Otherside Picnic (2021) User Reviews

A psychedelic odyssee

[bendashwood · 6/10 · 14 March 2022]

Sorao meets Toriko when she finds herself stranded and alone in the grotesque and horrendous "Otherworld" and from there on continues on a quest to find Toriko's acquaintance who mysteriously disappeared into that world.

"Otherside Picnic" thows you right into an odd world of madness without explaining much. It is filled with urban legends, horror elements and oddly overconfident main characters with plot armor. The setting is promising and the ambience, to a great extent, really well presented. The show unfortunately fails to capitalize on these good preconditions due to a couple of severe weaknesses. The Otherworld feels like an arbitrary collection of anything that might be scary, without any kind of common plot, interconnection or consistency. The supposedly romantic development between the two main characters is very superficial, hardly touching and the majority of the characters remains, while well designed, unrelatable. The idea of weaving foreigners into the story is well, but when every single soldier in the US batallion barks orders at each other in the worst English with obvious Japanese accent the immersion is entirely broken. A testimony of the studio's laziness to hire native speakers. Finally (and most severely) the story doesn't seem to lead anywhere. Over the course of the first season it achieves very little and leaves you with neither a conclusion nor a cliffhanger.

Watch it if you're bored, but you're not missing out on anything if you don't.

Great premise, poor execution!

[mcrpghk · 5/10 · 23 March 2021]

The anime has an interesting premise, Japanese folklore related to urban legends and horror legends is great and quite different from most other cultures, so much so that we see it being used in several different ways in works of all kinds, so it would not be a bad idea to create a work focused only on that, but the anime explores very poorly its base structure.

Sorao is a lonely girl who doesn't have much to lose in the world so isolates herself in this place that the characters call "another world", but at random she ends up meeting the person who would be his partner from then on, Toriko, a girl a little more experienced in that world who exploits him to find a lost friend.

From the moment Sorao forces himself to follow Toriko around the world the anime gives indications that those conflicts with monsters only have 3 objectives, create interesting suspense and action scenes, develop Sorao's personality for her to mature and a turn in her life through the relationship with Toriko and solve the mystery of the missing girl.

But none of the three premises are successfully fulfilled, the anime fails to create empathy for the main character since most of the time exchanges interesting dialogues with jokes or interruptions for something that happened in the background, the most we know of it are monologues that she does about her person, but we have almost no moments of personal improvement of the character.

The action scenes are mediocre and mostly anti-climatic, and the main mystery is most often interrupted by an isolated mission that takes the characters nowhere.

In the end what held me in the anime was its world, which by the way seems to be very rich and full of complex rules to survive in it, but in very few episodes these same rules end up being deconstructed by the whims of the script and conveniences, if the anime were only paranormal research as its basic premise I would not bother since its closed missions are at least interesting that give a reasonable level of entertainment , but become a problem in the middle of twelve episodes since, upon arriving at the end of the anime it seems that we have just begun the journey and nothing relevant has been done so far!

Put this in your watchlist

[tahaaljarjarygrg · 10/10 · 16 January 2021]

Th artstyle and animation is on point, it has a uniqe plot which is very rare these days, I really like that the lead characters are women, and in general it's really good, I'm excited for the next episodes

good story

[parawatt · 10/10 · 4 October 2021]

Personally, I like this kind of story very much. I want to have a sequel very soon.

YOU MUST WATCH THIS

[mauicomedia · 10/10 · 23 March 2021]

All contents here is my favorites songs,themesongs, characters, story, plot,headlines. LIKE I MEAN all even tho I don't want to finish it cause I'll be needing more if i finish it, hope the ending was good. like yeah i mean i hope they will make season 2. JUST I RECOMMEND U TO WATCH ITTTTT.

Torawo Depth

[raikipau · 8/10 · 13 October 2022]

Despite what a lot of people are saying, the anime isn't as bad as it sounds. I'll admit the first episode didn't really leave me that interested, but the concept itself of the "Otherside" made me continue watching.

The series contains quite a lot of suspense and there aren't too many characters that get introduced, so you can focus on the plot more. Speaking of the plot, it's not anything too complicated either-it's quite easy to follow.

The only things that bothered me was that it seems like the series didn't get a proper/complete adaptation compared to the manga/light novels. It feels kind of unfinished. Because of that, we don't get too much into depth with the characters and their relationships (Torawo) despite it being labeled GL. The plot armor isn't that heavy and you can sometimes feel it being present, but it doesn't necessarily remove the suspense/intensity.

I actually do appreciate that Sorawo and Toriko's relationship isn't based off of stereotypes & you can see their strong bond even if it doesn't include "spicy" scenes like most do. Just wish we could've seen the characters developed a little more.

dope

[lianthewhitetiger · 10/10 · 21 November 2023]

Very good anime , despite beeing limited via the short episode run it does manage to deliver .

I always keep rewatching it since i love it very much , this is a slowburn story so it makes more sense in the longer run , i reccomend reading the manga and the novels since they delve deeper into the mystery and the relationship of the two .

Overall the feel of the mystery the horror and the story is peety good and enjoyable , it makes you think more about the characters and their lives along with going into tematics of growing up into unsafe enviorments and having to survive .

Otherside Picnic is just what it entitles , people out of their zone of comfort trying to confront the unknown and fiind answers and along the way growing closer together , it has thrill and excitement along with a good dose of horror and the incomprehensible deeper lines of the story that go beyond far what is written and put your imagination to play . I would definitely recomend this anime and Manga/Novel to people that enjoy mystery and thrill .