Disclaimer: This is more of a rant than a review because this show really got to me. As a result I can’t recommend reading this unless you want to see how far one person’s psyche can plummet from watching a terrible anime. Also it's way too long, so apologies in advance. Lastly Spoiler Warning that I’ll be talking about the show’s entire plot.

In the winter of 2020 I saw a teaser trailer for an anime about teenagers being hunted by murderers wearing weird masks atop tall buildings. The anime had everything to grip my attention, a unique premise, the rare horror tag and the simple fact that it was a new anime instead of another sequel. I patiently waited until the anime Tenkuu Shinpan (or its English name Highrise Invasion (which is what I’ll call it for the duration of this rant) aired in its entirety on Netflix. A few weeks ago I finally sat down with the lights off like an excited child ready to watch what I thought would become a new staple of the horror anime genre! And then after three episodes I turned it off because it seemed really dumb...

The premise I was so enthralled with was undermined within the first five minutes of the show and it just kept going downhill from there. I took a break and watched another 3 eps on a later day. “Surely the show will get better,” I naively thought. “This premise is too good for it to become a mediocre battle royale ripoff right? There’s no way that would…”

So after episode 7 I had lost hope of the show becoming good, but I had a new burning passion inside me. That feeling was righteous indignation toward the narrative abomination that was taking place before my eyes. I have never seen a story establish so many basic world-building rules and then aggressively break them. I was perplexed by the worst anime protagonist I’d seen in ages. And above all else I was disturbed by just how much I cared. I was dismayed that this anime was awful because I truly love this premise and wanted to fall in love with a new series. Not since Isekai Smartphone has an anime rubbed me the wrong way to such a degree that I felt the need to rant about it just to vent my frustration. I hope that this mindless jumble either validates your opinions on this show or if you liked this show, at least makes you reevaluate some of its elements.

Now before I lay into this anime for far too long, I would like to talk about what I liked about it. I’m not a complete hater, in fact there’s tons of things about this anime that I really enjoyed even though I still condemn the overall product. There were many elements, decisions and characters that I want to praise despite how much I plan to complain about the show. So in no particular order here’s what I loved about this anime.

The Animation and the Music
The music and animation in Highrise Invasion is amazing. This may not be the spiffiest anime I’ve seen of late, but the actual animation is quality. There were virtually no scenes where the characters turned wonky or the visuals felt off. The fight scenes, while I have many grips with them for their content looked very good. The main thing I liked about this anime though is its soundtrack. The techno beats that played throughout this show were incredibly satisfying. I loved hearing the show’s battle theme even though it meant that the characters were getting attacked. Basically I would wholeheartedly recommend the ost of Highrise Invasion.

The Three Good Characters
There were three characters in this show that I really liked and the first one I want to talk about is Kuon. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of her character design. Kuon looks like she wandered in from an idol anime with her bright teal color scheme and ladylike appearance. Despite this criticism, Kuon easily became my 3rd favorite character in this show due to her light hearted and charming demeanor. Kuon is the most peaceful and reasonable character in the entire anime. She uses her special abilities almost completely to help others and even when she used her railgun offensively, she did so to break up Yuri and Aohara’s (the Doctor guy) fight or as a last resort in their fight with the Great Angel. If not for the fact that we have no way of knowing whether her first railgun shot actually killed anyone, I would praise her for being the paragon of virtue in this otherwise hellish world.

Kuon’s peaceful nature was not the only thing to make me fall for her. I also found her romance with Sniper Mask, while one-sided to be thoroughly believable. Kuon basically relied on him for protection starting in episode 3 and by the end of the show she was fantasizing about their wedding. Though what really sold me on their relationship was that it improved over time. Sniper Mask originally referred to her as “woman” and barely talked to her. This annoyed Kuon and she kept pestering him until he finally opened up to her after the library fight in episode 6. From there they became more comfortable with each other as they grew from an unwilling partnership to the OTP of this show.

