Shadows House (S1E1-5)

This review was comissioned by @Bernkastel


I thought it was supposed to be "Shadow House," "Shadow's House," or "Shadows' House" at first, but nope! It's Shadows House, yes S but no apostrophe. Anyway, this seinen manga has been ongoing since 2018, and it got two cours worth of anime in the 2021-2 era. I'm going to be talking about the first few episodes of that anime adaptation today.

The good news? I have plenty to say about Shadows House, and nearly all of it is positive.

The bad news? I still can't say nearly as much about it as I think I'd like to, on account of this being a mystery plot through and through, and these five initial episodes don't even finish setting up the initial round of questions let alone answering them.


The teaser does a good job of setting up the very, very basic (apparent, at least) premise and establishing the themes and atmosphere that will persist through these early episodes. A group of black silhouettes, their featureless outlines emitting a slow trickle of black carbon dust out through the gaps in their colorful pseudo-Victorian finery, stand by a window in a grim, expansive mansion. A row of normal-looking children whose own silhouettes eerily mirror the shadow people's ritually drink from row of cups offered to them, and then - speaking with a single, creepily cheerful voice - swear to serve the noble Shadows Family loyally and indefinitely, as all "living dolls" like themselves must do.

The rest of the teaser is less narrativistic, but similarly dreamlike and eerie. Featuring a (living doll?) servant girl and a mirror-silhouetted Shadows girl having what appears to be a very complicated relationship told in impressionist montage, along with some more horrific stuff involving the giant creepy mansion and clouds of the ash the Shadows apparently exhale through their skins doing scary Poltergeist shit.

There's also some external shots of trains running through ash-clouded tunnels. The people on the trains appear to be normal humans rather than members of the illustrious Shadows family.

And, that leads us to the pilot, "The Shadow And Her Doll." Our protagonist - a living doll who will soon be given the name of Emillico - as she wakes up for the first time in the coffinlike device she was ostensibly born in. She doesn't seem to trust her surroundings, fearing the darkness and fumbling with the series of doors and locks she needs to navigate in order to reach her Mistress' chambers. She wasn't born knowing much: just that she's a living doll, and that her purpose in life is to serve Mistress Kate Shadows as a personal slave. She *really* wants to do a good job of this. That impulse seems to be as innate as the knowledge, and as bereft of competing impulses.

Surprisingly, Kate didn't know that her servitor still needs to be named. She decides on the name "Emilico," after the living doll's goofy cheerful behaviour reminds her of a character in a book she's been reading.

Emilico's main job, henceforth, will be to clean Kate's suite. Kate is tidy by nature, but like all Shadows her body is constantly emitting clouds of ashes and soot, and whenever she experiences a negative emotion - anger, fear, anxiety - she emits exponentially more. Whole choking clouds and trickling waterfalls of it. It's even worse when Kate is asleep; she wakes up every morning in a bedroom buried in ash, and it's implied that the other members of the Shadows family are likewise. Like something truly terrible is haunting their dreams night after night.

As Emilico tries her best to please her new Mistress despite her overenthusiasm and (rather cliched, I have to say) moeblob-brand clumsiness often interfering with her performance, Kate reveals more and more of her own personality, and things get weirder with every step. For one thing, she never refers to herself using pronouns; she refers to herself as Kate and only as Kate, but has no problem using he/she/them/etc in reference to anyone else. She also, despite not being shy in her observation and studying of Emilico, is strongly averse to being watched (or even looked at unnecessarily) herself.

She clearly enjoys Emilico's company, even as she visibly tries to put up walls against it. Emillico, for her own part...well, it's very hard to say if she actually likes Kate or not at this point, or even if she has enough free will to not like her designated Mistress. Emillico always tries to look at Kate at a profile against the window, so that she can see the outline of her lips and cheeks and see if she is smiling or not (and it turns out that she often is, at least when Emillico gives her anything to react to and her staring isn't noticed). The pilot episode ends with Mistress Kate giving in to her affection and deciding to use her living doll as a literal living doll and dress her up in her own best clothing and makeup, just so she can enjoy Emilico's own happiness at the sight of her newfound beauty in the mirror. It is also in this final scene that Kate chooses Emilico's name.

Throughout the episode though, there are a few moments that go out of their way to remind the audience that what we're seeing here is very, very wrong.

First: relatively early in the episode when the not-yet-named Emilico is trying to make Kate smile and catch the shape of it in her profile, and admits it out loud, Kate momentarily turns into an angry tyrant with a sharp, venomous bark and a erupting cloud of frenzied black soot. "Don't you EVER," she hisses at Emilico, "try to control MY emotions." The emphasis she places on the words make it very clear that the Shadows are expected to control what their living dolls think and feel, but that the reverse is completely unacceptable and punishable very, very harshly.

