Let's just get it out of the way.

I... kind of loved this? If you've read other reviews by me, especially my horror ones, you probably expected me to fucking hate this. And to be fair, I did. I hated the manga.

So maybe it's because of not really liking the manga or maybe my expectations for any anime tagged under horror are so low that they're just automatically underneath the fucking floor, but I really did enjoy watching this. Pretty much the whole way through.

But if you take anything from this review, then let it be this. Despite everything I just said, this is still very much trash.

#WARNING: THIS ANIME HAS A WHOLE BUNCH OF... of gore. Why... why am I even bothering to do a content warning for this? "I was real shocked when the series about skyscraper fights ended up having gore in it!"#

...oh wait no hold on I actually do have a genuine content warning for this review fuck, sorry

#WARNING: FANSERVICE#

okay there we go

#Thanks Netflix#

Brought to us by the studio Zero-G via Netflix, High Rise Invasion is like one of the four horror non-Yami Shibai anime we got out of 2021. ~~And even then I'd be tempted to say it's more of an action series. But hey, who am I to complain? We got a whole bunch of blood, people jumping off skyscrapers to commit suicide, decapitations...~~

An adaptation of the 2013 manga of the same title by Tsuina Miura (story) and Takahiro Oba (art), I really just had the absolute lowest expectations for this possible.

When the anime got announced, I did kind of predict I'd probably like it more if it was animated but...

Why did this get this good of an adaptation? Like what. For this??? Some manga about characters waking up in a skyscraper realm where other characters who have SUPER COOL AND DEFINITELY NOT DUMB smiley face masks chase and murder them or try and push them to committing suicide?

But the animation of the action scenes is actually pretty good. ~~For what this is.~~ Like I genuinely had fun pretty much the whole way through watching this. To be honest, unless the art is incredible, I don’t really give a shit about action in manga. ~~I fully realize how terrible of a take that is, but for me it’s the truth.~~ Meaning unless an action manga with art I don't really like has interesting characters or an interesting plot, I’m going to have a bad time.

High Rise Invasion’s manga didn’t really have either of those things.

To be fair, where I stopped in the manga was like episode 3 or 4 of the anime. It was like fifty chapters in. Most of the chapters are pretty short but god damn did the pacing of the anime feel way better. Point is, I was only right about where the “plot” was starting to show itself. A character even says no joke verbatim, “like what, you thought this whole situation was just going to be you running away from masked people on skyscrapers??? No, idiot, there’s a real… thing, going on here. And that’s the actual plot!”

I mean yeah, I guess it just couldn’t be random masked people getting people to commit suicide for 250 chapters. But iunno… while the anime did get me back to reading the manga, I’m still not convinced this needed a plot…

And as for the characters, while I’ve warmed up to them, there’s still really admittedly nothing there…

#Characters#

Yuri’s kind of psychotic. Goes from scared high school girl to gun toting action killer girl way too fucking quickly.

Granted, this transition only feels even shorter given the speedier pacing of the anime, but it’s somewhat unsettling when your protagonist is pretty much 100% okay with repeatedly shooting people in the face.

I should note I’m only kind of complaining here. If she didn’t shoot a whole bunch of masked people to death, this would obviously be a far more negative review than it is. Also she has an annoying obsession with her brother.

Who I will get to, soon enough.

Nise, is also kind of psychotic.

Introduced via getting ready to shoot a man to death so she would secure a seat on the helicopter which is believed to be the way out of this skyscraper realm, Nise has already acclimated to this world. ~~AKA she’s a-okay with murder and she likes knives specifically.~~ And she tells Yuri after they agree to cooperate that she doesn’t plan on sticking around and she’s only looking out for #1.

And as a person who has experienced many pieces of fiction, I definitely believed her and didn’t think she was going to undergo a complete change of heart within like two or three episodes.

Oh, she also very quickly develops an annoying obsession but with Yuri.

Her character rapidly becoming completely different like Yuri’s is similarly forgiven because Nise very quickly ~~through plot bullshit that I don't care about~~ becomes capable of severing limbs with her knife.

*"How could you possibly like this anime?"
"A girl cut someone's arm off with a knife."*

There’s actually a third girl main character, Kuon, but unlike the other two, she doesn’t matter.

Maybe she does more later in the manga, but of what the anime covered, she only ever has two things to do.

When a series’ main draw is the fights and the gore, there’s no room for pacifists. And also she also pretty quickly gains an annoying obsession with Sniper Mask. ~~Because I guess every character has to be obsessed with someone.~~

Yuri’s brother, Rika, is kind of a worthless character. Admittedly, it is kind of funny that he has it in his head that he’s gonna go save Yuri but it becomes quickly obvious to the viewer a few episodes in that Yuri does not need to be saved at all. And that’s without even tipping our toes into the “plot.”

