Mysterious Disappearances appeared on my twitter feed with a hype campaign that says "this big bewb lady in the new supernatural themed anime" and I was a simple person to click. Ah, no wonder the title sounds familiar, it's one of those manga I've read waiting to be animated. The visuals and art stylistic choice are blatantly for fanservice. I stayed for that, and the plot too. The longer name: "Mysteries, Maidens and Mysterious Disappearances" written and illustrated by Nujima.
Plot:
Sumireko (the lead heroine) is a struggling writer that works at a bookstore who came upon a mysterious book containing old poems. She's also well endowed and working with a perverted male coworker named Adashino. It was by chance that all conditions were met for the curse to take effect after she read it during a full moon. This reverted her body back to a state when she was young child. Adashino finds out Sumireko unknowingly cursed herself to be the bearer of youth. It turns out Adashino was going around the city hunting for cursed objects (known as curiosities) and this begins Sumireko's journey to the world of the supernatural.
Did the anime remained faithful to the manga?
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No. Towards the end of the last few episodes, the events in the anime had set of events that made it suitable for a 12 episode show. It's hard to squeeze in a lot of the content from the manga in just 12 episodes. I'm better off reading the manga than watching the anime in terms of overall content.
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The elephant in the room is having the female lead Sumireko's character design be purely for the sake of fan service. And you know what? that's ok, other than a stylistic choice from the author, the story has a target market and isn't trying to be vague about it. But to say Sumireko is one dimensional is selling her character development short when the show does a good job capturing what a struggling creative writer she had been for the past couple of years.She was an award winning writer when she was a young but the bar was set lower for children and adolescents when it comes to creative endeavors. You've seen how child geniuses get hyped over doing something adults are also capable of except they complex things at an early age. Society will judge adults harsher while being lenient at children for accomplishing the same feats and this is what was captured well in Sumireko's desire to use the curse for her creative writing.
Adashino has his own problems which I wouldn't go into detail here because that's another spoiler heavy entry. His demeanor may come across as perverted but he's the archetype character that screams he's more than meets the eye. The show can occasionally touch heavy subjects which reorients us viewers that this is a supernatural horror show and there may not be happy endings per episodes waiting.
Aside from the Sumireko's character design as a bait, and the banger of an opening music, the show is sitting at an average rating on all departments if you're watching only the anime adaptation. The manga has a lot more content to offer.
![SPOILER Conclusion]
Mysterious Disappearances, the anime adaptation is a 3-3.5/5 for me. It's fine if you're into mystery and the supernatural genre if you only watch anime. I know the fan service during the trailers and some scenes were the bait but what interested me the most was the folk lore as told in a monster of the week fashion. The animation was ok but my biased with the stylistic choice leans more on black and white colors like what manga has to offer, probably due to me favoring how horror is visually more appealing in monochrome or just black and white.
Thanks for your time.
