First Impressions: Kowabon

EPISODE 1

A girl has a "Spike" video chat with her friend, who is going to a party and is trying out new clothes. Something's wrong with the video. Screen keeps glitching. Suddenly, the girl sees something on the camera standing behind her friend. She warns her friend about it. The friend leaves the room after being called by her mother, leaving the girl staring at her friend's room through the webcam. Screen glitches again and a naked girl with long black hair appears.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

That was some scary shit. Jesus. Remind me not to watch anime like this alone.
The plot for this reminds me of Unfriended, a horror movie that recently showed in cinemas and got rave reviews. Like Unfriended, the first episode of Kowabon uses the webcam chat to great effect, giving the audience an entirely new and immersive experience of the horror that's happening to the characters on screen. I was scared and I loved it. 

Now, for the art style. Kowabon uses rotoscope, an animation technique that uses live-action footage and rendering them into animated frames. It looks different from the usual anime out there. In that regard, it gives Kagewani a run for its money. However, where Kagewani animation-style makes the characters look 'off' as they move, Kowabon has a more realistic feel to its animation. 

All in all, I like it. The episode is only about 3 minutes long and about 50% of it is jumpscare. Awesome. :D