Anime Review: Phantom in the Twilight (A Failed Original Series)

Animating an original series s usually an extremely big risk. You have no fanbase for that series, compared to adaptations of manga/light novel/visual novel/game. However, if done right, the outcome and benefits are humongous and may even spawn manga/light novel adaptations of that anime series. However, Phantom in the Twilight is not the case, and unfortunately I found that out the hard way.a

Essentially it's a story about a girl who meets some peculiar men in a cafe because they have powers - werewolf, the Chinese zombie (Jiangshi), vampire, etc. We find out that the girl is a descendant of the powerful mages? (I can't remember tbh). There's not really any plot progression other than your plain villains trying to capture this girl since she has yet to unleash her powers. Nothing interesting unfortunately so it's easy to forgot about this series.

Too bad my reaction to this anime wasn't like this.

The characters are not unique either; however I do like the concepts of these monster. When I first read the synopsis, I thought it was some vampire flick, but there were other types of monsters. The Jiangshi was an interesting addition to the series, since it uses a goddamn minigun to mow down its opponents, and Jiangshi is not really seen in Japanese anime. However, I realised that it was an anime created by a partnership between Japanese and Chinese, so maybe there could have been some "story-conflicts" when creating this series. OP and ED are nothing special either, and the voice acting is your usual. This was surprising since the main girl was Kana Hanazawa and we know her voice is very well-known in the industry, so they probably used her to get some attention to the anime. However, the redeeming factor is the art, and the character designs were created by Z-Ton, so no surprise there. Unfortunately, art ain't gonna hold everyone's attention for a long time.

Overall, this anime is nothing special and I definitely do not recommend this to anyone. It is definitely not a hidden gem and I thought it wasn't going to be as bad as I thought it would be (Sometimes the anime community can bash an anime for random reasons). Furthermore, according to this AnimeNewsNetwork article, the blu-ray discs for this series was cancelled "due to various circumstances." I'm pretty sure everyone knows the reason for that - it wasn't going to sell well!

Overall Score: 5/10

Story: 4/10

Characters: 5/10

Art: 7/10

Sound: 5/10

Enjoyment: 4/10