The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide – Shabake

What is this?

During the Edo period lives Ichitarō, the young owner of Nagasakiya, one of the largest stores in Nihonbashi. He has been physically weak since birth and is unable to go outside. However, Ichitarō is always surrounded by spirits such as Hakutaku and Inugami, who serve and protect him. One night, Ichitarō sneaks out and witnesses a murder. From that day on, a series of bizarre murders began to occur in Edo. With the help of the spirits, Ichitarō’s search for the culprit begins.

Shabake is based on the novel series by writer Megumi Hatakenaka and illustrator Yū Shibata. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

How was the first episode?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

The highlight here is the yokai. There are certain ayakashi that pop up repeatedly across many series, like kappa or kitsune, but Shabake‘s first episode takes care to give us some less familiar faces, and I love that. Sickly Ichitarō can see yokai – possibly because his birth was the result of his mother’s prayers to Inari – and otherworldly beings surround him. Two are relatively standard anime features: an inugami and a tsukumogami born from a bell. But the others are much more unique: a hakutaku, a byobu nozomi, and a cluster of tiny yanari. At least those last two are probably rarely seen because of their lore – byobu nozomi are “folding screen peepers,” best known for spying on people over folding screens, and yanari are “house squeakers,” meaning they just make a lot of noise in poorly built wooden houses. (A hakutaku is a particularly brilliant chimera.) Not exactly romantic yokai, or even particularly friendly ones in their lore.

But all bets are off when it comes to Ichitarō. Since his older brother died young, everyone has kept a firm eye on him, and now, in his young adulthood, that’s really beginning to grate on him. Two of his yokai friends, Nikichi (hakutaku) and Sasuke (inugami), also serve as his guardians, meant to prevent him from overexerting himself. Still, the byobu nozomi takes his place when he just can’t stand it anymore and needs to get out. (The yanari are easily bribed with dango.) And of course, none of them can keep Ichitarō from sneaking out and running headlong into a murderer and then practically tripping over his victim.

This, quite frankly, feels more like an “episode zero” than the first episode of Dusk Beyond the End of the World. It’s primarily focused on setting up the characters and their dynamic, establishing Ichitarō’s chafing at the restrictions placed upon him and the way he interacts with the yokai around him. It’s not really doing much to set up the mystery that this is purported to be, at least not until the very end of the episode. While I still enjoyed it, I did find it dragged a bit, especially in the middle, when Ichitarō was walking around with the bell spirit. The all-brown color scheme doesn’t help, especially since the past, Edo period or otherwise, wasn’t uniformly sepia and dull green. It’s an attempt to create a sense of a long-ago event that really isn’t necessary, especially since the scenes of bustling Edo and the work in Ichitarō’s family apothecary do the job more than adequately.

Still, I’m curious to see where this goes. I’m a sucker for mysteries, historical fiction, and folklore, so this is very squarely aimed at me. That I didn’t love this first episode isn’t a great sign, but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, if only because I really love the way faces are drawn.

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Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. (Sunrise) is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.

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