Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

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Among the crop of a given anime season, you can usually sort the premieres into three categories: promising, not-so-promising, and those that make the viewer emit a long, drawn out, neutral “huuuuuuhhhh.” Tasokare Hotel is one of these. A decidedly low-key one, in fact. And in being so, it proves itself to be an understated, surprising standout of the season so far.

Tasokare Hotel‘s premise is quite simple. A hotel stands, bathed in perpetual, pinkish twilight as it straddles the world of the living and the world of the dead. Those on the brink of death, whether they actually pass on or not, visit this place, where they are checked in by a friendly flame-headed doorman [Yamamoto Kanehira]. They don’t necessarily remember who they are or how they got here, but over the course of their time as guests of the establishment, they will hopefully come to remember their past life. Aiding their quest to remember who they are is the invisible “room service” of the hotel itself, the suites magically fill themselves with items relating to the deceased. As they remember their pasts, the guests themselves change, starting out as caricatures, sometimes faceless and sometimes with their heads replaced with relevant objects, and eventually recovering their human appearance. Around then, most move on, either back to the world of the living or onward to the world of the dead. This isn’t so for everyone, though. Case in point, our protagonist Tsukahara Neko [Momokawa Rika, in what seems to be her first role of note in any anime].¹

Neko, an idol fangirl in life, opts to stay at the hotel long-term, joining its staff. Her real role in the story though is to act as a sort of detective / memory recovery assistant. Across the cases in the two episodes so far she helps a prospective fortune teller disentangle herself from an occult streamer she was parasocially fixated on, and also aids a gambling addict remember the final bet that stuck him in the grave situation he presently finds himself in. She’s perceptive, quite cute, and has a dry wit about her. (This latter trait is emphasized by her similarly-dry, open vocal tone, which is a bit unconventional for an anime lead. I’m fond of it.)

Overall, the writing involved in these “cases” is fun, but it’s not terribly subtle. The fortune teller spends most of her screentime pining for her “boyfriend” (spoiler alert: he actually turns out to be the aforementioned streamer), and as such, her head is replaced with the Lovers tarot card.

The gambler? Well, his noggin is a giant pachinko ball. I have a serious soft spot for shows that are in love with blindingly obvious symbolism, so I’m into this. (And they make more sense when considered that Tasokare Hotel is actually an adaptation of a video game. I imagine what we’re seeing here is the equivalent of the tutorial and an easy first mystery.) Opinions will vary, naturally, but for me at least, it’s more endearing than anything. It also provides the additional bonus of allowing these characters to start out as flat, almost literal caricatures of themselves, before growing into the complexity they had in life. The gambler’s story in particular becomes genuinely affecting by its end, and even when the show isn’t quite hitting that high, it’s still interesting and charming.

Similar charm also runs through the show’s presentation, which is largely on the simple side. It’s crass and a vast oversimplification to reduce how a show looks to questions of its “budget,” but Tasokare Hotel gives the impression that those working on it knew they’d have only so much money and time to get everything done and plotted out how to use their resources very wisely. The set design carries most of the visuals, as animation is sparse and unshowy. This, in tandem with how dialogue-heavy the episodes are, can leave them feeling almost more like theater than anime per se. What might be a downside in the minds of some ends up being a bit of a blessing in disguise, focusing the viewer’s attention on what’s being said and saving focus on what’s being shown for a few key moments in a given episode. The device of physical objects appearing in the hotel rooms works really well here, as it allows the show to shuffle in meaningful, charged imagery “off-screen,” creating a subtle sense of momentum that carries the stories forward.

All told, these little mysteries work together in a perfect little clockwork. If you’re the sort of anime fan who enjoys the quieter side of the medium, check this out. You won’t be disappointed.

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^{1: She was in Magical Somera-chan about a decade ago. Does that count as “notable”? I leave that as an exercise to you, the reader.}

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