screen where entrails should've been visible. In the case of "Corpse Party: Tortured Souls", the title alone brazenly declares that it has torture, corpses, spirits of the dead, and raves. It's practically OBLIGATED to be a gruesome splatterfest, PG-13 be damned.At first glance, though, it might seem like the odds are against that. There are primarily three sorts of people who would watch this anime: unassuming strangers who want to see high school students get abused by ghosts, unassuming strangers who are squeamish to blood and don't yet know that this anime will feature high school students getting abused by ghosts, and fans of the video game it adapts who want to see their favorite high school students get abused by ghosts, this time animated. However, said source material, Corpse Party (...Blood Covered: Repeated Fear) is a handheld video game that's developed by a rather small studio. So visually, what it can show is inherently limited to pixelated guts and the occasional artist CG. To amend this, the game mainly relies on its excellent audio and writing to convey its horrors. In many ways, reading a lengthy description of a torture scene, alongside the horrifyingly realistic screams of the talented voice cast, is a lot more effective than flatly 'showing' what takes place. To add to that, "Tortured Souls" is actually the second OVA based on the franchise, the first one, "Missing Footage", being more of a trailer. Despite being an OVA and therefore being more immune to censorship than television broadcast series, Missing Footage ended up being censored all the same.So, taking into account the style of horror displayed in the source material, which is unsuitable to be imitated properly in an animated adaptation, and Missing Footage being an unfortunate display of censorship, there should be no reason to assume Tortured Souls will fully live up to its title. There shouldn't be, and yet, well......Corpse Party: Tortured Souls ended up being, quite simply, a slasher film in animated format.Does it live up to its title? It damn well surpasses the title, as it's not called "Corpse Party: Tortured Souls: Eyeballs Being Skewered by Goddamn Scissors: Now With 50% Less Innards". Basically, they did not hold back. The very concept of "holding back" was brutalized as much as the show's main cast. The result is nothing short of a 2 hour guro display of high school students being violently executed, fitting squarely into the genre of "Slicing of Lives". No censorship whatsoever; no hopes or dreams, either.Without a doubt, the brutality and even the plot-induced psychological despair deserve some respect for how unadulterated they are. Of course, like quite a few other Japanese horrors, it relies on vaguely sexual gore and excessive violence more so than the "don't look behind your back!" sort of subtle scares (or God forbid jump scares), accomplishing a result that's more 'disturbing' than 'scary', but it executes the former absolutely splendidly while still retaining aspects of the latter. And yet unfortunately, there's still something besides that to be desired, something that's perhaps only noticeable while having the source material as a point of comparison. The more 'refined' elements, the ones that aren't judged by the amount of spleens visible to the naked eye; that is, the characters themselves, and to a lesser extent the plot in general.Alongside its more subtle direction of horror, the main protagonists in the video game were more than just slaughter material for the villains. In classic utsuge fashion, all the characters that end up dying horribly are to varying degrees likable, given background, motivations, something to make you care for them. Unsurprisingly, though, Tortured Souls ended up suffering from the bane of many, many video-game-to-anime adaptations: time constraints. Jamming lengthy stories into 12 episodes- or in this case, only 4. The characters have been reduced to the absolute basics of what their personalities should consist of. However, unlike most cases, there was a way to make the best out of this predicament, and that was intentionally shifting the focus from the characters to the beheading thereof. It took a more "western" approach to horror, one that doesn't try to make the viewer particularly empathic or attached to the characters, essentially amplifying the raw horror and gore aspects at the cost of the emotional and heartbreaking ones. To this end, the characters were more than just "reduced to their basics", and some of them were altered to act in a stranger way as part of the process of shocking the audience- for instance, altering one of the characters' deaths from a suicide to an armed fit of madness, in the process getting quickly killed by another character.On the storyline front, the premise is as simple as always. A bunch of teenagers and a teacher accidentally perform a ritual that transports them to the cursed Heavenly Ho- I mean, Tenjin Elementary School, in which dying means experience the pain of your death for all eternity as a soul (a 'tortured soul', if you will). While the plot unsurprisingly progresses a lot quicker than usual and several minor and major plot points are different, none of this is exactly noticeable without being familiar with the source material- which begs the question, does it really matter? All things considered, the result in question is by no means bad. Shallow, arguably, and perhaps even disappointing in some aspects. But 'bad' would be far too much of a stretch. Looking at the production values, most everything is pretty good- sure enough, the animation for most 'normal' scenes isn't the best Studio Asread has produced, especially considering that this is an OVA and not a television broadcast, but the, uh, 'raunchier' scenes are done well and are pleasing to the eyes. In as much as decapitation is capable of being "pleasing to the eyes".And as the "Party" in the title promises, the soundtrack is great, albeit primarily recycled from the game. The voice cast is terrific, featuring good ol' Pikachu as the main antagonist, and A Certain strangely familiar scientific pairing among the main protagonists. The opening song performed by resident cast member Asami Imai is likewise superb, and the cast's performances are enough to make all the gory scenes disturbing even with the screen turned off. All in all, the audio is very splendidly done.And so, the main drawback lies with the characters. Even while being a stranger to the franchise, it's easy enough to see that neither the protagonists nor the antagonists are particularly deeply thought out, to the point where it's hard to see them as being a lot more than a hunter and its prey, both serving as the 'trigger' for the violence to occur. But had I been a stranger to the franchise, I would've by no means expected anything really beyond that from something titled "Corpse Party". Considering this and the dramatically different ending, the best way to enjoy Tortured Souls would be to treat it as a standalone creation. This way, Corpse Party: Tortured Souls is a very welcome addition to horror anime, and makes for a great anti-censorship statement, and an example to be followed.On the other hand, if you find the notion of panty shots flashing directly before the violent mutilation of a schoolgirl to be disagreeable, consider not watching Corpse Party: Tortured Souls, as Corpse Party: Tortured Souls is very, very disagreeable.