Despite the criticisms of Le Portrait De Petit Cossette that I have that I think hold it back from being a masterpiece, I would recommend it to just about every fan of anime. It's only 3 episodes, and is a completely unique experience in its strange visual presentation, its dark narrative dripping with blood and taboo, and one of the best soundtracks I've heard. It's just the kind of experimental, edgy, and mysterious that drew me into anime to begin with. And I will get into spoilers in this review, so if you haven't, the short review is just watch it.

All I knew about Cossette going into it was that it's an early display of Akiyuki Shinbo's distinct directorial style before he joined studio Shaft, which was enough to get me to want to watch it not knowing anything else, given that I loved his direction in Shaft anime like the Monogatari Series and Madoka Magica. And his direction in Cossette is incredibly bold. Cossette can largely get away with its writing being so barebones and vague, because the story is primarily told through its images. The protagonist's disconnection from other people and obsession with the glass that he sees Cossette through is told to you by the fact that other characters are constantly framed in the background of scenes, through glass or other obstructions, putting objects in the foreground and visually de-emphasizing people. The real world is far away, everything is quiet and far removed from Eiri, while the surreal world of gothic fantasy that he slips into is so vivid, it's full of bright blood and swelling music and burning love, fear, and pain. The use of cgi in these scenes is downright insane, they're full of giant floating skulls, eyeballs, bones, and nauseating spinning camera shots, it's hideous, and it just works! My reaction wasn't "oh this cgi looks shit, I'm taken out of the experience" but rather the strange ugliness of it drew me in completely. And the anime just generally looks gorgeous. Scenes are framed by huge blocks of solid black shadow, characters from uncomfortably far or close angles, the composition of every shot is a little uncomfortable in a way that's compelling and interesting. And it has some of the wonderful character art style I was familiar with from Monogatari, where these stylized anime characters are draped in blocky shadows that elegantly suggest more anatomical detail, curving around and suggesting noses, the plates of the face, the muscles of the neck, and collarbones.

With all of that praise, I think the strongest part of Cossette is its soundtrack. Sadly, with my lack of any technical musical knowledge, I don't really know how to talk about it in detail, so I'll settle for the boring statement that its among the best soundtracks I've heard in anime. If you loved the music in Madoka, you'll love the music here. Every track exudes tension and melancholy, and they do wonders to create the series' thick gothic atmosphere. Particularly songs like Moonflower and Sadness I've listened to on their own countless times. The track Fake Jewel is another standout for how perfectly it captures its theme of careless euphoria within an illusion, with its sickly sweet flutes inviting you to fall into the perfect joy of Eiri in that scene despite the deep darkness under the surface that's being ignored.

Sadly, the story of Le Portrait De Petit Cossette is kind of a mess. And not only in lots of small, superficial inconsistencies and things that just don't really make sense, although it is also that. The fatal flaw is that it is fundamentally a mess, the plot not making sense is far from a deal breaker for an abstract and symbolic fantasy story like this, but the emotional and thematic core don't really make sense either. There is a team of female side characters who just kind of exist in the background and take up some screen time. By the climax of the story they all band together to look for Eiri, but this had no impact given that they're given next to no characterization. Having all of these peripheral characters just felt like a distraction in such an otherwise focused and non-literal narrative, particularly with one girl who's a psychic medium, and occasionally interjected that there's something strange going on spiritually in the town. We know, we're seeing the events ourselves, this kind of explaining what we already know by a character that has no reason to be in the story just feels like watering down the narrative focus and weakening the sense of isolation and being trapped in Eiri's perspective.

But as for that main focus, the relationship between Eiri and Cossette, there is a lot of good. I think it just trips over its own feet in the third episode trying to reach a happy ending and have shocking twists that only uproot the simple and compelling thematic narrative that I thought I was getting a good hold of after the first two episodes. The initial premise of a boy losing all interest of reality to an obsession with a young girl he can see through a magic glass that starts to destroy his life is a fantastic and intriguing one, and the developments that arise to build on it are all great. That Cossette is the ghost of a girl murdered by her fiancé, and then the reveal that he murdered her so that she would never age. A twisted and pedophilic obsession with youth that's reflected uncomfortably in our protagonist, who is being spiritually and physically tortured by Cossette in spectacular fashion. It seems that she's using him as a proxy target for the revenge that she was never able to get against her killer. This is all a very cool gothic horror story of twisted love and hatred, blurring time and reality.

It's in the conclusion where it really trips over its own feet. We're treated to some major plot twists that are more baffling then enlightening. The Cossette we had been talking to was actually... an evil version of Cossette created not from her soul but just the painting. And Eiri is actually alright and not like the murderer Marcello because... he was in love with the person Cossette, and not just her image. This does not check out. He quite literally fell in love with a painting of her. It's not clear how much if any of the Cossette we've seen was real, or what the difference between evil Cossette and real Cossette is. It ends with Eiri giving a grand statement about the nature of beauty that feels like it should be meaningful and serve as a thematic thesis statement, but in its full context it falls totally flat. It's all unsatisfying contradiction. It is possible that all of this does make perfect thematic sense and there's just some fundamental failure of understanding on my part, but after giving my best effort and a fair bit of thought, if I still come away not understanding then I'll assume that the failure was on the part of the story.

When I think of Cossette, I'll first think of its incredible style and soundtrack. After that will be the disappointment I felt in how it bungled what was almost a very strong gothic horror tragic tale. Even so, it deserves a great amount of credit for being such a distinct and daring anime.