Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective (1998)

 

Director: Kiyotoshi Sasano and Yutaka Kagawa

Screenplay: Genki Yoshimura, Ryota Yamaguchi and Toji Gobu

(Voice) Cast: Takumi Yamazaki as Shido Tatsuhiko; Emi Shinohara as Yayoi Matsunaga; Maaya Sakamoto as Riho Yamazaki; Ai Uchikawa as Asami Akiba; Akira Ishida as Shunichi; Ayumi Kida as Miharu; Chiemi Chiba as Yuki; Eiji Maruyama as Shuzo Akiba; Hideyuki Tanaka as Cain

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / An 1000 Anime Crossover

 

"Always a title I wished to get to, Nightwalker is especially a case of my tastes winning over some clear flaws with this thirteen episode horror show. It is also a curious chimera as, for four episodes, it is visibly clear this could have been a straight-to-video production if there was no success getting a television deal, a literal line between when it could have been and that which became the series, both in the look in little details of the show and having two different directors[...]"

 

Certainly, a flawed title, this nonetheless scratches an itch for an anime niche I am a huge fan of - that of horror anime about supernatural figures, or those who specialise in the supernatural, who deal with episodic narratives where they can merely be a bystander who resolves the issues, whilst characters specific for those episodes either find or doom themselves in how they act or fall into in the tales. Nightwalker has touches beyond this, and it's schism between the first four episodes to the last seven does offer a lot of potential, and some disappointment, but for a piece of late nineties anime, the mood is there in spades. And when this works, in those first four episodes as an increasingly more adult horror tale, and the best episodes of the latter half, like a family plotting to murder the patriarch only for his body to start wandering the streets, this can shine.

 

For the full review, follow the blog link HERE.