So Monster High is one of those franchises that Ive always wanted to get into but could never find a good entry point. Ive been working in retail for pretty much my entire adult life and for a pretty good chunk of that time I worked almost exclusively in the toy department. During that time I bore witness to countless toy lines some of which would go on to have long life spans others of which fell by the wayside. One of the lines that I found the most interesting however was Monster High which was like Bratz except they werent boring and had more than one gimmick and personality trait. I thought they looked really cool with their alternative fashion designs and different monster personas and I always enjoyed opening up a shipment box to see which creative new characters and designs I was going to add to the mod. Well they were mostly creative. Id love to meet the Mattel employee who came into work hungover and wrote down Venus McFlytrap in order to just collect their check and go home. In any case I never actually bought any of the dolls and it wasnt because I was safeguarding my masculinity or anything... Lets face it what masculinity? One of my favorite anime is called Princess Tutu who the fuck am I trying to impress. No it was because I prefer to collect solidmold showaccurate merchandise that look cool on a shelf and toys where you have to brush their hair and change their outfits never really appealed to me. No shade intended if thats your thing. I watched the first 23 minute special... Im sorry Movie... And while I didnt like it I thought the theme songhttps://www..com/watch?v=nGawAhRjtoA was really cool. I kinda fell off and didnt make anymore effort to break in until the year I started writing reviews again when I watched the Monster High anime and while I ultimately placed it on my back burner I knew I would review it eventually. Well its 2025 the year of eventually and I figured it would be a great addition to my Cute girls doing spooky things theme month but I still didnt want to approach this review from the perspective of a complete outsider because I didnt think that would be fair. Thankfully there is plenty of Monster High media to choose from nowadays and while I had no idea where to start I had to pick something to watch in preparation for this review. I wound up choosing the 2022 Nickelodeon cartoon solely for the fact that it looked like the closest thing the franchise had to an official series. I had no idea it was a reboot. I had no idea it was the third generation. I had no idea this franchise even had generations. And I especially had no idea that it would be fucking awesome. Im not kidding when I first looked up this series on Paramount Plus I thought it would be extremely bad and that I was just going to submit myself to a couple of episodes of modern day Nicktoon cringe just to get the gist of the franchise but instead I wound up binging two whole seasons in a week which is something I havent done since My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. Its funny its creative its smartly written I like all the characters and its pun game is strong enough to put Squidgirl to shame. The more I learn about this franchise the more it occurs to me how perfect it would be for a Japanese audience. Its a slice of life high school series about monster waifus. Thats about as anime as a spiky haired teenage protagonist who sits in the back by the window and has a female childhood friend whos hopelessly in love with him. Thus it really strikes me as odd that there IS a Monster High anime and it only got eight 4minute episodes. This leads me to the property Im actually reviewing which is titled Monster High KowaIke girls and Im sorry it took me this long to get to the point but another fact Ive discovered is that theres no quick or efficient way to talk about Monster High. Its a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole and thats just where you start. KowaIke Girls was produced by Shogakukan Music Digital Entertainment whose resume seems to consist of a lot of titles Im personally unfamiliar with as they produced the animation for the extensive Duel Masters franchise as well as doing music work for shows Im a bit more familiar with like Pokemon and Hayate and CG animation for a bunch of anime that occasionally needed that kind of animation to be spliced in. They mostly seem to focus on childfriendly properties that are highly commercial and sell a lot of toys but its hard to put them down for that because KowaIke girls looks pretty damn good. At first glance there is kind of a look of cheapness on the surface as it seems like the characters were animated using Flash so there is kind of a stiff marionettequality to their movements but its largely forgivable. In the 2022 show they used a sort of 3D animation that was tweaked slightly to give it the appearance of stop motion and in a similar vein this animation does make the characters appear more dolllike. Besides even if the character models themselves move a bit stiltedly there are a ton of really beautiful effects layered over them from their intricately designed and flowing outfits to the occasional environmental effect. Also the color palette is extremely pretty and the characters are all really fun to watch as a result of how their color schemes make them pop on the screen. The occasional CG effects are also blended into the 2D environment so well that they can be pretty easy to miss which shouldnt be surprising given Shogakukans experience. I