So, Monster High is one of those franchises that I’ve always wanted to get into, but could never find a good entry point.

I’ve been working in retail for pretty much my entire adult life, and for a pretty good chunk of that time, I worked almost exclusively in the toy department. During that time, I bore witness to countless toy lines, some of which would go on to have long life spans, others of which fell by the wayside.

One of the lines that I found the most interesting, however, was Monster High, which was like Bratz, except they weren’t boring, and had more than one gimmick and personality trait. I thought they looked really cool, with their alternative fashion designs and different monster personas, and I always enjoyed opening up a shipment box to see which creative new characters and designs I was going to add to the mod.

Well, they were mostly creative. I’d love to meet the Mattel employee who came into work hungover and wrote down “Venus McFlytrap” in order to just collect their check and go home.

In any case, I never actually bought any of the dolls, and it wasn’t because I was safeguarding my masculinity or anything... Let’s face it, what masculinity? One of my favorite anime is called Princess Tutu, who the fuck am I trying to impress. No, it was because I prefer to collect solid-mold, show-accurate merchandise that look cool on a shelf, and toys where you have to brush their hair and change their outfits never really appealed to me. No shade intended if that’s your thing.

I watched the first 23 minute special... I’m sorry, “Movie”... And while I didn’t like it, I thought the theme song was really cool. I kinda fell off and didn’t make anymore effort to break in until the year I started writing reviews again, when I watched the Monster High anime, and while I ultimately placed it on my back burner, I knew I would review it eventually.

Well, it’s 2025, the year of eventually, and I figured it would be a great addition to my “Cute girls doing spooky things” theme month, but I still didn’t want to approach this review from the perspective of a complete outsider, because I didn’t think that would be fair. Thankfully, there is plenty of Monster High media to choose from nowadays, and while I had no idea where to start, I had to pick something to watch in preparation for this review.

I wound up choosing the 2022 Nickelodeon cartoon, solely for the fact that it looked like the closest thing the franchise had to an official series. I had no idea it was a reboot. I had no idea it was the third generation. I had no idea this franchise even had generations. And I especially had no idea that it would be fucking awesome.

I’m not kidding, when I first looked up this series on Paramount Plus, I thought it would be extremely bad, and that I was just going to submit myself to a couple of episodes of modern day Nicktoon cringe just to get the gist of the franchise, but instead, I wound up binging two whole seasons in a week, which is something I haven’t done since My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. It’s funny, it’s creative, it’s smartly written, I like all the characters, and its pun game is strong enough to put Squidgirl to shame.

The more I learn about this franchise, the more it occurs to me how perfect it would be for a Japanese audience. It’s a slice of life high school series about monster waifus. That’s about as anime as a spiky haired teenage protagonist who sits in the back by the window and has a female childhood friend who’s hopelessly in love with him. Thus, it really strikes me as odd that there IS a Monster High anime, and it only got eight 4-minute episodes.

This leads me to the property I’m actually reviewing, which is titled Monster High, Kowa-Ike girls, and I’m sorry it took me this long to get to the point, but another fact I’ve discovered is that there’s no quick or efficient way to talk about Monster High. It’s a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole, and that’s just where you start.

Kowa-Ike Girls was produced by Shogakukan Music & Digital Entertainment, whose resume seems to consist of a lot of titles I’m personally unfamiliar with, as they produced the animation for the extensive Duel Masters franchise, as well as doing music work for shows I’m a bit more familiar with like Pokemon and Hayate, and CG animation for a bunch of anime that occasionally needed that kind of animation to be spliced in. They mostly seem to focus on child-friendly properties that are highly commercial and sell a lot of toys, but it’s hard to put them down for that, because Kowa-Ike girls looks pretty damn good.

At first glance, there is kind of a look of cheapness on the surface, as it seems like the characters were animated using Flash, so there is kind of a stiff marionette-quality to their movements, but it’s largely forgivable. In the 2022 show, they used a sort of 3D animation that was tweaked slightly to give it the appearance of stop motion, and in a similar vein, this animation does make the characters appear more doll-like.

Besides, even if the character models themselves move a bit stiltedly, there are a ton of really beautiful effects layered over them, from their intricately designed and flowing outfits to the occasional environmental effect. Also, the color palette is extremely pretty, and the characters are all really fun to watch as a result of how their color schemes make them pop on the screen. The occasional CG effects are also blended into the 2D environment so well that they can be pretty easy to miss, which shouldn’t be surprising, given Shogakukan’s experience.

