Mother's Basement has recently added another video to the ongoing saga of AniTubers lamenting that Horror is one genre they feel Anime really has trouble with. And I notice these critiques often act like Scaring the viewer is a horror story's only or primary goal, like something has to give them nightmares to be truly a success, but is it though?
When I made my Halloween Anime recommendations back in 2017 I defined myself as not a traditional horror fan since I've never been truly scared by any horror fiction or sought to be. I've been startled by jump scares, creeped out by things, and felt that
spooky atmosphere, but never truly scared and certainly never had
nightmares from them, and I've watched plenty of the classic staples of
the genre. But as I've thought about it more since then I've realized that's not so unusual, my brother says he's also never really been scared by any either, and if he isn't a hardcore horror fan I don't know who is.
So in fact I can't help but feel like most discussion of Horror Anime is really stilted by how it comes from people who are ultimately more into Anime then Horror. So when someone says "Higurashi isn't scary, it's just Cute Girls being Creepy" I'm like "yeah, a lot of Western live action Horror is about cute little kids being creepy too", from Bad Seed to Children of The Corn. Shows like Higurashi just merge that common form of Horror with Moe tropes. Maybe that I'm one of the few people who kind of enjoyed Omen IV:The Awakening is another thing that foreshadowed by Otakuness.
I think the main appeal of the Slasher genre tends to be sadism, they're made for men who get off on watching women be brutally killed, and it's the same with the sub genre Saw and Hostile started, I have no intention of recommending what Anime to appeal to that impulse. Which is why it's never been a genre I like much, but I do enjoy some Halloween movies and the first couple Child's Play films.
Classic Universal and Hammer monster movies are mainly about the Gothic Aesthetic, both done as a period piece and sometimes as being about the Gothic infecting the modern world. Jason Colavito likes to try and distinguish Gothic from Horror as a Genre (he says American Horror Story is really Gothic not Horror) but the truth is Classic Horror was always mainly about the Gothic.
How do you translate that Gothic appeal into Anime? There are two ways. One is simply Anime depicting the same European Gothic aesthetic of those movies, a lot of Anime is inspired by Western media. The other is to look at Japan's history and culture and figure out what the uniquely Japanese equivalent of Gothic Horror would be, and again I feel that is another thing Higurashi does perfectly.
And it is the importance Aesthetics plays in Horror that makes me totally reject this common assertion that the abstract nature of Animation is somehow an obstacle. Do Black and White horror movies work because people think that color pallet is what the 20s-50s actually looked like? Do Silent Horror films work because we think people didn't talk back then? No of course not.
Basically I reject even the starting premise of this debate that Anime has been less successful at Horror then other mediums. Over the last 3-5 years the Anime versions have become my favorite versions of most genres, and Gothic/Horror is no different. It's just Horror is the one genre where I still haven't seen as much yet.
And of course the Horror Fandom also includes people who love laughing at Campy Cheesy so Bad it's Good Horror, and the 90s and early 2000s avalanche of schlock dubbed by studios like Central Park Media and ADV that inevitably get riffed by Anime Abandon provide plenty to scratch that itch.
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