Tasokare Hotel Anime First Impression Review (Spoiler‑Free)

A girl wakes up alone in a featureless desert. The last thing she remembers is collapsing on her way home, then darkness. In front of her is a single sign, telling her to turn around. Behind her, rising out of the dirt, is a single building. It is an old style hotel, sitting in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, she has arrived in…

The Twilight Between Heaven and Hell

So is the introduction to Tasokare Hotel, a successful free mobile mystery game that is getting an anime adaptation released on January 3rd of 2025. Known for its fun characters and interesting story, the anime is set to run during the winter season.

At the border between the living world and the afterlife, there stands a hotel bathed in perpetual twilight. This is the Tasokare Hotel, an in-between place where those who have suffered death or a catastrophic accident end up to regain their memories and a potential second chance. Through the first episode, our heroine uses clues from the room the hotel itself provides for her to remember her own name: Neko Tsukahara. She doesn’t recall what happened to her quite yet, and that mystery, as well as others, provides the main thrust of the story across the entire series.

For the episode-to-episode plot, each focuses on a new guest at the hotel with their own unique story to uncover. We explore the creative cast of characters from the hotel staff to the guests, each one with their own unique situation and room at the hotel.

The Good

The overall vibe of the series is Death Parade crossed with Danganronpa: The Animation. Like Death Parade, each episode introduces a new character with their own mystery of who they are and how they died. Through Neko, the audience explores how each person got to this point, and when they learn who they are they are able to “check out” of the hotel and move on, either back to the world of the living or heading to the afterlife.

As an anime constructed from a mystery game, Tasokare Hotel also shares DNA with Danganronpa through its mystery elements; each guest has their own room, automatically decorated to provide clues as to what their names are and what kind of person they were in life. As Neko searches through each room, she finds clues for each person and then ties everything together Kirigiri-style at the end.

The mystery is super fun, and the characters are interesting. The heroine herself is likeable and cute enough to hold attention; seriously, when we find out her name is Neko, she has the classic “:3” expression, and wears it often in the rest of the series. The overall personality and classy aesthetic of the series makes for an entertaining enough watch.

The Bad

Unfortunately also like Danganronpa: The Animation, the audience can pretty easily see the skeleton of a mobile game underneath. In the first episode, one of the characters helping Neko find her own name outright says “Let’s look for clues” and a little audible  chime plays whenever she finds something important. While these elements are somewhat inoffensive in themselves, they compound the “mobile-gamey” feeling, along with the pacing and the way the mystery of how Neko died outright stops when she decides to work for the hotel and help others solve their problems.

And unlike Death Parade, the characters themselves are a lot simpler; the guests don’t have the same complex, humanity they do in other stories, and it makes their backstories less interesting as a result. As a mobile game, where the player is tackling an episodic story and playing (or paying) to get to the next part, this makes sense. But as an anime, it’s difficult to keep the viewer engaged without gameplay. While fans of the original game might be charmed by these details from the game, it’s a hard sell for regular fans.

The Verdict

While this show is entertaining enough, it’s an anime that might be more of a recommendation for fans of the original game, and die-hard mystery fans who just HAVE to have something to watch next. A solid mystery for a slow weekend, where you want to relax and watch something cute and fun.

Where to watch Tasokare Hotel

You can watch Tasokare Hotel on Prime Video, YouTube (REMOW Channel), and Plex.

Special thank you to REMOW & White Box Entertainment for providing an advance screener for the first 3 episodes of the series. Receiving this screener had no effect on the reviewer’s opinions as expressed here.

Article Editor: Bill Curtis