I have something of a love-hate relationship with horror and suspense in media. For the bad ones this pretty much sums up the reason; for some of the better ones (Silent Hill on film, the book The Ring) it’s the fact that I get freaked out enough to practically stop breathing, yet I’m enjoying the piece so much I have to know how it ends.

There’s a third way with horror though – one that ignores the “rule” that our cute spunky protagonist is given a noble motivation and an arsenal of cleverly homemade weapons, then manages to subdue the Big Terrible Evil Thing while suffering no more than a few scratches. Instead of a hero and a villain, two morally neutral antagonists want one another dead, and even accomplishing that won’t bring any personal satisfaction. Basically, life deals a few people the shittiest hands ever, and they play them as best they can. A story where gruesome supernatural fantasy is cut through with the worst of grim reality.

A story like Red Garden.

Four high school girls awaken one morning sick and exhausted, unable to remember the night before. From homes wealthy and poor, scattered over the city, they make their way to Roosevelt Island, and the strict private school they attend there. Upon arrival, they find they’re not the only ones who’d had a troubled night: another student, Lise, committed suicide.

Classes are canceled, but as these four return home, they’re waylaid by a peculiar sight: glowing red butterflies that no-one else seems to notice. The girls are drawn together as they follow the mysterious insects, and discover that despite moving in very different circles (one academic elite, one party girl, one tough loner, and one nobody) they all were close friends with Lise. Then a stranger arrives with some startling news: Lise was actually murdered last night, and these four girls were too.

I hope I’ve done the setup justice, because it really was intriguing. A most necessary quality, I might add, when the music and the art style are so… ugh. The girls frequently break into song, alone or together, and none of them sing well at all. (Rie Tanaka, who plays a secondary role and actually *can* sing, is never give the chance to do so.) The opening music is decent (think Bird, but simpler and more pop than jazz) but the two ending themes are both injected with some wince-inducingly horrible Engrish. The art style is not as actively bad, but does take some getting used to: many characters only have noses in profile, and the size and placement of features isn’t always consistent. The strange art is really only actively distracting for the first few episodes.

Despite all this mediocrity, the show does have a real strength: the development of the plot and the characters. Over time, you see how each of the four came to have the personality they now display, and the interaction between them under the stress of the situation is well-realized. The balance between blood-and-guts horror and psychological suspense is delicately maintained.

The series runs 22 episodes, plus and OVA to be viewed after the series, available as a commercial sub/dub in two collections. While not so intensely scary as the popular Japanese horror films, fans of such may enjoy the similar pacing and development.

Overall, a good series, worth watching for any fan of the strange and creepy.