thought it was also really interesting how each character takes a different approach to the infamous anime expressions and mannerisms... For a couple of examples Frankie being really blushy Draculaura cycling through all of the extreme countenances that emojis are made out of and Cleo doing that really haughty and pretentious villain laugh. As for the cast they really only focus on eight characters... The main cast is made up of Frankie Stein Draculaura and Clawdeen Wolf. The supporting characters are Ghoulia Yelps and Lagoona Blue with Cleo De Nile as a sortof antagonist and Abbey Bominable and Spectra Vondergeist basically reduced to lategame cameos although Spectras plot was a pretty fun idea. There is nobody else. No male characters just those eight and their pets. Its hard for me to judge how theyre portrayed as I havent really done a deep dive into generations 1 or 2 just yet but they mostly seem very gimmicky... Draculaura and Cleo probably have the most defined personalities with Draculaura being the most openly emotionally expressive and Cleo playing your basic egotistical bully archetype. Clawdeen and Lagoona kind of got shafted as all Clawdeen really does to set her apart is obsess over eating meat like Luffy and Lagona is just a wideeyed space cadet who is always applying skin lotion to herself which makes me miss the adorable chomping addiction of Honduran Lagoona. I like what they did with Frankie and Ghoulia though. They play up the fact that Frankie is only two weeks old by having her constantly ask what basic concepts are and she mimics anyone her thread becomes attached to which is a very funny gag. Ghoulia cant talk her owl talks for her while she just falls over which can also be funny. These gags arent outliers either this ONA can be downright hilarious at times. The humor is fastpaced there are constant background gags you have to pay attention to and the casts monstrous traits can be played up in some very inspired ways... Unfortunately theres little to no depth to it. This ONA doesnt really have anything to offer other than a series of quick bite sized chunks of comedy featuring the infamous monster girls and while it doesnt necessarily need to have anything intriguing or thoughtful to say the shallow nature of the material can render it a bit empty and boring on rewatch. The short length of the series both in terms of episode and series length is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it suits the pacing of the comedy and each episode is over and done with before it overstays its welcome. On the other hand it feels like a lot of more interesting ideas and expansive content is left on the cutting room floor and the episode ideas they came up with dont hold up to very much scrutiny. You know that old cartoon trope where a character thinks everyone forgot their birthday only to find out at the end of the episode that their friends were just planning a surprise party for them all along and the audience figured this shit out long before they were supposed to because the idea is overdone as fuck? Thats the final episode of this ONA. Thats the note they went out on spoiler warning I guess. But the bigger problem I feel is one thats not really the ONAs fault. Remember Im coming at this anime from the perspective of someone who has already seen the Nickelodeon cartoon and this is a problem because basically everything this ONA does is something Ive seen done better. Every single character presented in this anime is someone who I personally liked a lot better in the newer version. Ive seen so much more depth and complexity in their individual personalities and in their relationships to each other. Ive seen this world explored to a much more satisfying degree. Does that make KowaIke Girls bad? No not by any means but I am struggling to figure out what purpose it has. Dont get me wrong I have some idea of why it exists... Monster High is apparently popular in Japan and there was a planned toy line tiein that ultimately got scrapped or so Ive heard. But who is this for specifically? I could see the original generation 1 and 2 animated features being enjoyed and treasured by their target audience. Hell the Japanese fans themselves would probably rather watch these features dubbed into Japanese than watch this ONA. Id personally much rather recommend the 2022 show to any actual modern day adults who are curious about the franchise. KowaIke Girls just seems to exist as a very curious novelty which is saying something for the Japanese adaptation of an American property. Its not substantial enough to be accepted as an adaptation that explores a beloved franchise in a new light like the RWBY and Suicide Squad anime. Its also not enough of an embarrassing train wreck to gain any ironic infamy like the Rick and Morty and Powerpuff Girls anime. If it had been given more time and money and a real chance at being a legitimate anime series it could have realized its potential to a much more significant degree... Or it could have been exposed as having no ideas of its own that were strong enough to support a longer run time. The world will never know which of these camps it would have fallen into. As it is its fine. If youre curious about what a Monster High anime would look like its not a waste of your time. Its cute its well produced and its funny enough to leave an impact in the little time that youd spend watching it and if youd like to do that its up for free on . I give Monster high KowaIke Girls a 6/10