Kuon did one more thing that I feel a quick need to praise, she actually did her generic anime tropes right. Kuon acts like a laid back ojou-sama from her polite speech to her reserved attitude (mostly). She also makes pretty good use of the over the top expressions common to anime girls. Kuon changes to a hopelessly lovestruck teen over the course of the show (see sniffing Sniper Mask’s jacket), however I’m not going to complain about mundane anime tropes when they’re done decently and Kuon succeeded in this department. I only feel the need to mention this due to how much I’ll complain later about some of the other characters in this show for their terrible use of anime tropes.

Rika Honjo is the protagonist this show deserved, but didn’t get to have. He’s so stoic, adept and confident that I fell in love with him from his first appearance in episode 3. Rika’s cool and collected persona even got me to accept the scenario of a highschool student leading an entourage of multiple adults. He was just so competent and strong-willed that he made every scene he appeared in at the very least tolerable.

Rika’s best scene was during his group’s fight with Aikawa’s Masks in episode 7. During this fight Rika battles the Naganita Mask and gets slashed in the head by the enemy’s blade. He continues to fight, but quickly passes out from blood loss and gets abducted by Swimmer Mask. This is one of the best scenes in this entire anime. It’s a very spontaneous fight between Aikawa’s flunkies, Yoshida’s masks and Rika’s knuckleheads that effectively highlights the strongest members of each group. The reason I liked this fight so much in regard to Rika’s character however, is that it brilliantly showed his vulnerability. This will be greatly expanded on later in the review, but there’s very little tension in this anime because the characters consistently feel overpowered (mainly Yuri) in regard to their opponents. For example, by this point in the series Yuri and Mayuko have already survived 7 fights and killed 4 Masked Assailants barely sustaining any injuries in the process (other than Mayuko getting hit by a baseball bat in episode 6). So while it may seem like a minor occurrence, it really stands out as the only time a main character both lost a fight and was not immediately bailed out. Honestly my only grievance with Rika is that he barely got any screen time. He gets two fights before being kidnapped by Aikawa and literally ends the season captured. Given his coolness and actual vulnerability, I think he would’ve made a better lead than who we primarily followed.

Sniper Mask (Yu) is the best character in this show. He’s competent and cool in the same way as Rika, but Sniper actually gets enough screen time to back it up. He has a simple, yet powerful motivation to regain his lost memories and save Rika. Sniper even allows Yuri to have one of few scenes in this show where she actually seemed like a normal person (when they had tea in episode 10). The only bad scene in the whole anime with Sniper in it, was when Kuon and Mayuko went into his dreams inception-style to rework his mask. This scene for no particular reason turned Sniper and Rika into kids and felt very out of place (especially with Masked Mayuko randomly appearing to provide exposition). Otherwise I was very happy with every scene involving this guy. Sniper even managed to make his own potential death (during his fight with White Feather in episode 9) look really cool.

Many Angles for its Premise
One last positive for this show is that it gave a glimpse into the many angles that could be taken with its premise. Now the anime doesn’t go anywhere good with these angles, but it should be noted that it did at least try. Highrise Invasion tries to juggle being a visceral horror while also being a gun-slinging battle royale in addition to having both comedic and romantic elements. And literally none of these are handled well. Though it does go to show how much room there was for experimentation with the premise of “we are being hunted in a world of tall buildings”. I also want to say early on that I really dig the mask aesthetic of the enemies, but I’ll go into detail on that later when I gripe about how much they ruined the masks overall. Anyway I’ve been positive for as long as I can, so for the rest of this rant I’m just going to talk about all the things I did not like about this anime.

