfectly with the overall mood of this pathethic excuse of a horror. If you want a good guide how to not scare your three month old child, Corpse Party is literally a textbook case here. The spooky sounds straight out of bad horror flicks are just laughable. Even the non-horror films, like Pi, had a better usage of sound during more intense moments. Hell, this movie alone is much more involving than Corpse Party, being made with little money, but huge effort.

None of the above, kid. My dignity died before everyone else.

The colors are also on par with modern TPS games – muddy, dark, without any part of background standing out. I know it is a horror, but once again, you don’t need to shove scariness with the power of Slender up your viewer’s ass. It’s like the author really wanted to immerse you fro start to finish. He forgot though, that the viewers always need a break from the main formula. Hence the slower parts about character development or calmer exposition. Here, we get no development, one heroic sacrifice and the actual explanation is another dumb show of pointless scene of little girl being choked to death for a reason that could easily be avoided. Shame on you, Japan. You used to create such magnificent, atmospheric horrors, and now?

To end this misery…

That’s basically all I can tell without boring you. Corpse Party is a failure on every level. It’s too gory to be scary, too monotone to actually remain funny for longer than two episodes and too unpleasant to even waste your time on this mockery. If you want to see a good animated Japanese horror, try out Shiki, especially manga. If you’re into games that present more Japanese way of scariness, look up Forbidden Siren and Fatal Frame. This title isn’t worth of your time. It lures you in, as you hope for a decent mystery involving teenage characters, and leaves you with blood and tasteless fanserivce which is a really bizarre thing to see in such genre. Unless you’re really curious or you want to fill up your anime list, don’t waste your time and nerves. You can always visit your dentist for the true thrill.

Score (based on Junk-o meter): 3/10

(a.k.a. What the hell is this shit?!)