×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
Otherside Picnic (TV).


Goto page 1, 2  Next

Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Series Discussion
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:39 am Reply with quote


Otherside Picnic (TV)

Genres: adventure, mystery, sci-fi
Themes: shoujo ai

Plot Summary: Sorawo has been exploring the strange dream-like world she calls the Otherside ever since she stumbled upon it during her days as an urban explorer, but her most recent trip has gotten her into serious trouble. That's when she meets Toriko, a strange young woman searching the Otherside for her missing friend. Toriko helps Sorawo out of her predicament, and Sorawo falls into helping Toriko in her mission. But each journey into the Otherside brings strange new dangers and skills, and Sorawo isn't sure that the search is worth it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:08 am Reply with quote
Episode 1

Please don't just tease a girl love story.

An interesting start. My theory at the moment is that these beings that cause madness are maybe influenced by perception, such that they can only be harmed once they have been perceived enough to have a tangible form, at the risk of something similar in return.

But it is a nice looking start, which did not animate our heroines with CG.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 6:34 am Reply with quote
Episode 2

That was a good twist, that Sorawo was actually under the effect of the tall lady's charm, with the Toriko she was trying to stop from going was an illusion.

Also, nice going episode. Sorawo is jealous that Toriko is not just being with her because she think Sorawo is cool but is after another girl. She is a little crush on Toriko. It looks like as possible characterisation of Sorawo is that she wants to escape to places like that world out of a fear of being rejected by other people, so she would rather reject them first or avoid cases

What was the apparent real body of the monster looked like something out of a Creepypasta, although I am not super knowledgeable about that sort of thing. But I have seen a bunch of the SCP like stuff, where people find weird or creepy looking images and use them as the basis for a reality defying entity.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23795
PostPosted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 12:01 pm Reply with quote
This title is a bit of a weird one for me. On the one hand, I'm enjoying it, but on the other hand, there is something that is holding me back from embracing it wholeheartedly and I'm not sure why that is. Maybe I'm not entirely sold on Sorawo's character in terms of not really vibing on her. Lots of mysterious elements to keep the interest, though.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 2:07 am Reply with quote
Episode 4

Felt like this episode lent even harder into the horror element that it was actually pretty creepy at parts, and even would describe it as eldritch horror in regards to the lore of entities that can only communicate with something like fear. Sometimes quick jump cuts can make a scene feel like a mistake, but its use here added to a sort of can't trust your own perception and sanity. I am up to continued uses where we cannot trust our POV character's idea of what is going on, first seeing someone else under the spell, before show that they fell under it too.

The plant people also reminds me of the movie Annihilation.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23795
PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 8:16 am Reply with quote
Woo-hoo, another Japanese-Canadian primary character! Wow, two in the same season. (For those of you who may not be watching it, Sk8 the Infinity is the other one). Although I feel that Toriko is being unreasonable with Sorawa. Expecting somebody to go to such a dangerous place like the Otherside just to help you out is not cool, man.

We learned that Sorawa hasn't had the easiest childhood, to say the least. So it seems that its either aliens or some kind of monsters who are using fear to intrude on the consciousness of humans. I had started to think that maybe the Otherside was the afterlife but maybe not. I hope they don't make us wait until the final episode before unveiling the true nature of the Otherside.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 12:53 pm Reply with quote
You want to understand the true nature of the eldritch aliens? It is getting Lovecraftian, which means knowing too much is going to be dangerous to both mind body, that the more they find out the more things are probably going to directly come after them, like the door people. We are already seeing how little bits of exposure can have them act irrational, some madness, and little bits of knowledge leaking out at they peer into the horrors.

I am not sure I got it all, but it kind of sounded like the aliens are dimensional beings that can only interact with humans by what humans perceive as fear, their goals unknowable or unrecognisable to humans. And in Lovecraft fashion true dangers of mental health may be in understanding a truth that human society is on a much more precarious situation where everyone is ignorant to what lurks just beyond the veil and could snap at you with no warning. Like the man from the other episode might have had some truth to his wife disappearing with no warning and could happen to literally anyone.

I do have a bit of interest in these types horror. I did not see any mention in places that the big headed people from the previous episode bear a striking resemblance to Bloodborne's Celestial enemies. The big flabby heads, and even the whole mob thing.

