Mysterious monsters called "UMA" suddenly appear in the present day and attack humans. The scientist Sousuke Banba pursues the truth with the keyword "Kagewani," a word that literally means "Shadow Crocodile."

Source: ANN

Content Warning

Violence

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Reviews

What I Liked: The visuals, which took some getting used to. Episode 3, with its plot of revenge and nauseating atmosphere. Episode 6 was also a stand-out, as it had a great sense of tension and atmosphere. Sound design isn't half bad. What I Didn't: The visuals, which felt like some student's animation project at times. The hamfisted Alien and Tremors references. Many of the earlier episodes were standard ridiculous creature-feature gore porn, with later episodes feeling like lazy attempts at joining the previous episodes together. The protagonist was about as fascinating as watching paint dry, and having important people to him die did nothing to further his development. Invokes the Disposable Woman trope. The antagonist was a standard "environmentally unfriendly villian", complete with plans of militarisation. Nothing interesting was done with the tribe hunting the UMA/Kagewani. The series couldn't decide on what to call the monsters. Final Verdict: I know Kagewani is meant to be a horror-with-monsters anime, but its hamfisted homages to other (better) horror flicks, the uneven quality between episodes, the stiff animation and its ultimately uninteresting and useless protagonist left me feeling disappointed. While it's not as formulaic as some horror anime, it still feels messy and amateurish.

Do you like kaiju? Are you interested in bite sized bursts of kaiju goodness to refresh you from your drought of weird creatures terrorizing hapless civilians? Do you not mind a paper thin plot that only serves to loosly link each monster attack, without bogging the limited run time with human characters you don't care about? Then Kagewani is the anime for you. The monster sounds are good to great. The animation style is unique and overlayed with a nice filter that gives the show a greater aura of those old monster movies of days of past. Characters? Story? Who cares!? This is a short form anime meant to pander to kaiju fans and it is all it should be. In that regard, it does alright for a short form anime. Could it be better? Yes! But it does ok for what it's trying to do.

Really interesting so far. I'm not used to the animation, but the story really intrigued me. All in all I will continue to watch or put it on my watching list for a bit later as I'm trying to catch up with other anime.

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