I love Kate, and Emilyko,and their relationship. I also love mamy of the other characters,but they’re both definitely my favorites!
It’s no news that I absolutely love Shadows House,so fanart was inevitable! The plot is very interesting,characters intriguing, and the aesthetics just beautiful. Plus the online version is fully coloured! If we ever get english volumes I’m buying immediately,even if they’re black and white unlike the scans.
In a Western-style mansion on a cliff lives the aristocratic, faceless Shadow family. They live together with lifelike doll attendants who serve as their faces. One such living doll, Emilico, aids her master Kate as they learn more about themselves and the mysteries of the house.
A mystery! I love mysteries! With its intriguing premise and and somewhat gothic visuals, I was excited to pick this up.
It’s intriguing from the get-go: Emilico is a “living doll,” because as a member of the Shadows family, her mistress Kate has no face. All Shadows must have a face, a living doll who is practiced and in-tune so as to visually reflect all their master’s emotions when interacting with anyone else.
Living dolls and their Shadows must learn to be in sync with each other; at the same time, when she’s not in her mistress’s rooms learning or cleaning, Emilico and the other living dolls are on cleaning duty for the rest of the giant house. See, the Shadows aren’t just featureless black bodies: they produce soot like humans produce carbon dioxide. And the soot, if left to accumulate, can congregate into “scorches,” or little soot monsters. So cleaning of both the house as a whole, and the Shadows’ individual rooms, is paramount.
Kate doesn’t know much more than Emilico; both of them are learning about the Shadows’ house as the series goes on, particularly when they have to prove how well-suited they are for being paired together. I enjoyed Kate as a character: she’s prone to feeling blue, but is sharp and cares. I was curious about why she didn’t seem to know much about the house or family more than Emilico, given that they appear to be somewhere between the ages of 10 and 14. But as the series goes on, explanations do come about.
And that’s good, because you need answers, you need some payoff to the central question of the series: what’s up with the Shadows Family?
I hate when shows don’t answer the obvious questions, or try to be mysterious without giving the audience answers as a reward for their engagement. And happily, that doesn’t happen here: we do get a solid explanation by the end of the series, and we get it in ways that explain a lot about what we’ve already seen, or which the viewer may have already connected some dots.
Verdict
English dub?Yes
Visuals: Fine, and thankfully there are plenty of bright colors and lights, making it easy to watch and not super dark (-toned), despite the abundance of soot, literal shadows, and overcast days lending atmosphere to the setting.
Worth watching? Yes. It’s a good show, and a second season will start airing in July (2022), which promises to continue the story of Emilico, Kate and company with more questions and more answers. This initial season gives you some answers, then introduces more mysteries so you’ll want to come back for the second.
Where to watch (USA, as of May 2022):Funimation (sub and dub), Crunchyroll (sub and dub)
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I love Kate, and Emilyko,and their relationship. I also love mamy of the other characters,but they’re both definitely my favorites!
It’s no news that I absolutely love Shadows House,so fanart was inevitable! The plot is very interesting,characters intriguing, and the aesthetics just beautiful. Plus the online version is fully coloured! If we ever get english volumes I’m buying immediately,even if they’re black and white unlike the scans.
I don’t know Shadows House but this is beautiful!! I kinda get Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan’s shadow combined vibes XD