Yuri Honjo is awful
The protagonist of Highrise Invasion is the apex of bad character writing. Yuri Honjo isn’t even really a character to be honest, she just seems like a hastily-blended mix of anime tropes molded into a bland yet horribly offensive form. She stole the brother complex from Oreimo, the gunslinger persona from Black Lagoon and the generic main girl energy from every romcom anime ever. And the impressive thing is, she doesn’t pull off any of these personas remotely well. Yuri starts with the simple goal of reuniting with her brother, but then almost immediately she falls in love with a murderous blonde girl and gets totally distracted. Yuri pledges in the second episode to destroy the game world, but then she immediately consents to its rules in order to suit her needs (becoming a god candidate in episode 7). Yuri even tries to combine being an energetic highschool girl with being a cold-blooded serial killer. None of her character traits make any sense or combine to form a coherent package.

Moving right along with the gripes, Yuri’s fighting prowess in the early episodes doesn't make any sense either. How are we supposed to believe that this random highschool girl is physically capable of fighting all these random attackers with no aforementioned practice? It would’ve made sense if the anime said Yuri underwent combat training or was a gun fanatic, but no we’re just supposed to accept that she’s an amazing shot with godlike athletics. Related to this complaint, Yuri also exemplifies one of the worst aspects of this show, its lack of stakes. Yuri appears much stronger than any other character in this show (bar the Great Angel maybe). She never loses a fight or has to watch one of her allies die. We even see her fight four fully-grown men in episode 10 and lay waste to them effortlessly. Yuri is the core reason this show lacks any tension, because it almost seems like she’ll never lose. If we as the viewers cannot fathom the protagonist actually failing, then how are we supposed to be afraid of the possibility?

Now to be fair, Yuri has had many scenes of peril, but only two of them stood out and both scenes were cursed for other reasons. The two scenes I’m thinking of are the scene where she’s threatened by the policeman in episode 1 and when she’s attacked by Student Mask in episode 11 (and wow that’s a large gap). I’ll give the scene with Student Mask it’s own section later (because I think it’s one of the worst scenes in the whole show), but I want to touch on this scene with the evil policeman right now since it stands out as the only time Yuri seemed legitimately helpless. First of all let’s address the elephant in the room (trigger warning for unpleasant subject matter) the rape implications from this scene are both overwhelming and incredibly offputting. It doesn’t help that this is the third scene of the show, which might lead viewers to assume that the series glorifies sexual violence (which while being a garbage show, it does not). Shockingly this scene is a good example of the one of the weird angles that the show could’ve taken. It's reminiscent of the video game Dead Rising where the horrifying scenario would cause some of the victims to go insane and become enemies to the player. That being said, no other maskless enemy ever reaches the level of this random policeman. As a result, the whole scene ends up being edgy and misogynistic for the simple payoff of giving Yuri her first gun. This scene also does not effectively counter my assertion that Yuri is overpowered. It takes place barely ten minutes after her entry to the world and while she’s disarmed. From the moment Yuri gets her gun following this fight, she remains basically infallible until episode 11.

One last complaint I have about Yuri was her reaction to killing Maid Mask at the end of episode 1. This was a very quick and easily forgettable scene, but after shooting Maid Mask and watching her plummet to her death, Yuri herself drops to the floor and cries over having shot somebody.
This is one of the few truly human things Yuri does over the course of the entire show. It made me quickly identify with her situation where protecting oneself would involve killing potentially innocent brainwashed people. This is why everything started to seem a little wonky near the end of episode 2 when Yuri wakes up after fighting Sniper Mask and immediately confronts the Mask with the wolverine claws. It felt like in the span of four hours she made the leap from “killing people is bad'' to “murdering these people before they can harm me is completely justified”. To be fair, it would really complicate the show if Yuri tried to pacify or avoid killing the masked enemies. However, it felt strange to have her express remorse over her actions if she would never see them as morally questionable again.