She calms down again a second later, and even apologizes (seemingly in earnest) when she sees how frightened and upset Emilico has become. But still. It did happen, seemingly on reflex. This scene casts a long shadow (heh) on all of their more pleasant and heartwarming interactions afterward; no matter how cute they are playing together, and whatever fantasy circumstances there might be to soften the edges, these two are a master and slave with all that entails.

Second: throughout the first few scenes of the episode, there are some really unsettling details hinting at what a "living doll" actually is. One memorable subplot has Emilico feeling a growing discomfort that she attributes to a lack of maintenance and need for oiling, until she finally collapses and needs Kate to tell her that she's starving and needs food. When asked why a doll would need human food, Kate simply replies "your body still needs energy."

Related to this is the fact that Emilico is illiterate, and that Kate needs to teach her how to read in order for her to read the instructions left for her. Kate states outright that most living dolls aren't born not knowing how to read, any more than they're born not knowing what they are and who they need to serve. She's evasive about why this might be, but to me it suggests that these children were something else before they were turned into "living dolls" and that they came from different backgrounds and levels of education. Then again, Kate was also surprised she didn't already have a name, so this may or may not mean anything.

Third: Kate murmurs ominously about how each of the Shadows needs their personal doll to act as a "face" for them.

With each member of the Shadows family being considered a faceless nobody despite their apparent privilege until they come of age and are assigned their slave to act as a face. Hopefully this won't involve flensing. In the meantime, Kate seems to be almost as much of a prisoner as Emilico, and she's suffering from chronic isolation and boredom.

But then, how literally "faceless" the Shadows are is also called into question near the end, when - during the "dolling up" scene - Emilico manages to touch Kate's face with a makeup-sponge before she can push her hand away.

For just a moment, white skin is revealed before it secretes another covering of ash.

Did both of them used to be something else, before being made into a Shadows and a living doll?

Did they both used to be the same person, before being *split* in some way? Their outlines are identical, just like all of the Shadows' are with their dolls'.

The second episode, "Outside the Room," introduces a little more of the Shadows House and its occupants. Only a little, though. This castle is absolutely huge, and its structure is designed to keep it highly compartmentalized. Each section of the building houses a different age and sex cohort of the (seemingly very large) Shadows Clan and their dolls. This wing is set aside for young Shadows who have only just received their dolls. Within the wing, different floors and hallways seem to be reserved for either boys or girls. Each living doll spends a part of their time cleaning the hallways and common areas though, and when doing this they're able to socialize with pretty much any other doll from their wing who happens to also be on general custodial duty.

Emilico quickly befriends Mia, Rosemary, and Lou, girls who appear to be around her age and are the personal slaves of other Shadows their age. They seem cheerful, for the most part, but it quickly becomes apparent that this happiness is something that requires constant, wilful reinforcement, and that some of them are much better at maintaining it than others.

As for who uses these living spaces, well. Apparently, each Shadows youth undergoes a debut ceremony in which their living doll becomes their official "face." After that, they're allowed to leave their rooms at will and go more or less where they wish, provided their face is with them. Faceless pre-debutant children, it seems, are to be neither looked at nor heard.

Emilico is taught where to clean, where living dolls are and aren't allowed to go (certain hallways that presumably lead out of their building section are strictly forbidden, at least without a post-debut Shadows master). Whenever she asks about something outside of their immediate purview, she is simply told "not to fret over trivial things." Living dolls clean, and they do whatever else their masters tell them. This makes them happy and healthy and long lived. The consequences for not doing so are trivial things that need not concern you, because seriously, why would you want to do anything else anyway?

She's even taught a song to sing as she sweeps and wipes, about the happiness of her kind as they serve and their lack of need to think about anything else. It would honestly sound like a Disney Rennaissance number, were it not for the total lack of music to go with the vocals that makes it feel hollow and its cheer empty and strained. Emilico herself seems to think that she's as happy as the song says she is, but things are clearly nagging at her at least a little by this point.

They need to go through a big airblaster to blow all the soot off of them after each day of common area cleaning, with a fan so strong you can't even breathe while it's cleaning you. They are also each given a bodysuit and plague doctor-looking gas mask, in case an area of castle under their care ever gets dangerously sooty. You wouldn't want to catch the soot-sickness, after all.

...

Just a reminder: this soot is coming from the bodies of their masters, and a lot more of it comes out when said masters are experiencing anger or fear. The servants sometimes need to wear protective gear to stop it from killing them.

The symbolism here is pretty self-explanatory.

...

The metaphor comes close to surface text just a scene later, when Emilico returns to Kate's room to resume her personal slave duties. Kate is happy and entertained by Emilico's excitement as the latter recounts her first experience of the "outside world" as she thinks of it. Everything is going really well. But then Emilico gets water on a little stuffed doll that Kate keeps on the shelf, and Kate flips the fuck out in a tantrum of yelling, insulting, and venting ash like an active volcano.

That doll is apparently the only object in the room that Kate actually cares about. She never mentioned this to Emilico, but that isn't sparing the latter right now. Kate refuses to accept an apology, claiming that Emilico could never understand how much Kate values that doll, because (according to her) Emilico values nothing whatsoever. Because that's an accusation you can make of someone who was effectively born a few days ago. Telling Kate that Emilico values her as a person just enrages her to the point of stomping off to hide in the bathroom for a few hours.

The soot formation left on the ceiling over the site of Kate's freakout is a veritable stalactite of solidified ash that refuses to come off no matter what Emilico does to it. Emilico knows that the instruction booklet contains advice for how to remove extra-resilient soot patches, but she still can't read well enough to decipher the text without help, and she's terrified of what might happen if she asks Kate for help with it. So, in the meantime, she tries something else.

When Kate emerges back into the bedroom, Emilico has delicately opened, oiled, dried, fluffed, and sewed her doll back together again with no trace of the water damage. She ALSO, in that time, started making a new doll of her own; a little chicken-type thing made from spare bits of cloth and stuffed with a little soot-snowman that Kate had earlier built during her boring, lonely time without her slave.

This is meant to prove to Kate that she is also capable of valuing inanimate objects. The soot-snowman stuffing is to represent her love of Kate as a person as well.

Kate is charmed. Impressed. And also (just like the last time she got mad at Emilico) very vocally apologetic.

However, there is still a (potentially toxic) ash-stalactite on the ceiling. And Emilico is still the one who needs to deal with it, once Kate magnanimously helps her read the instructions for how to do her job for her.

The little chicken-doll ends up being the cause of another problem not long afterward, though. When Emilico is scrubbing the outside of Kate's bedroom window, the ash-chicken falls out of her pocket, and while trying to grab it she ends up falling out the window and falling two floors into the garden below. She lands in some thick hedges, but still hits her head hard enough to lose consciousness.

Here, we see what might be some self-awareness from Kate when she breaks the rules of her people and leaves her room to dash downstairs and see if she's okay, just hoping that no one sees her.

It definitely feels as if Kate understands that it's her own fault that Emilico would risk her life for that stupid chicken doll. There's guilt motivating her here, not just concern.

No concussion or broken bones, fortunately. However, the scrapes and bruises that Emilico did get are normal wounds on normal skin that bleed red. When she wakes up and asks Kate why a "living doll" would be made of flesh, blood, and bone, Kate simply deflects.

...

Earlier, Kate also marvelled at Emilico's sewing ability. That's not a skill that living dolls should be programmed with. Certainly not one prioritized over the ability to read their own instruction booklets.

...

While they hurry their way back toward Kate's room, they unfortunately run into someone. Emilico's cleaning friend Mia, in the company of her own post-debut mistress, Sara.

Mia doesn't react when Emilico speaks to her. Just mimics Sara's body language and sneers cruelly at the other pair as Sara cackles about what a weakling Kate must be for letting her Face move and speak independently while outside her room. If she's this much of a screwup, then the Shadows Lord Grandfather will likely have her removed, which is alright with Sara if it means less competition for favor and family resources within their cohort. Still, just because Sara is such a nice person, she won't report this indiscretion from a pre-debutant to Lord Grandfather. Kate should consider herself lucky; few other Shadowses would have been this merciful.

The next time Emilico sees Mia, the latter acts like nothing happened. After all, she was just acting as Mistress Sara's face back there. Nothing to do with herself or with Emilico. That said, Sara was telling the truth about the Lord Grandfather euthanizing debutants who displease him, and their "faces" don't survive the process either, but there's no need to think about trivial things like that. Just clean the mansion and follow orders, and you'll stay happy.

No word about how this telepathic bond that lets a doll serve as a realtime "face" is meant to be formed; you're just supposed to DO IT.

On one hand, no flensing, so that's good. On the other hand, well...everything.

That night, Emilico starts using her growing literacy to take notes about things she shouldn't bother thinking about. Getting them down in a notebook in her coffin-bed-thing will help keep them out of her head where they'll distract her, right?


So, that's two out of five Shadows House episodes in this order. I think you all see what I mean about there being too many questions and not enough answers for me to do much analysis yet.

One thing I do wonder, though, is if the significance of each Shadows being a literal "shadow" of their appointed doll with an identical silhouette, combined with the dolls having a kind of positive, non-parasitic identity that the Shadows lack, is pointing at something Hegellian? The slave, ironically, having a more self-affirming existence and in many ways more freedom to be themselves than the master, making the state of mastery a kind of negation of the self. The slaves suffer for always needing to deal with the ashes and soot, but the masters spend their lives so completely covered in it from head to toe that there's little else left of them.

I feel like it's playing with something along those lines, but not exactly that. I'm not sure what, or how, but something LIKE it.

In any case, I definitely am wondering if the Lord Grandfather (who pretty much has to be some kind of eldritch abomination) has been capturing human children and splitting them into "doll" and "shadow" halves to create a two-tiered society of minions. There are just too damned many hints for this to not be at least *close* to what's going on.

Profoundly weird show, but so far I've enjoyed every minute of it. I might have more to say after the next pair of episodes.