Yami Shibai

I've got something very different in store for you. I'm hesitant to class it as anime but have nothing better to call it, even so: I think this is the best thing to come out of this season of anime and definitely deserves more recognition. But I would say that the less prior knowledge you have: the better the show will be.

Another

This anime has been one of the featured shows on animedreaming for quite a while now, so, upon my sister's recommendation, I decided to watch it. It's mostly a ghost story, but it hasn't really got a ghost in it exactly. It also has some pretty unnecessary gore in it. I don't like gore or ghost, it's not really my thing at all. 26 years ago, Misaki, the all-round brilliant guy, is killed in an accident. Horribly effected by their class mates sudden death, the whole class decides to pretend she's still alive. Even the headmaster plays a long and puts an extra chair out for her during the graduation ceremony. That's weird enough, but when Misaki turns up in their group photo 9th grade class 3 can't even begin to realise what they've done. They opened 9th grade class 3 up to the world of the dead. I get a bit lost with the rest of the story, but basically every year, the 9th grade class 3 are always missing one desk and one chair because like, a dead person joins they're class or something.... And then every month a student or a member of their family die. It's not particularly clear... but that's the history of the school. Now Sakakibara is transferred into said class of terrors. Unknowing of 9th grade class 3's calamity, Sakakibara accidentally destroys the protective measure they had set in place. Know, with his class mates dying around him, Sakakibara is determined to fix such a horrible problem. Or something like that. Really, it's not clear why Sakakibara is willing to endanger himself to find the answers. The plot is very layered, but I think the writer might have had difficulties with such a plot because it seems fairly disordered. I do think it's a very interesting plot though even if some parts of the story are too far-fetched. Like how every one's memories get altered so you can't remember who the ghost in your class was and the self-altering school documents that add and remove the ghosts name.... I really don't like those bits. But the idea of a ghost in your school and not knowing who and unusual deaths and stuff, that's what makes it interesting.
Sakakibara is your average kid with lots of curiosity, fairly boring actually. But then there is Mei Misaki, she is very pretty. Her face is so blank and expressionless that she really looks like a doll. Although she is completely ignored at the beginning it is very interesting to watch her adapt to be around friends. She also appears to have an interesting story to her family, but I haven't really heard about anything yet. All her abnormalities make up for Sakakibara's boring traits. The only other character that I'm interested in is Akazawa. She's a bit of a tsundere, but I bet there's a reason that she's the Head of Countermeasures thus responsible for protecting the class against the calamity.
The art is very nice. I like the addition of all the dolls, it makes everything very creepy. Really, the whole animation is creepy, crows and flickering lights, the whole town is depicted as a place of death and decay. Very well thought out. Then there's those superbly detailed backgrounds, so pretty. There's one thing that really ruins the art: the deaths. I don't mind death scenes, but these are irrationally gross. Dismembered limbs and blood every where. If it was necessary for such gruesome deaths to take place then the use of obscure camera cuts (I find) are more effective than the exaggerative amount of blood flying everywhere.
In all honesty, I am quite open, I don't really hate any genre. But I just dislike unnecessary horrors. Sure, maybe some of you out there like watching blood pour out of someone as some sharp object is insterted into their body. But it just looks really crude to me and pulls away from the quality of the plot. Even with that, this is a good show. Short but I don't think it'd do to be any longer.

Pie: