Well hello there! Well don’t dawdle now my dear, come in out of the fog... We don’t get very many travelers out here, especially so late at night. Um, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing out here in the first place? There’s nothing but dark spooky woods for miles around here... Well, except for us, that is. You were lucky to find us when you did, my dear, it’s a lot safer in here than it is out there... Well, slightly, anyway. Welcome to our humble hotel. Allow me to show you to your room... Oh, don’t bother with the paperwork, it’s already been taken care of. We have many lovely guests here tonight, and it’s probably for the best if you keep to your own room so you don’t meet any of them. Let’s see, you’ll be staying... Oh! Not there, darling, there’s an anime critic in that room. You know, some lonely ageing nerd who wastes his time writing reviews of foreign cartoons. I’ll admit our guests generally aren’t the friendliest lot, but go near that one... He’ll talk your ear off!

And I am that critic!

Sorry about that weird intro, it’s late on a very strange day off from work, and I’m experiencing the excitement of early October with the goofy side of sleep deprivation. I’m here to give you another short-form review that nobody’s going to read, because my life just be like that, and for the first of hopefully THREE spoopy reviews for this month, I’ve decided to revisit one of the strangest anime franchises I’ve ever covered, Gregory Horror Show! Because yes, this blocky, CGI Nick Jr. looking series is a legitimate anime, so if anyone ever uses that “Anime is a specific stle” argument for why they think they should be able to post a Teen Titans or Castlevania review on this site, Gregory Horror Show is a damn good counter-argument.

I reviewed the first season last year... Well, let’s be clear, it’s an ONA, or Original Net Animation, consisting of largely two minute episodes, so it’s technically an hour long ‘Series.” There’s a lot that hasn’t changed since last time. Like the previous installment, The Second Guest is spooky in some areas... The locations, some of the more twisted vignettes, the character designs when you first meet them... And it also falters in a lot of the same areas, like with the cheap party city style soundtrack, some of the concepts being a tad on the pretentious side, and character animations taking the scares right out of their designs. Yeah, Gregory and his supporting cast CAN be scary, until you see the laughable way they move and talk. Well, I’ll admit that aspect of the series is slightly improved since last time, they’ve found more ways to use the stiff character motions to their advantage, but not by much.

One area that’s gotten even worse is the show’s adamant refusal to be consistent with it’s point of view. I mentioned in my previous review how the series is mostly told from the perspective of the nameless, faceless protagonist, but it would constantly abandon this gimmick with no hesitation OR explanation, and they’ve gotten even worse this time, since not even the setting is consistent... At least last time, you were either in the hotel, or you were directly outside. This time, there’s an entire vignette taking place in an old west ghost town that appears around everybody out of nowhere... And the fact that it stars two racially insensitive mexican cactus outlaws doesn’t help. I will say the story has a much faster pace than last time, and a somewhat smoother and less random-feeling narrative, so yay, they’ve made at least some improvements.

The big change this time is that instead of a male protagonist, the nameless and faceless wanderer who ends up stuck in the Gregory Hotel is a woman, and it’s not just a cosmetic change. You could easily argue that switching the male protagonist from the last season with a woman wouldn’t have changed a damn thing, and that is true, but a good chunk of this season is very explicitly gender specific... From Gregory’s condescending dialogue towards her, to the very nature of the protagonist's backstory, which... Yikes, we’ll get there in a minute. I don’t have the first season fresh in my memory, so I don’t remember specifically who was in the cast for that one and who wasn’t, but there are a few who I’m pretty sure are new. There’s a chef, with the body of a giant candle, who hates smoking... Gregory’s evil soul-eating mother, who along with Gregory and his grandson officially make up three out of four confirmed generations of the mouse family... And the cactus hombres, while previous main characters like the lost dolly and Judgement Boy make small but memorable cameos.

There are some effectively scary moments... The protagonist has a dream about a potted rose in her room coming alive and evolving as its thorns extend into new vines covered in new thorns, trying to simultaneously slash her to ribbons and embrace her. She tries to escape, an attempt that goes horribly wrong in the most nerve-wracking and chilling ways possible. On the other hand there’s a sub lot about Gregory’s mother harvesting peoples’ souls to eat them which is a little lame, especially because it winds up with the protagonist, Gregory and his grandson going through what’s basically the body-swapping sub-plot from the first live action Scooby Doo movie. The only part of this arc that kind of worked for me was when Protag and a bunch of other souls escape and try to cross to the afterlife, but she gets rejected and sent back to her body. Spoilers, I guess.

But the most interesting thing about this season... For better and for worse... Is the way Japanese societal gender norms seep into the story. It’s hinted early on that in the protagonist’s backstory, she’s at a crossroads because she just came from the wedding of her ex-boyfriend and her best friend... And the reason she isn’t with her boyfriend anymore is because her career was more important to her than he was. Now, you hear that for the first time, you would naturally think, “Oh, she neglected her relationship because of her job, right?“ No. As Judgement Boy reminds her later, she received a promotion on the same day as he proposed to her. This was framed as a choice she had to make. To anyone from the western world, you might be thinking “Oh cool, so you get to marry someone you love AND pursue your dreams!” Well, that’s not really the case in Japan.

I don’t know if things are still this bad over there, but at least at the time this came out, women were basically expected to give up their personhood and a chunk of their rights upon marriage. Becoming a wife means, in so many ways, becoming someone’s property, so the protagonist's choice of her career or her relationship was a very real decision she had to make... And while it doesn’t come right out and say it, it often feels like this season is saying she made the wrong one. The fact that her boyfriend was shattered and turned to the bottle is shoved in her face, Gregory himself makes some comments about women marrying before they’re too old to be considered desirable(an attitude that seems to be in direct response to women responding to their culture’s backward laws by marrying later and later in life) and a lot of her dialogue does feel like it’s dripping in regret.

I don’t know if I consider this season to be better or worse than the first season. This season feels a lot less fun, like the random madness of the first season has been sanded down to present a smoother narrative, but it also feels a lot more interesting, like the social commentary being more focused and deliberate. The new protagonist does have a nice noir-esque delivery, like she’s casually telling her story in a seedy bar over a pint and a smouldering cigarette. But then again, I’m not sure I like what that social commentary is saying, and it feels highly culturally impenetrable, to the point that I’m surprised the dubbers didn’t rewrite it to make it more accessible. It’s certainly a thought provoking little oddity, one that’s perhaps a bit too esoteric for younger audiences, if not all around too scary.

I give Gregory Horror Show; The Second Guest a 5/10.