Rebecca Silverman
What if there was a place where the urban legends are real? Not necessarily where they become real, or even where they come from, but simply an otherworld where all the things that lurk in the dark corners of the internet live and breathe. That seems to be the place called Otherside, a world somehow connected to our own where college student Sorao meets Toriko, a young woman around the same age who appears to be much more versed in Otherside survival – or at least she makes a good show of it. She's also looking for someone named Satsuki, but so far Toriko's keeping mum on that front.
If nothing else, Otherside Picnic made me realize that I really need to pick the source novels back up, because not only was this creepy and fascinating, but it also looks almost exactly like I'd pictured it in my head when I read the first light novel. The grayish tint to the colors on the Otherside, the shape of the wiggle-waggle, the abandoned, ruined buildings that make Otherside look like a post-apocalyptic version of our world – it was all just as described in the book. That's impressive and opens the door for Otherside Picnic to be a very faithful adaptation, which in the case of this series would be a good thing.
The other major piece of the episode that absolutely worked for me is the creeping horror aspect. There's a feeling of impending doom every second Toriko and Sorao are in the Otherside, and the music and imagery enhances that beautifully. The scene in the elevator, which Toriko has somehow learned will take you to the Otherside if you punch in the correct sequence of floors like an old school game console cheat code (which makes it feel like a believable internet rumor, honestly), is genuinely unsettling, especially when she calmly says to Sorao, “It always tries to get in on the fifth floor,” after something that looks like a ghost attempts to rush the elevator car. What, or who, was "it"? Another traveler to the Otherside who didn't make it out? Given that when we meet Sorao she's on the verge of dying – and that Toriko is looking for Satsuki – that definitely seems like a possibility.
Even with its strengths, there are a few little missteps here. I did laugh at the image of Millais' Ophelia painting with a bar across her eyes, but I don't think it added to the episode; in fact, the humor felt jarring in the moment. I also got stupidly hung up on the fact that Toriko, who clearly knows what she's doing, wore high heels to go traipsing around the Otherside; she had to have known that was a bad idea, and she definitely was planning on going there when she went to find Sorao. A bit more clarity about the whole urban legend/internet myths piece would also have been nice, since I mostly knew that from the novel rather than the episode. But despite those issues, I really enjoyed this first episode, and I'm definitely going to check out more – and get back to the books.
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