So once more the nights draw in, the days get colder and the wailing of the winds grow louder. So, it is time for the month of spooks to begin and tales of horror to be told in the diminishing light.

I have not talked about this series before, and that is because it’s not yet done. I don’t know if it will be good in the end or fumble the landing, but for now it’s one of the best Digimon series. This comes at a cost though, for it is very much horror themed. Transporting classic fears, monsters and ghost tales into a postmodern setting.

This episode is the 4th in the series so the full cast hasn’t assembled just yet. But importantly for this review, it’s the Halloween episode. Pumpkins and decorations abound.

As mentioned, this series is set in the not too distant future. 7G is a thing and Holograms are widely used. But sometimes something strange happens with holograms, these occurrences have been called “hologram ghosts” it’s all in the opening blurb.

The episode resolves around Ruli’s school doing a Halloween event but people start vanishing, Jack o lanterns moving when people aren’t moving and people having pumpkins dropped on their heads as a Pumpkin themed Digimon stabs the head with a knife (I did say the series is horror themed)

The episode is quite interesting in that for once in a Digimon series they give an explanation for the origin of Digimon and the digital world, and it’s handled with such little fanfare.

The main horror aspect as mentioned is with people being kidnaped, you see the pumpkins moving occasionally and people being dragged off to a back room, a childish yet creepy utterance of “trick or treat” happening just before the attack. I have to wonder the differences in regulation as a show I’m sure is meant for children has a scene where the lead is being attack with a knife surrounded by the kidnapped people who all hare immobilized with Jack o Lanterns stuck on their face. (But then a later episode does have actual body counts and a villain who wants to eat their brains). Maybe they just accept kids can enjoy being scared?

I’m not going to go into full detail on the characters, as a review of the series when it’s done will do that, but Gammamon is just sooo adorable, his habit of calling chocolate as champion (or at least that’s how the sub translates it as) giving him a slight childish innocence as he gets words wrong. Go look up some reactions and you will see what I mean… unless you… well that’s for a few episodes down the line.

I am enjoying Ghost Game as a whole and this episode oddly gave some quite important information for worldbuilding just like it was nothing major so it’s important to watch, also happy as a previous season made by the people making this one when it did its second Halloween episode was very negative after some IRL events in Japan, so many that bad taste is going away. Still, this is just the first week, let’s see what other horrors I’ll be looking into.

Digimon Ghost Game on Crunchyroll