English Dub Season Review: Shadows House Season One

Overview:

The Shadows, characterized by their pitch-black appearance and tendency to emit soot when agitated, are a family of nobles who reside in a colossal manor deep within the mountains far from other humans. When a Shadow child is nearly of age, they are assigned a Living Doll who acts not only as their attendant but also as their second half—the faces they could have had if not for their complexion.

Emilico is a cheerful, newly created Doll who serves a rather soft-spoken master named Kate. Despite their difference in personalities, Emilico does what she can to carry out the needs of her master. As she learns more about her role and duty, Emilico begins to meet her fellow Dolls and their respective masters and comes to know more about the purpose of her existence.

Our Take:

Shadows House was such a pleasant surprise to watch. I didn’t know what to expect when I started it but like some other shows its appearance is a bit deceiving. You might think it’s just about cute anime girls doing cute things and you would be wrong. Almost entirely, in fact, I mean Emilico is definitely cute and does some cute things and her outlook is definitely adorable. But other than that it’s a pretty dark atmosphere this show has going on.

I can’t think of too many episodes of this show I didn’t like. The worldbuilding was amazingly crafted and I wanted to keep watching to learn more. Everything was presented masterfully with just enough info being drip-fed to us to keep us interested. In fact, that was really my only complaint from the story, it seemed like we kept getting more questions and only a few answers.

Cloverworks is the studio that handled Shadows House and it makes sense with them being the studio that handled The Promised Neverland. These two shows are very similar to me, with kids being put in rather horrific, life-or-death situations. The animation for this show was really well done. Especially the soot effects whenever a shadow would use their soot powers.

I have to mention the ed for this show. It’s “Nai Nai” by ReoNa and it’s a fantastic song. It’s catchy and has a pop feel but also fits the creepy atmosphere the show sets. It goes really well with the ending animation they set up for it as well.

The voice actors for this show did a great job. Dani Chambers plays Emilico and it is definitely a typical role for her. She excels at what she does and that is no different here. I love that Adam McArthur is getting more anime roles and I hope that trend continues. He was excellent in Jujutsu Kaisen and he does great here too. The standout to me was Emi Lo as Kate, it was my first experience with her as an actress and I was definitely impressed. I think she deserves more leading roles and I have a feeling we will be seeing her in those kinds of parts soon.

The power system in this show is pretty unique and interesting. With most of the shadows demonstrating some sort of soot power. John destroyed a boulder with one of his in an impressive show of heroism. Kate was able to do a few things but the coolest was making soot wings. And with some of the later reveals I am even more excited to see where this power system could go in the next season and (hopefully) beyond.

Speaking of another season, Shadows House was recently announced to be getting a second season. This is important cause it really does affect my score for this series. The last episode teases A LOT of upcoming things that would be really frustrating without another season in the works. Luckily that isn’t the case, and I know the manga for Shadows House has a lot of chapters and I would definitely love to see it all get adapted.

Shadows House is an amazing show that definitely deserves more attention. If there is anything you take away from this review it’s that you should watch this show. If you love great characters and great world-building you won’t find much better than Shadows House.