I thought it was also really interesting how each character takes a different approach to the infamous anime expressions and mannerisms... For a couple of examples, Frankie being really blushy, Draculaura cycling through all of the extreme countenances that emojis are made out of, and Cleo doing that really haughty and pretentious villain laugh.

As for the cast, they really only focus on eight characters... The main cast is made up of Frankie Stein, Draculaura and Clawdeen Wolf. The supporting characters are Ghoulia Yelps and Lagoona Blue, with Cleo De Nile as a sort-of antagonist, and Abbey Bominable and Spectra Vondergeist basically reduced to late-game cameos, although Spectra's plot was a pretty fun idea. There is nobody else. No male characters, just those eight and their pets.

It’s hard for me to judge how they’re portrayed, as I haven’t really done a deep dive into generations 1 or 2 just yet, but they mostly seem very gimmicky... Draculaura and Cleo probably have the most defined personalities, with Draculaura being the most openly emotionally expressive, and Cleo playing your basic egotistical bully archetype. Clawdeen and Lagoona kind of got shafted, as all Clawdeen really does to set her apart is obsess over eating meat like Luffy, and Lagona is just a wide-eyed space cadet who is always applying skin lotion to herself, which makes me miss the adorable chomping addiction of Honduran Lagoona. I like what they did with Frankie and Ghoulia, though. They play up the fact that Frankie is only two weeks old by having her constantly ask what basic concepts are, and she mimics anyone her thread becomes attached to, which is a very funny gag. Ghoulia can’t talk, her owl talks for her while she just falls over, which can also be funny.

These gags aren’t outliers, either, this ONA can be downright hilarious at times. The humor is fast-paced, there are constant background gags you have to pay attention to, and the cast’s monstrous traits can be played up in some very inspired ways... Unfortunately, there’s little to no depth to it. This ONA doesn’t really have anything to offer other than a series of quick, bite sized chunks of comedy featuring the infamous monster girls, and while it doesn’t necessarily need to have anything intriguing or thoughtful to say, the shallow nature of the material can render it a bit empty and boring on rewatch.

The short length of the series, both in terms of episode and series length, is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it suits the pacing of the comedy, and each episode is over and done with before it overstays it’s welcome. On the other hand, it feels like a lot of more interesting ideas and expansive content is left on the cutting room floor, and the episode ideas they came up with don’t hold up to very much scrutiny. You know that old cartoon trope where a character thinks everyone forgot their birthday, only to find out at the end of the episode that their friends were just planning a surprise party for them all along, and the audience figured this shit out long before they were supposed to because the idea is overdone as fuck? That’s the final episode of this ONA. That’s the note they went out on, spoiler warning I guess.

But the bigger problem, I feel, is one that’s not really the ONA’s fault. Remember, I’m coming at this anime from the perspective of someone who has already seen the Nickelodeon cartoon, and this is a problem because basically everything this ONA does, is something I’ve seen done better. Every single character presented in this anime is someone who I personally liked a lot better in the newer version. I’ve seen so much more depth and complexity in their individual personalities and in their relationships to each other. I’ve seen this world explored to a much more satisfying degree.

Does that make Kowa-Ike Girls bad? No, not by any means, but I am struggling to figure out what purpose it has. Don’t get me wrong, I have some idea of why it exists... Monster High is apparently popular in Japan, and there was a planned toy line tie-in that ultimately got scrapped, or so I’ve heard. But who is this for specifically? I could see the original generation 1 and 2 animated features being enjoyed and treasured by their target audience. Hell, the Japanese fans themselves would probably rather watch these features dubbed into Japanese than watch this ONA. I’d personally much rather recommend the 2022 show to any actual modern day adults who are curious about the franchise.

Kowa-Ike Girls just seems to exist as a very curious novelty, which is saying something for the Japanese adaptation of an American property. It’s not substantial enough to be accepted as an adaptation that explores a beloved franchise in a new light, like the RWBY and Suicide Squad anime. It’s also not enough of an embarrassing train wreck to gain any ironic infamy, like the Rick and Morty and Powerpuff Girls anime.

If it had been given more time and money, and a real chance at being a legitimate anime series, it could have realized it’s potential to a much more significant degree... Or, it could have been exposed as having no ideas of its own that were strong enough to support a longer run time. The world will never know which of these camps it would have fallen into. As it is, it’s fine. If you’re curious about what a Monster High anime would look like, it’s not a waste of your time. It’s cute, it’s well produced, and it’s funny enough to leave an impact in the little time that you’d spend watching it, and if you’d like to do that, it’s up for free on youtube.

I give Monster high, Kowa-Ike Girls, a 6/10