Shadows House
Genres: slice-of-life, supernatural, seinen.
Original Creator: Soumatou.
Studio: CloverWorks (The Promised Neverland).
Season 1 is 13 episodes long, the story is still on-going in the manga, a sequel hasn't been announced yet as of the time of writing this post
What makes a hidden gem? A series that's easy to miss because nothing stands out about its genre, studio, author, etc. but turns out to be a pleasant surprise.
Shadows House is described as a Slice-of-Life, which gives people the impression that it's a slow story with little to no plot continuity, I feel like that's one reason why it flew under most people's radar, but the truth is only the first two episodes may be described that way, as the series picks up gradually from episode 3 and things get very interesting.
Personally what I care about the most in a fantasy/supernatural series is creativity, and boy does Shadows House have that.
Shadows House starts off by introducing two characters, one is a "Shadow" named Kate, the other is a "Living Doll" named Emilico, whose purpose is to serve Kate.
Emilico is a happy-go-lucky type of protagonist who's always cheerful and optimistic and makes friends very quickly, Kate on the other hand is more calm and insecure, but also kind.
As you can see in the image, Kate's design is simply a silhouette of Emilico's, the interesting part is that Shadows are self-aware of their lack of expression, and that's where the Dolls' real job comes in, as they are supposed to dedicate themselves to acting as their Shadow's "face" beside being servants.
"Dolls should not fret over trivial matters" is a phrase you'll hear a lot throughout the series, and it means exactly what you expect, Dolls should be nothing more than their Shadow's face, they should not think or act on their own.
So you can imagine, if the Doll has a strong personality and her Shadow likes that about her, what would happen?
As the story goes on we learn that there are social statuses among the Shadows, and they have to go through trials to grow up and reach higher levels, and of course Emilico being the bright girl that she is, gets herself in trouble all the time.
The setting and life style of the shadows are similar to nobles from the Victorian era, the characters in general come off as arrogant (especially the Shadows), but some of them go through some sweet development.
There are five main pairs of Shadows/Dolls, and each of them are unique and have interesting chemistry, my favorite is a Shadow called John, the fact he's so likable and interesting despite having no face expressions says something about the level of care put into this series.
For a concept as simple as a silhouette you'd expect the character designs to be bland, but there's one important characteristic to the Shadows that differentiates them, beside their clothes and personality.
The concept of "Soot" is by far the most interesting, as each Shadow emits a smoke-like substance referred to as "soot" that leaves a charcoal-like stain behind, if these stains are not cleaned they accumulate and form a soot monster called a "Phantom".
At some point we learn that each Shadow emits a different pattern of soot and can use their own soot in different ways like super powers, the variety of these powers makes every character unique in its own way, and not only that, but it seems like there's more to explore about the soot, as the series has some cool mysteries and twists.
A cool thing about Shadows House manga is that it's fully colored, I'm not entirely sure if it has a monochrome format, but it makes sense that it would be colored since I imagine it would be difficult to convey the concept of Shadows in black and white without looking like a mess.
Although there are differences between the anime and manga, they are equally good, you can pick whichever you prefer, either way I highly recommend this series (it's my favorite of Spring 2021), and I give it an overall rating of 8/10.
Let me know what you think, are you familiar with this series? Do you find it interesting? Do you plan to watch/read it?
Whether you found my review helpful or not, your feedback is appreciated.