Checking into the Tasokare Hotel's Premiere at Anime Frontier

I don't know whether this was a happy coincidence or done on purpose, but the decision to put the Tasokare Hotel premiere during Anime Frontier's Friday night was a good call—it turned out to be a great way to close the convention's first day. Based on a mobile game of the same name, Tasokare Hotel opens with what appears to be a girl's sudden death. I say “appears to be” because before she has time to process what's going on, she's suddenly transported to an empty desert-looking area, where the only thing she can see is a hotel. Once there, she learns that it's called the Tasokare Hotel, and where people go when they're unsure whether they're dead or alive—so, think mostly people who are having near-death experiences. Guests are then checked into a room that's created based on their memories, then they gradually begin to remember who they are and what happened to them. And once they finally have their memories back, they also have to figure out whether or not they'll return to the land of the living (and subsequently lose their memories of the hotel), or the afterlife. Our protagonist is a guest-turned-maid named Neko Tsukahara, who wakes up in the hotel, but whose memories don't return as fast as they usually do. So in the meantime, she decides to join the hotel's staff.

You're far from alone if you read that and felt reminded of Death Parade. Their premises look similar on paper, and even in practice—they feel like two different people wearing the same outfit. They're even structured similarly, too: episodically. Each episode focuses on a new guest and unraveling their story. Meanwhile, there don't seem to be any apparent connections between the two—no major staff crossovers that would explain their parallels, and certainly nothing as big as a shared universe. Still, even if Tasokare Hotel does have a few things that set it apart, it's hard to escape Death Parade's long, looming shadow while watching these first few episodes.

In any case, there's already a breadcrumb trail suggesting there's more to the hotel than even most of the staff realize. The third episode, in particular, was my favorite of the bunch and leaves off in a really interesting place that has me itching to watch more. The mysteriousness of its world and its strong character writing seems to be, in my opinion, the biggest strength of this anime as laid out by these first three episodes. Of the premieres I watched on Anime Frontier Friday, this one was probably my favorite, and I intend on watching more once it starts airing.