Why Highrise Invasion isn’t scary
There are a lot more reasons why Highrise Invasion fails as a horror anime.We already touched on Yuri being too strong, but another issue is how weak the enemies seem by the latter half of the show. In the first few episodes the appearance of literally any Mask was a cause for concern and they posed a noticeable threat. However when the series pivots to being a battle royale rip-off, the Masks change from a malevolent and random threat to the disposable foot soldiers of each God candidate. This is made even worse as the Masks also start acting more human as the series progresses. In episode 2 it's specifically said that the mask is controlling their brains and forces them to drive their victims to despair. Then in episode 3 we added the potentially interesting idea (that went nowhere) that certain aspects of the Masks’ old personality would be shown in their fighting style (with the baseball guy that Rika defeated). However, once we reach episode 6 and the Masks just start taking their masks off, all of their mystic just kind of goes away. I think the Masks were both visually unique and striking, which is why it’s so depressing how lame they got by the end of the series. The only masked character who managed to remain credible was Sniper Mask, who conveniently never showed his face (even when the writers saw fit to have him take his mask off). Basically as the Masks became easier to defeat and more human with their actions, they stopped being scary.

The second factor that ruins the horror of this anime is the easy availability of resources. Passive masks consistently appear to give our heroes food and supplies. There’s also tons of beds, clean showers and lounges sprawled throughout this world for characters to relax in. This sense of comfort and convenient access to food really undermines the fear one can truly have in this world. Sure the Masks might try to kill you, but at least there’s no concern for hunger or poor hygiene. This is a very simple plot point in the narrative, but I think it really hurts the series as a horror show. To contrast this with a better horror series, in Corpse Party the threat of starvation is repeatedly forced upon the characters as they traverse the haunted school. Thus the characters are threatened on two fronts, either being killed by the monsters or wandering the halls until they inevitably die of starvation. The characters in Highrise Invasion however, have access to legitimate comforts that make their world nowhere near as scary, which really stinks since fundamentally the setups of both Corpse Party and Highrise Invasion are the same. A group of randoms are brought to a dangerous world governed by strange rules where their lives are at stake. However, while Corpse Party showcased a gritty, painful and unforgiving world, Highrise Invasion showcased the world that was only scary during its fights (and even then not very).

Why Highrise Invasion fails as a basic narrative
Highrise Invasion not only fails as a horror show, but as a narrative in general. The show sets up a myriad of rules and then blatantly undermines them a few episodes later. Also when the story pivots to being a battle royale ripoff, we never get a good explanation of the rules for said battle royale (why do we trust Aikawa again?). Heck most of the ideas in this show fall apart if you actually think about them for more than a few seconds. Let’s start with the worst offender though, the often broken rules of this world.

This anime does an incredible job of establishing basic rules and then breaking them later on. I can’t tell if this is just bad writing or if no one actually comprehends the rules of this world. Here are just a few instances that come to mind, at the end of the second episode after defeating the Wolverine mask, Yuri unmasks him and he tells her that if the mask is removed it forces the wearer to commit suicide. Of course once we start fighting the God candidates, this rule is completely abandoned with no repercussions. Are the God candidates actually modifying the Masks’ code? This is the likely answer, but it's not well-explained in the show. Or how about when the Masks all started out as violent hulking brutes, but eventually they all just start acting like normal people? Again, is this supposed to be Mask modification? And if so, why is the God Candidate making them act like their normal self? Or how about in the first episode when the Maid Mask dies telling Yuri to never put on a mask, but then we learn that the only way to get power in this world is to find a mouthless mask and become a God candidate? Did Maid Mask lie to Yuri or was this a random misdirection?

This segways nicely into another problem with this show, which is how faulty most of its ideas are. The first thing that took me out of Highrise Invasion happened five minutes into the first episode. The show establishes almost immediately that the Masks’ primary goal is to drive their victims to suicide and not kill them. However if the victim refuses to commit suicide, the Mask will just kill them anyway... This is totally illogical. I cannot fathom why it matters how the victims die. Is being gored by any of the Masks really a preferable death to just plummeting to the ground below? I can try to extrapolate that the show is going for some kind of anti-suicide message, but if so it’s handled beyond clunkily. One could argue the world of Highrise Invasion is unique by providing its victims an easy way to commit suicide at basically anytime. That being said, suicide never comes up as a theme other than when Mayuko tries to kill herself in episode 6. And even then she was only trying to kill herself to protect Yuri, not because she had actually given up on life. All this suicide gimmick does is make the show feel silly. If they had to keep it in, they should’ve had the Masks attack their victims in non-fatal, but excruciatingly painful ways to make suicide actually seem preferable.

