Unnaturally Scary
The last Halloween themed post out of me until next year, maybe, on the day before Halloween no less. This one kind of ties all the past four together and that made it nice wrap on these. So enjoy and have a Happy Halloween.
Most, if not all, horror genre anime tend to touch some kind of supernatural topic in order to scare the viewer. As I mentioned in my previous post, I do have a problem with it and would like to expand on that a bit.
If you didn't notice the past four weeks have a supernatural undertone, or quite prevalent to the point of it being required for the story to work. I don't think there is one anime of the horror genre, that I've seen, that wasn't sprinkled in magic powder. I've been of the mindset that creepy stories are much more impactful if they are somewhat believable.
One example I can pull from is Btooom!, it hasn't relied on the supernatural, but I wouldn't consider it all that much horror. However, watching the survival game play out it does get a bit nerve-racking if you like one or both characters in a battle. The tension is pure on the mortality of participants and the fact that you can get killed at any point inside this game. The fragile bodies of human can serve well as a platform for the horror, but anime do usually add a bit extra.
One reason that anime tend to pile on the supernatural is harping on the human instinct to fear the unknown. Being pattern seeking animals, human want to know that there is some kind of predictability to events in their lives. And supernatural concepts, by definition, are things removed or separate from nature and not that easy to predict, hence being something unknown and frightening.
Since there is a lack of horrors grounded in reality, it kind of makes me think that the genre is a slave to the paranormal. I've only been into the horror genre, in anime, after my over-consuming of the romantic comedy genre. Very weird contrast, but I do want more realism in horror and the opposite for romance. So really a man can only dream for anime to deliver, but for now I'm enjoy the sparse amount of horror compared to romance.