Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary – Episode 1

Content Consideration: young children in peril

What’s it about? Kindergarten teacher Chie is at a loss for what to do with sullen student Kaya’s strange behavior—until she sees the girl punch a ghost square in the face. She can’t ignore a student in need, even if it’s terrifying, so Chie steels herself to better understand this pint-sized psychic.

Earlier this season I was grumbling about anime’s tendency to treat little girls as something closer to squishmallows than actual children, and now Kaya-chan has come to offer me a certified Weird Little Girl. Truly, life is a marvel. Not to say this is a grounded exploration of childhood behavior—even I can tell that, and I am not one of the multiple AniFem team members who’s worked with children—but I love that this little girl is a weird, inconvenient pain. She does things that make no sense to adults or even other kids but make perfect sense to her, and she’s understandably reluctant to talk about ghosts when she’s been picked on and disbelieved in the past. It’s sweet to see her so relieved to have a friend and an adult on her side by episode’s end, but without swinging all the way into “clinging moppet” or “tsundere pufferfish.” Chie also strikes me (and Caitlin, for what it’s worth) as a teacher working hard to be there for a student in a pretty responsible way, which works nicely to ground the supernatural elements.

Kaya-chan is not especially scary, but I really wasn’t expecting it to be. Wrestler William Regal (sshh, let me have this) has spoken on how selling an injury is most effective when it’s something the audience can imagine happening to themselves—a papercut is a pain more people have felt than having their arm slammed in a door. Writing for a passive medium puts you at one degree removed from the audience’s id, if you will (versus a game or in-person experience), and animation then creates a second wall of unreality. I can count the anime that have chilled me on one hand, so I think of it more as a nice bonus than a requirement.

I ask that a horror anime have a unified visual aesthetic and good boarding, which Kaya-chan manages pretty well…when it isn’t getting in its own way. The episode’s biggest problem is the loud distortion effects that go over almost every haunting, betraying a lack of confidence in visuals that are strong enough to stand on their own in a Spirit Halloween kind of way. It’s especially distracting when the very end of the episode reveals that Kaya’s mother is apparently possessed by a spirit even Kaya hasn’t been able to fight (a metaphor that could go in aaaaaaaall kinds of potent directions). It’s a dramatic reveal, but the intrusive static makes me feel like I shouldn’t download a car.

How off-putting you find that clumsiness will probably determine whether this is worth checking out. The jokes are solidly in the “sensible chuckle” range, and there’s a solid emotional base established that will probably be a background counterpart to the shenanigans for most of the show. I think I’ll end up coming back for a couple episodes, just to see if it’s maintaining those solid Weird Girl vibes.