The suicide gimmick is only one aspect of Highrise Invasion’s awful worldbuilding. This anime doesn’t actually tell its characters or the viewer what the goal of this world even is. At first, it’s simply to find the randomly spawning helicopter and be flown home. However, this idea gets discarded when the show becomes a battle royale to decide the new God of “our realm”. The new problem is that the rules for this battle royale are never fully explained so we have no clue how any character actually wins it. Sure the bad guy (Aikawa) tells us about the battle royale, but why should we trust him? While it’s easy to extrapolate that all you have to do is kill the other God Candidates, we have no way of knowing how many of them actually exist. Worst yet, more people could become God candidates over time by finding the mouthless masks. I mean who can even blame them? Being a God candidate is a clear improvement over being hunted by Masks while looking for the helicopter. Hell even the God Candidate system is nonsense when you think about it. When Yuri gets her mask, the program tells her that all of her abilities will be sealed within her memory. This means that every God Candidate can’t even use their full powers for the competition unless they happen to randomly recall them. This actually leads into another sort of praise, sort of criticism I have for this show, its inconsistent tone.

First off, the last two episodes of Highrise Invasion are unironically a comedic goldmine. The overall show has a lot of crummy running gags (like Rika getting bullied for his girlish name or Mayuko’s outlandish jealousy.), but the last two episodes are pretty much a one-man standup routine by the Great Angel. And shockingly enough this actually worked. Introduced haphazardly in episode 11, the Great Angel is the definitive moment that this show jumps the shark as this huge man in tight black spandex asserts himself as the strongest entity in this world (though whether he could beat Yuri is unknown). This man catches a bullet with his bare hands, defeats three people easily (Mayuko, Takabe and Ein) and survives getting nuked! All the while he’s spouting insane rhetoric about punishing evil with an almost childlike naivete. It doesn’t help that Aikawa’s whole evil plan hinges on the Great Angel and Yuri not realizing that they both want Aikawa dead. These absurd circumstances propell the last two episodes to a Garzey’s Wing level of “so bad that it’s good”. Honestly if not for Aohara dying, I could legitimately call these last two episodes entirely comedic with their tone. If you have to watch this show, please only watch episodes 11 and 12.

Funny finale aside, there’s still a few more elements in this show to complain about and the next thing to address is its fanservice.
Now I am not a prude, in fact I’m actually pretty perverted, but despite this I could not tolerate this show’s obsessive lewdness. The amount of fanservice in Highrise Invasion is shameless and worst of all pretty much pointless. For example, Yuri flashes her panties in almost every action shot and NEVER replaces her torn skirt. I wouldn’t normally be so annoyed by this, but the anime goes out of its way to show us panties in the middle of every fight and it just feels distracting. Furthermore, it doesn’t mesh with the general vibe of the show. These characters are already fighting for their lives, why do we have to see Yuri’s panties and torn skirt every episode? Mayuko is also a member of the disappointing fanservice bandwagon. She not only flashes her panties mid-fight (and when getting up dramatically), but also gets her dress torn in episode 4 to reveal her bra and somehow does not change her clothes until episode 10. Since there’s clearly an abundance of clothing in this world, why do the main girls never replace their damaged outfits?! Highrise Invasion’s fanservice just feels incredibly forced, and uncomfortably aggressive. I haven’t even gotten to all the times the show made Yuri and Mayuko naked because of some random dream sequence. Basically some fanservice is fine, and a lot of fanservice can also be fine, but a lot of fanservice that distracts from the actual show as shown here is just awful.

