I'll start this review right off by saying that I am coming towards this show as someone who read and loved the manga and I will review it through that lense. While certainly nothing groundbreaking or special when it comes to horror manga, the Kaya-chan manga still manages to be creepy and effective...and in-between all the murder ghosts add some more realness. ESPECIALLY with stuff regarding young children someone like a parent might fear.

And this show still manages to contain some of that like in the example above or the swimming pool episode...but for some reason, halfway, starting with episode 6, decides to just rush its story and leave a lot of chapters on the cutting room floor.

This part essentially being the beginning of it, as they skipped over the field trip to the forest except for this one drawing. Now to me it makes sense as I have read the manga and I know what its referencing, but to someone else they might not now, that that actually happened. And this is one of my biggest problems with the anime as someone who read the manga.

The manga does have a lot of self-contained chapters and starting from that point on, if a chapter isn't relevant to the reveals or the overarching story revolving Kayas family, it doesn't get adapted. Now one could argue that thats better since there's less "filler". But I think that because of that, we are missing on some great and horrifying moments (the "Be Quiet" or the Umbrella Ghost chapter being some of my favourites that I would have loved to see animated). A big part of the story being Kaya slowly being accepted by the other children in the Kindergarten. But it really comes the most through through these self-contained chapters, even if the anime still tries to show it happening.

Not to mention...part of what made the mystery so compelling is, we slowly got glimpses and hints and reveals to Kayas family. The way its done in the anime, you get hit over and over again quickly, with barely any time for the viewer to really give much thought to it. Now I can't say if its because they only had 12 episodes and/or if they weren't planning on making more seasons for this show...but this approach certainly hurt the show.

Now to be positive, the chapters it does adapt are all done mostly faithfully. Certainly the show doesn't have the best animation quality or anything like that, but personally it still manages to adapt all of the creepier aspects of the manga and the panels really well. The music is also really well done too, being able to have this child like sound to it...before, just like the ghosts, slowly revealing something creepier underneath it. Same goes for the voice acting, with all the actors sounding like how I imagined them.

So overall, what can I say? I still liked the anime very much. The first half was pretty good (even if its limited in animation) and the 2nd half at least build up to a big finale. But I feel like it either needed more episodes or even a 2nd season, because the way it starts rushing towards its finale just means, it lost a lot of what made the manga so great in my opinion.

But overall, I still enjoyed my time with the show very much and if you are looking for some nice horror and haven't read the manga, this show still will provide you with a fun time!