Halloween is often cited is one of the two most popular holidays in America, usually right behind Christmas, but I can think of one thing Halloween has going for it that Christmas doesn’t... You can celebrate it alone without feeling suicidally depressed! Yes, long after trick or treating as a child, or attending sexy costume parties in your twenties, you can sit on your worthless ass in your thirties and onward and watch spooky themed media, whether it be long forgotten childhood TV specials, or those creatively creepy independent films people have been making in the modern day, we can absorb and consume Halloween related media until the day we die(whereas if we’re being honest, most Christmas media kinda sucks).

And if you’re a reviewer, it means you get to embark upon the easiest possible theme month, because there is a ton of horror anime out there waiting to be discovered and discussed. When I started writing reviews again four years ago, I decided on a whim that I was going to review one Gregory Horror season per year, and if it sounds like I’m stalling for time so far, it’s because there’s honestly not much to talk about with the fourth season.

So just to recap, Gregory Horror Show is a curious little horror oddity that doesn't quite look like anime, but is in fact a Japanese animated production. It was directed by Kazumi Minagawa, written and created by Naomi Iwata, and animated by Milky Cartoon, and none of those names are likely to be relevant outside of Gregory Horror. The first season is a mostly first-person adventure where an audience surrogate who’s downtrodden because of Japanese workaholic exploitation culture staying at a haunted hotel ran by a blocky-looking anthropomorphic rat, and he has to navigate encounters with all of the other spooky and creatively designed residents to sort himself out and try to escape.

The second season is largely the same, except with a female protagonist, dealing with a more gender specific Japanese social issue. The third season drops the very idea of first-person perspective protagonists, and just follows the rat-host himself, Gregory, on a train with all the other residents, and a few fun new faces. Among these three seasons, while the franchise never exactly reached greatness, each season was slightly better than the last, so you might be expecting the fourth season, Bloody Carte, to be the best of the bunch, right?

Well, let’s take a look at what season four even is. Rather than a new protagonist, or a tighter focus on Gregory, the narrative chooses a new character to focus on, and this time it’s the long running supportive character Katherine. She is an anthropomorphic gecko in a nurse’s outfit who carries a giant syringe, which I guess is kind of a cliche fetish in Japan? I know there are Evangelion figures of Asuka and Rei dressed up like this, giant syringe and all, and there has to be more than them out there.

In any case, this sounds kind if promising right out of the gate, because Katherine is theoretically in the perfect position to show us the rest of the veteran supporting cast from a new perspective as she interacts with them, and she has the potential to be an apt cypher, as well as an increasingly interesting character in her own right. They could have done that. They certainly could have done that.

Instead, we get the same scenario over and over again. Katherine is starved for love, she has a brief interaction with an established character, she finds some reason to stab someone with her syringe, rinse and repeat. I’m not gonna pretend some of these cameos aren’t at least a little fun... I liked when the Mexican cactus cowboy steals the zombie doctor’s tequila to party with Gregory, but they’re not funny, and it feels really weird that my favorite scene is also the most racist scene.

The voice acting is fine... I’m pretty sure most of the returning characters retained their original voice actors, Dave Petit is just as kooky and charming as always, and while her character may be just a one note joke for the entire season, Elinor Holt(Who you may know from HunterXHunter 1999 and exactly nothing else) is clearly enjoying her role, each line dripping with honeyed venom.

The animation is basically the same as always, with two small downgrades. First, there are several panning shots that feel really choppy, like they weren't given time to render properly. Second, the lighting feels like no real planning went into it, as character's faces will be half concealed in shadow while they're facing the camera.

I’m not gonna lie, this season is only half the length of previous seasons at only thirty minutes long, but I still found myself struggling to stay awake halfway through. It doesn’t really add anything to the franchise, it doesn’t do anything special for any of the characters, the setting OR the lore, and I just don’t think this needed to exist, and that’s not something I say often.

I am not the kind of person who will look at the worst entry in a franchise and say “That didn’t happen,” because to me, even the worst entry has an identity and a place in its franchise. Dragonball Evolution exists. Class of ‘09 The Flipside exists. Community season 4 exists. The only time I want to wipe a sequel, prequel or otherwise from existence is if they bring nothing whatsoever to the experience.

From that perspective, in my opinion, recap episodes and movies that are just condensed retellings of anime series don’t exist. Certain chibi spinoffs don’t exist. The Bloody Karte WOULD exist if it were just an OVA, but as the fourth season? No. There is no fourth season.

I give Gregory Horror Show season 4: The Bloody Karte a 2/10