On the topic of sexualizing Yuri and Mayuko, (and yes I know I’m going to hell for that segway...) I couldn’t rant about this show without criticizing their incredibly contrived romance.This relationship is easily the most poorly handled aspect of the whole show. After meeting abruptly in episode 2, these characters immediately fall in love despite never sharing a scene together that doesn’t involve fighting (or preparing for a fight). This awful subplot follows Mayuko’s character like a specter and randomly destroys the little credibility that she has. Basically one minute she’ll be a competent badass, and then two minutes later Mayuko will be staring longingly at Yuri like an idiot. It’s mind blowing that when we first met her, Mayuko was a cold-blooded murderer killing innocent maskless people just to better her chances of finding the helicopter. However the minute Yuri pushes her out of the way of a stray bullet, Mayuko becomes a total simp for her and remains like that for the entire show.
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This seems like a good place for my mini-rant about Mayuko in general because she somehow straddles being a credible character and a terrible one. We get tidbits of her backstory to learn that she’s been the victim of bullying and abuse (which is more than we learn about Yuri I might add). Mayuko also gets into multiple fights where it’s clear that she’s outmatched and thus we can actually fear for her safety. What destroys Mayuko is that she juggles being a calculating fighter with being a lovestruck buffoon. And because the show never gives the pair a legitimate scene to get to know each other, their whole romance ends up feeling hollow.

That isn’t to say that all the romances in this show are bad. I already mentioned how I enjoyed Sniper’s relationship with Kuon, since we got to actually see it improve over time. There were also huge overtones of a potential relationship (bromance?) between Sniper Mask and Rika. These relationships all had a sense of depth to them. With Kuon and Sniper, there were multiple scenes of them just talking and getting to know one another. In the case of Rika and Sniper, both of them risked their lives to save the other and also spent entire scenes hyping the other up. In contrast Yuri and Mayuko’s relationship feels painfully empty. The only thing it accomplishes is making Mayuko’s character impossible to take seriously. I assume the logic was that Yuri was the first person to show Mayuko genuine kindness and that’s why she became so obsessed with her, but honestly it just feels hard to believe.

Yuri and Mayuko’s painfully forced romance also leads to the worst scene in this whole anime. This is a very quick and easily forgettable scene, but it exemplifies how poor Yuri’s character is. The scene occurs in episode 6 after Mayuko falls into a coma after her mask malfunctions. Yuri learns from the Guardian Angel Mask that she has to obtain a Mouthless Mask in order to save Mayuko. However right before Yuri leaves to get the mask, she kisses Mayuko on the lips. This is the most jarring thing to me because it's wrong in so many different ways. Not only is Mayuko unable to consent to the kiss, but it also comes out of nowhere from Yuri (who had been the more passive one in the relationship). Just imagine for a moment, kissing someone you’ve known for barely one day who's in a coma! Does that seem right? Does that seem justifiable even given the abnormal circumstances? I might have given this scene a pass if Yuri and Mayuko actually seemed like a real couple, but they never do. The closest they even get to mutual romantic interest is holding hands during the season finale. Basically this minor scene just made me hate Yuri even more, because she comes off as opportunistic and predatory. I can tell this scene was intended to be endearing, but it just came as horrifying to me.

There’s a lot more terrible scenes in this show. There’s actually so many, that I almost want to do a scene by scene commentary on why virtually every scene without Sniper Mask or Rika is garbage. However this is already too long, so I’m just going to list a few more scenes that upset me:

Yuri tossing the Needle Mask off the roof at the start of episode 7
Episode 6 ended with Yuri seemingly defeated by this Mask as its hook. So it felt very jarring to me that the minute episode 7 started, she easily escaped his restraint and grabbed the mouthless mask. Then she just tossed him off the roof effortlessly. This is the exact scene where I lost faith in the Masks being a credible threat. They were seeming less and less scary, but this scene really made the Masks feel mediocre. Not to mention, this scene was the start of Yuri becoming so overpowered that her fights lost all stakes, except for...

