User Reviews

I enjoyed season one and I applaud the producers for choosing the anthology format, so each new season has a fictional horror story in a different historical setting. I believe it's the right call.

The setting is interesting; instead of a 19th century arctic expedition we have Japanese-American internment camps during World War 2; instead of monsters, we have ghosts. That said, I wasn't crazy about this first episode. Production values are once again solid but I have issues with the pacing, which felt too slow, and with the writing.

You know when I started to be worried ? When a character is walking on a street in broad daylight and the ghostly force/curse attacks him with gruesome results, as bystanders watch in horrified impotence. If there are no rules or limits to what the supernatural threat can do and anything goes, far from being creepier, it becomes a recipe for tedium.

Let's hope this gets better in the next episodes.

5,5/10

I am a big fan of the first season. The fact that the first season did not get even a single nomination at the Emmy's was truly a travesty.

What the first season did very well was to create a believable Victorian British Naval world for viewers. This continues on with the second season. There have been enormous amounts of efforts in creating a believable Japanese-American society. Even the background conversations in Japanese are truly to the point and realistic. (I'm from Japan so I understand the conversation in Japanese.) It is just as in the first season of the Terror. We are transported to the time when the mystery begins to unfold.

As for the scare factor, this season is much scarier than the first season so far. I made a mistake of watching the show late at night by myself. The first scene, when a lady starts to stretch her neck in a very odd way, scared the heck out of me and I had to quit. The same kind of scare as the Japanese "Grudge " where a ghost comes down stairs extremely slowly. Creepy! I had to watch the rest of the show during a daytime.

The acting is wonderful. Intermingling Japanese and English sounds very realistic, including English spoken with heavy Japanese accent. I don't consider that as cultural appropriation because the intent was to create a realistic world, not to mock. The only thing is, and I am nitpicking now, Derek Mio's Japanese needs improvement. As a Nisei (second generation), Chester should be able to speak better Japanese than what is in the show. Sometimes I needed to rely on subtitles to understand what was spoken by Chester. But I know this is insignificant and nitpicking.

Overall I'm very excited about the second season. I hope the show will continue to keep the creepy and eerie world.

A huge step down from the first so far. I like Asian horror but this was way too slow pace with fairly unengaging characters. The morose faces of most of the characters was a chore to watch and this before they know what they really face. Human and supernatural. At least there's nowhere to go but up.