But it quickly becomes a problem that we keep switching back to Rika. The way I thought it was going to go was that after that initial phonecall after Yuri woke up in the skyscraper world, that that was going to be it for Rika.

Yuri even conveniently got immediately dephoned before Rika could really give her any useful information, so it’d probably be a while before Yuri got to talk with Rika again.

Instead nope, Nise, give me your cell phone I have to talk to my brother. It’s super important.

Which by itself would have been fine, but no, we gotta switch and be shown Rika’s team. And look wow, Rika can bash masks with a hammer! How cool!

And then you have the Sniper Mask who… it’s like the mangaka sat down and said to himself “yeah, I’m gonna make a SUPER COOL character. The ABSOLUTE COOLEST.”

And what pisses me off about it I guess is that he genuinely is cool. He’s dressed in all black, is masked, he smokes, and has a sniper rifle. Yeah, okay.

Sniper rifles are just inherently cool. And since most of the common masks are like… oh, my weapon’s a pair of scissors! Or a power drill! Or I'm a baseball pitcher and my actions are literally restrained by the rules of baseball! Yeah no fucking wonder the Sniper Mask is one of the strongest masks.

But to be a bit more genuine, I don’t know, he’s the only character who really has anything to him? Him partially breaking out of the mask’s brainwashing and then trying to regain his memories is at least something. Better than I’m gonna shoot a bunch of masks while I work towards this vague goal of putting an end to the skyscraper world… somehow?

Also, did I mention sniper rifles are cool? Oh by the way there actually are several more characters but I just can’t be asked to go through the rest. The only other one I’d consider going a bit more into is the bad guy of the show but his whole character up to the end of the anime is “I’M THE BAD GUY AND I’M GOING TO USE THE PLOT TO CHANGE THE WORLD!” and eh…

#I really don’t know why this show didn’t annoy me#

So… fanservice.

To be honest, I don’t hate fanservice. No really, I don’t. When it’s used appropriately, at least. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still annoying. But like if it’s just panty shots interspersed with the action because of course Yuri and Nise are just hopping around everywhere shooting and stabbing masks all over the place… I’m fine with it.

When fanservice really gets on my nerves is when everything is put on a halt for the sake of it. Like if they had just stopped fighting at any point and went like

“Hey everybody, let’s go to the pool skyscraper!”

Then, I would have been annoyed. ~~If I read the rest of the manga and something along those lines happen, I swear to god… unless they’re literally still just battling to the death in a pool. Actually that’d be amazing. You would think it’s going some ridiculously stupid fanservice route and then Nise just cuts someone’s throat.~~

Anyways… it should also be noted that since I read horror manga quite a lot, I’m just happy whenever the fanservice isn’t delivered via… well… rape. The farthest it goes is when the insane cop at the beginning tries to rape Yuri.

But of course he gets swiftly dealt with ~~due to a certain nearby sniper~~ and Yuri obtains a gun and then goes on to become one of the strongest characters of the skyscraper realm.

Because she has a gun.

I will say Nise does get her shirt cut open by one of the masks and then she’s just like that for pretty much the whole show. But I mean, come on. What is she going to do?

Just find a shirt? Like there’s a clothing shop in one of the random skyscrapers they come across?

~~Actually, I think she does get a new shirt at some point near the end. Also thinking about it, Yuri's literally wearing the boots of the dead girl they find near the start of the series. Don't know why I didn't think about the absolutely viable option of "corpse robbing."~~

That’d be really convenient for some weird hellish skyscraper realm.

Look, just because Kuon really needed to take a shower and a skyscraper just happened to have a shower doesn't mean there's a skyscraper willed into existence to fulfill that direct purpose whenever it’s needed!

#Conclusion#

Frankly, I kind of feel like an asshole going this in-depth about such a fucking schlocky fanservice filled horror action series but against all odds… I really liked it!

I might only like it because of the animation and also the soundtrack but hey. ~~The soundtrack is so stupidly over the top, it's perfect. Genuinely, if the soundtrack hadn't been so perfectly complementary to this stupid show, I definitely wouldn't have had as good of a time.~~

High Rise Invasion’s anime for me, is an 8 out of 10. My recommendation is if you're not the sort of person who hates any presence of fanservice to give it a try while simultaneously not taking it seriously at all. I think ultimately that's the key. Because I had read the manga I already expected to have a bad time only to realize oh wait, seeing this stupid shit animated is actually kind of fun.

Sucks that it's not gonna get a season two because it's a horror anime and horror anime don't get season twos. Even if there's an obvious postcredits teaser for one.

I'd love to be proven wrong, though... as I'd totally watch a season two of this rather than read the manga...