Yuri being attacked by Student Mask at the start of episode 11
This scene was mentioned earlier as one of the few times Yuri was in legitimate danger and actually seemed vulnerable. However, my problem with this scene is that it felt totally out of place. It occurs right after Yuri killed four adult Masks without so much as getting a scratch on her. And now suddenly the show decides that her powers can randomly stop working just so we can have this random idiot harass her for like two minutes? It’s beyond stupid. If they wanted to establish that the God candidate powers had limits they should’ve done so in one of her earlier fights. Furthermore, this weakness never comes back for the rest of the anime. As a result this scene just feels like insanity to me as we watch Yuri destroy 4 enemies one minute and then almost lose to a much weaker enemy the next.

The entire Sniper Mask dream sequence in episode 10
I hate this scene in particular because it prevents me from saying that every scene with Sniper Mask is good. While this scene is not god awful, it just feels weird and poorly planned out. I mean why is Sniper Mask a kid in his dream world? Why couldn’t Kuon recover his lost memories right then and there? And most importantly, why did we bring Mayuko along? She didn’t do anything productive the whole scene and it made even less sense that her Masked persona showed up. Admittedly this scene did give us the payoff of Sniper Mask joining Yuri’s team, but I would’ve preferred to have not seen the coolest character in this show as a powerless kid.

The entire fight between Mayuko and Chef Mask in episode 4
This scene rubbed me the wrong way for so many reasons. To start, Chef Mask squandered the best surprise attack in the entire show. He seemingly tosses Mayuko off the roof, before we realize he’s just dragged her to the lower floor. The second problem was Chef Mask immobilizing Mayuko with the heads of her previous victims. This makes zero sense. Why would Mayuko suddenly feel intense guilt over the people she killed? Did Yuri’s hug magically reignite her humanity? And even so, why would this shake her to the point that she would completely abandon fighting back? It just irks me so much, and of course it doesn’t end there. The fact that this fight is won by Yuri shooting Chef Mask while suspended upside down by her clothing makes it the dumbest ending to a fight in the entire series.

Finally we’re at the conclusion, or at least we would be if I didn’t need to answer one last important question. Why on Earth did I write this? Why did I post such a long rant about a Netflix anime that the vast majority of people will never see? Why am I lashing out so vehemently against an anime that despite all my gripes was still well received? Well here’s the reason. I love the premise of Highrise Invasion. I think it perfectly captures the elements that made prior horror anime amazing and memorable. You’re suddenly transported to a unique, but dangerous world where seemingly human, but completely remorseless assailants want to kill you. This could’ve easily been the grittiest and scariest anime in recent memory. How impactful could this series have been on the genre if it was actually good? What if ammo and supplies were scarce and the characters had to ration everything they could with the bleak hope of seeing another day? What if instead of ripping off battle royale, the series focused on the simple goal of returning home, which every viewer could relate to? Ultimately the reason I wrote so much about this show and the reason it left such an impact on me is that I really wanted this to be my new favorite anime. I went in as excited as possible and came out utterly crushed and frustrated.

And so ends my rant about Highrise Invasion. I could recommend this show if you were intoxicated, because if you don’t think about the plot or fanservice it’s at least watchable. Honestly just viewing the last two episodes with no context would be the best way to approach this anime, because those episodes at least made me laugh. I do feel regret that I let this show ruin two months of my life and usurp Isekai Smartphone as my most hated anime series, but alas Highrise Invasion is really just that bad.

As a final joke, here’s a drinking game I came up with for Highrise Invasion with the disclaimer that I have not tested this so be weary as you might die:

The Highrise Invasion Drinking game:
Easy Mode
Take a drink every time:
Yuri’s panties are flashed or shown
Yuri or Mayuko are shown naked
Kuon pouts or blushes
Rika is made fun or feels self-conscious over his name
A Masked assailant takes their mask off

Hard Mode
Take a drink every time:
Sniper Mask lights a new cigarette
Mayuko stares longingly at Yuri
A Mask dies without injuring a named character
Yuri says she’ll destroy this world or talks about her brother
A bullet regrettably misses its target