Kakurenbo (2005) User Reviews (6)

Kakurenbo: Beautiful but ....

[gaiasuniverse · 8/10 · 26 July 2008]

The graphics are amazing. The characters are well spoken. The storyline... well...

The issue is not the story itself but the lack of structure with such a short film. Had this been the start of a series than perhaps it would make more sense as you would expect to get the rest of the information needed to answer the many questions you are left with in the end throughout the series.

Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek is a story of a young boy who is looking for his sister who went missing playing a game of demonic hide and seek. Why are children playing this game at night and where are their parents? What is the motivation to play it in the first place? For three of the children it was the adventure, for one other it was the need to find his sibling, however, what about the other three? You are not told this nor are you told why children knowingly go and play after hearing of all the children that have gone missing before them.

The ending was not much of a surprise but the very last images in the last scene left you thinking a new game had started. There is no explanation as to why it was starting over nor what happened to the winner that passes on the mask. Did she get to go home? What saves this movie is the beautiful graphics. The story is well told, what there is of one, and it does have a haunting feeling of a story that would be told by a campfire or on Halloween.

I do recommend watching it for yourself but do not have expectations that you are getting a full story as it ends up feeling more like a clip from a full length film that never came to fruition.

A wonderful chilling tale

[Angels_Review · 8/10 · 13 April 2014]

This starts out really creepy, talking about a game where children wear fox masks to play a hide and seek game and when children will go missing from it. We have a strange band of characters that are brought together by the fight to survive a game that they know they could be killed in. There really isn't much I can say about the show since I really don't want to spoil if for you. It's one I say you should watch. Also would like to note, very rarely does a Writer also become the director of his own show but in this case, it happened. Shuuhei Morita actually not only wrote the show, he was the director and producer of it. I think that is part of why this was done so well. Because he had a point to put across and it wasn't diluted by anyone else in the way.

Now for the psychological part of this, I had to look at Wikipedia. Sadly I couldn't get it but now I see what the show was actually trying to show. The idea was that Tokyo was losing its aesthetic, its beauty for a more industrial looking life. If you look at its aesthetic before being like a child, then you can see where a child's game turning into a scare trip in a large abandoned city more based on industry could lie. Sadly, if I told anymore, I would be doing spoilers again.

The animation style feels much like a cut scene from a rather well made game. The mixture of 3D and cell shaded textures are almost seamless although once in a while they use the same model over and over again. There are times when you will see very small clips of what all the characters are doing to stay alive and sometimes they don't seem to be congruent at all. They are placed randomly to break things up and so it ends up a bit hard to tell where everything is taking place. Still I fully love the post-apocalyptic feel they have for the show. It's hard to tell where the show is taking place because it's a large mixture of Japanese structures and yet the demons have a more hindu looking design. At least that's in my mind.

Surprisingly, this was actually dubbed and the dub is rather well done in my book. Voices work for many of the characters in how I would picture them sounding, some might be whinny but it was the personalities were the only things that annoyed me, not the voices. The music captures the mood well and keeps you hyped up long after watching it.

Again, you should watch it if you like thrillers or anything psychological. I thought it was amazing for how short it was.

Not great, not terrible

[butlermorasatur · 4/10 · 2 October 2019]

I think it's a good watch, just nothing great ovearall, if you are bored It Will keep you entertained.

Watch it

[rashed_facebook · 8/10 · 30 July 2019]

Regardless of the reviews, if you understand anime, and in general horror japanese culture you'd like this one, the concept is amazing, the story is good, the characters are alright and even for a short one it keeps you thinking about the future of this story.

The ones complaining are either new to anime, dont get anime horror, or thought this is some triple A budgeted horror anime, which clearly it isnt.

Watch it if you enjoy horror and want a fast-tracked one.

It's okay but....

[WeAreLive · 6/10 · 25 March 2018]

It is not really something memorable or good to be honest.

The whole thing just felt very flat to watch and all this time these kids were play is hide and seek but for some reason they game just turns into a horror movie.

My question is that: Why are these kids play hide and seek in the middle of the night? and where are their parents?

The animation was good but the fact that everyone was wearing masks and some of the creatures might come out as scary for some children who aren't used Japanese culture does worry me.

Not a failure, bot nothing great either

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 28 July 2016]

"Kakurenbo" or "Hide and Seek" is a Japanese animated short film that runs for half an hour. The writer and director here is Shûhei Morita and he made this film in 2005, over a decade ago, and quite a while before he got his Oscar nomination. His co-writer is Shiro Kuro and, according to IMDb, this is the man's only credit so far. I must say the animation here is okay and the story is also not bad, but there were two things that annoyed me a bit. The first would be these random cat masks the protagonists were wearing that made it occasionally fairly embarrassing to watch. The second problem was that the mix of a children's game like "Hide and Seek" and the horror component was not really working in here. At least that's how I perceived it. I would definitely say that it is a cartoon more suitable for grown-ups than children, but even they may find it a bit childish on some occasions, like the "hide and seek" song. All in all, the bad outweighs toe good sadly and I have to give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.