I initially skipped over Otherside Picnic as it aired because I'm not really into anything horror. Not because I hate it or anything, but I just never really found it interesting. But I was bored one day and had nothing to watch, so I decided to try checking this out. It turned out to be better than I expected, though I do feel more could have been done with this. The story centers on two girls—Sorawo and Toriko—who meet in the mysterious realm they refer to as the Otherside. It's a vast and dangerous realm that hardly anyone knows about, filled with all manner of horrors straight out of ghost stories. In order to get more information on this strange world, Sorawo and Toriko travel back and forth to it from the real world, though one incident alters their bodies in ways that actually manage to be somewhat helpful in both investigating the Otherside and dealing with the monsters and ghouls that inhabit it.

As far as animation goes, Otherside Picnic isn't really winning any awards. I mean, the animation itself is fine, and the character designs, while very simplified from the illustrations from both the light novel and the manga, do their job. Liden Films as a studio isn't always capable of doing justice to the things they adapt into animation. They've gotten better as they've gone on, especially compared to the disaster that was Goodbye My Dear Cramer, and they're set to adapt an anime of the first Atelier Ryza game coming up, and their work here is pretty good for what it is. That being said, the CGI is REALLY hit-or-miss. Seriously, the CGI monsters don't look like they blend well with the show. They're so clunky they look like they came right out of a bad PS3 game. Also, whose bright idea was it to make the far-off shots of Toriko and Sorawo CGI models? Because those were just flat-out bad. They move really awkwardly and clumsily, like disjointed Barbie dolls, and it's really noticeable when you're watching the show on a big TV. Why couldn't they just animate their far off models in 2D? And no, this isn't just a product of the broadcast version, they're in the home media release, too! Why?!

I don't have as much to say about the music, as a lot of it is pretty heavy synth that's meant to sound eerie and horror-like. The soundtrack, again like the animation, does its job, but isn't really anything memorable. I did really enjoy the song that played at the end of episode 12, though. For the characters, again I'm kind of mixed. I do like Sorawo and Toriko as a pair, and their chemistry really blossoms as the series goes on and we learn more and more about them as people. They pretty much carry the show, and while they're not exactly three-dimensional, I did find them interesting enough to care about. I did find Kozakura to be a bit too whiny for my liking, and I feel like more could have been done with Akari and Natsumi. That being said, I found out the anime only adapted the very first light novel and nothing else, which explains why Akari and Natsumi don't do much beyond their introduction.

As for the anime's attempts at horror, I do appreciate that Otherside Picnic doesn't try to rely so much on jump scares or gratuitous violence for the sake of it. A lot of it is atmosphere or character-driven, something I'm definitely a big fan of. Plus, rather than the typical monsters like zombies or ghosts, Otherside Picnic takes inspiration from Japanese urband legends and creepypasta stories, using them as the scaffolding for its story and lore. I've never even heard of stuff like Lady Hasshaku or the Kunekune until I looked them up on the series' TVTropes page. Believe me, I want to like this show more than I do, but a lot of its problems do come down to the fact that it's an adaptation of one light novel in a whole series of them. As a result of this decision, its build-up never goes anywhere and the characters don't evolve too much throughout its run. It's likely we'll ever get a second season of this, and that sucks because I do want to see more of Sorawo and Toriko. Then again, there's always the light novels and the manga. I know the anime itself is meant to be a commercial for the light novels, which is fine, but I'd gladly watch more of it.

Overall, Otherside Picnic is a fairly low-key, intriguing horror anime that's bogged down by the fact that it's a commercial for the light novels, and its narrative doesn't get resolved. But I still like it for what it is.