Anyway, the question was made of if urban legends in the normal world are created by the aliens, but my take is the Otherside is something like a dream plane that is partially influenced by urban legends because they are a language they can understand. The entities are extra dangerous because they exist in dimension we can have little influence over, only being able to be more beaten by trying to perceive them for what they are which grounds them by rules we can we understand, because they partially exist as entities of the mind. But that also runs the risk of them doing damage to your mind due to them doing the same. It has been a bit of a struggle of visual mediums to get across the ideas of cosmic monsters that exist beyond human understanding and drive one mad from just looking at it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23795
PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 1:10 pm Reply with quote
Interesting thoughts, DP! Part of the fun of this show will be to see how close or far we are from our initial guesses over the nature of the Otherside.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 7:02 pm Reply with quote
Blood- wrote:
Interesting thoughts, DP! Part of the fun of this show will be to see how close or far we are from our initial guesses over the nature of the Otherside.


And I am most likely totally wrong and generally think about certain details way too much.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
#920534



Joined: 26 Jan 2021
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 8:02 pm Reply with quote
I love this series thus far! I have one doubt: whats happening with Sorawo's eye? Why it isn't blue all the time? Is she capable of disguise it or is she using a lense or something? Did I miss something?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2021 5:13 am Reply with quote
Episode 5

And this episode did not let up either, starting with what felt like a pretty cosy dinner party between our heroines, they started to go awry with a weird interaction, and a sense of unease when everything is too quiet, like the world was abandoning them. I would say it was a great invoking of the experience of when you leave something late at night, and you can't tell what is just or imagination because it has all became a bit uncanny from being much darker than normal.

You could think a fantastic creature like that bird could be something more of a positive spectacle in another show, but with the music and such, it just becomes all the creepier, and considering the monsters they find. My responses while watching were reminded of Bloodborne, that creepy atmosphere. I am acting like one of those crazy fans that tries to connect everything to Bloodborne, I just like these sorts of things that sort of act like a meeting of the familiar and what may be cosmic horror.

And to mention in general the meeting the soldiers, where the marines are in that standoff with the "Horned Man", an entity that evokes ideas like an ancient pagan god, although with a nature probably stranger. And the only thing they could hope for would be that it might decide to leave them alone, because chances are it would not go down easy, if it actually could be. As expected, the English lines do kind of break the immersion a little bit.

I was just thinking that this could be a really cool movie, the monsters in this episode reminded me of a movie called The Ritual.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
bonbonsrus



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 1537
Location: Michigan, USA
PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:30 pm Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
Episode 5

And this episode did not let up either, starting with what felt like a pretty cosy dinner party between our heroines, they started to go awry with a weird interaction, and a sense of unease when everything is too quiet, like the world was abandoning them. I would say it was a great invoking of the experience of when you leave something late at night, and you can't tell what is just or imagination because it has all became a bit uncanny from being much darker than normal.


I really liked how they just transitioned over into the Otherworld as well with no warning...
and since the hat is strictly a guess, although a good one, I at first was just thinking it was because they had been going so much and been affected by that world more that it was just blurring a line for them which is somehow so much scarier than the hat took them over.

The troops seems to have not known how they got there at all though, and it was their first time by all indications, so it made it seem easier to get into that world than I thought previously. The fact that they'd been there a month as well already and lost people makes so much sense that they would distrust the girls among meeting them, it would have been pretty easy to understand if they'd have just shot first and asked questions later.

I am interested to see how this plays out now that they are back at the soldiers camp. Will they leave them? Will they all get to go back home together? This show does such a good job pulling you into this world.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail My Anime My Manga
camseyeview140



Joined: 26 Jan 2021
Posts: 211
PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2021 5:16 pm Reply with quote
While I think I prefer Wonderegg Priority in terms of horror anime alongside Jihen, I'm really adoring Otherside Picnic. It's the right kind of scary for me where it has some jump scares, but is mostly a psychological horror show. I also like that it's full of monsters
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23795
PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:50 pm Reply with quote
I really noticed in this last episode how the bgm is contributing big time to the creepy atmosphere. I'm liking this title more and more, for sure.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15477
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 5:39 am Reply with quote
Episode 7

A beach episode, actually on the Otherside, a good thing that ocean does not play a big history on the sort of horror this show plays around with. Like mysterious things washing up on shore. It also used some of the kind of horror pictures I have seen before for Creepypasta and stuff, where it junk that is arranged in a way that unsettling looks like a person but regardless a sense of uncanny in how it should not work.

Pretty sure that Sorawo would have been fine with Toriko's idea of a beach activity of flirting with people on the beach empty except for both of them. Sorawo's reaction after finding out she slept next a naked Toriko.

I would also think they maybe should a little bit be reconsidering drinking too heavy. They went out drinking, somehow ended up in the Otherworld with the soldiers, ended up around resorts, apparently went on a drink binge again, ended up in the Otherworld near the beach, got back and started drinking again.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Series Discussion All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group