Halloween 2024: Catching Up With
Shinbi's House Favorites!
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
An entire three years ago, I discovered Korea's hit horror "anime" Shinbi's Apartment, also known as Shinbi's Haunted House. After reviewing the first episode and the app game, I was so in love with the franchise that I dedicated 31 days to reviewing its coolest ghosts in more detail, which you can begin reading HERE!
...But the series has kept going, and episode clips eventually make their way to the youtube channel. It may have unfortunately taken three years, and it would still be difficult to give the newer episodes reviews as complete as I once did, but I can certainly take a moment to share with you a handful of my top favorites since we last left off!
So I guess what we're doing here, instead of busting ass to meticulously comb through all the content we've missed, is dropping by on our old pal Shinbi to ask how he's been doing!
ORIGAMI GHOST
The very first episode of season 5 is also a great ghost to kick this off; look how positively HORRIBLE its creations are! The ghost itself appears as just a pale, sharp-toothed, long-haired woman with many arms and legs, but she has the power to flatten people out like paper and fold them into origami minions. Their facial features, scrambled across the different folds, look positively horrified and in constant pain as she forces them to do her bidding, and she can fold them down further into tiny, red origami cranes to store in a jar she carries around!Her true identity is just a little girl, Hyomin, who suffered from an unspecified chronic illness. Unable to play with other children outside, she took up origami as a hobby, and made only a single friend, a boy named Ji-won. When Hyomin was scheduled for a particularly risky surgery, she folded a thousand paper cranes for Ji-won as a symbol of good luck and a promise that their friendship would never end...but Ji-won soon stopped visiting, afraid to say goodbye in the event she passed away. Twisted by rage, her spirit now sought to "make friends" - and another thousand cranes - out of anybody she could catch.
COOKIE MAN
This one has an especially creepy behavior pattern, using the smell of sweets to lure children into a bakery truck where they find piles of the most delicious, irresistible cookies and pastries. These are, of course, terribly cursed, and the hypnotized kids transform into anthropomorphic cookies themselves as the Cookie Man absorbs their souls! His design is just a massive, beefy chef made entirely of cookie dough and sugar crystals, with horrible shattered looking sharp teeth and a hilarious vanilla frosting mustache.You might think this is another human ghost with a sad backstory, but surprisingly enough, it's categorized as an "evil spirit" or "demon;" the Cookie Man was apparently always the Cookie Man! ...Why though?!
CANDLELIGHT GHOST
Actually another demon! Candlelight Ghost is a giant figure of melted wax with big, clawed hands, multiple burning wicks, empty red eye sockets and a dripping, toothless mouth, pretty much what you expect of a candle themed demon. He encases people in wax, of course, to make into candles, and is actually one of those ghosts kids can summon by simple ritual to supposedly answer any question.BLACK KRAKEN
An octopus ghost! Literally! The ghost of an actual octopus!! In spirit form it has a gaping mouth ringed with teeth, two siphones and five human-like eyes in a slimy black head with multiple blood-red horns. It spews filthy, toxic black water, it can camouflage itself, and it can imprison people in large octopus eggs! But why does it exist, and especially, why does it haunt an apartment complex nowhere near the ocean?It turns out Black Kraken was once a normal octopus found by a little boy at the beach, who brought it home and bonded with it as a pet...but only briefly. The boy fell suddenly ill, and during his extended stay at the hospital, the neglected and forgotten octopus died. This alone isn't what its spirit is angry about, however; it's upset with the boy, yes, but it also still loves him, and it alone understands why its human friend got so sick: a property manager who cut costs and neglected to clean a horribly contaminated water tank.
MANDRAKE
This one starts out with a fairly classic mandrake design; a fat little humanoid vegetable with empty holes for its eyes and mouth, big green leaves on its head, all-around pathetic and hilarious looking. But it cries and wails exactly like a human baby, and it seems a married couple feel compelled to take care of. Hey, wait a second! That's the fairy tale of OTESANEK! Cool!! And like its inspiration, "Mandrake" grows rapidly larger and hungrier, until it's devouring everyone in sight. Soon it takes on a more monstrous, tentacled appearance with a tooth-filled mouth and a flower on its head, and it even turns people into wood-skinned zombies that willingly join with it....Otesanek, however, was the story of a couple who wanted a child, and couldn't conceive. Shinbi goes darker, of course, by revealing that the Mandrake is the ghost of their dead baby.
BLOCK MASTER M
...Wait, isn't this guy from DELTARUNE? Block Master M - as the English translated wiki calls him, anyway - is a black and purple jester with a simple, noseless white mask, glowing eyes and a crescent smile that's all pretty damn stylish! He can also grow bigger, his mask stretching out a little into more monstrous jaws when he gets pissed off enough. He exists in a video game world of his own design, hence his initially pixelated appearance, trapping people in an unbeatable labyrinth full of deadly traps that imprison their souls in the game for all time.This spirit was originally a gamer kid, of course, but he also wanted to be a developer, unperturbed by either the negative criticisms his project kept getting or the disapproval of his parents. But before he could ever fully complete his first game, an electrical fire broke out in his house. Partially thanks to his hyperfocus, and partially thinks to a sweet headset he was wearing, he didn't notice until it was too late. It's probably one of the least dignified deaths in the series, but it's still pretty sad, and all he wants as a ghost is to prove how great his game is!
SOCCER MASTER
So this ghost possesses soccer equipment, initially haunting a set of shoes, and lends his energy to soccer-playing kids while slowly taking over their bodies. Once he has total control, he bulks the host up into a clawed, black skinned demon and covers over their head with a haunted soccer ball, giving it a big fangly mouth and a single eye! The result is surprisingly really cool looking, very "MADBALLS"-esque, and I especially like the purple flesh filling the pentagon-shaped eyehole.He was, of course, once a kid who truly loved the sport, or at least felt like he needed to prove his skills. After suffering a major injury, he only downplayed it, insisted on playing anyway, and pushed himself so far that he just plain dropped dead in the field. Ouch.
GAS MASK SIBLINGS
These are three ghostly children with sick as hell black gas masks, and three different gimmicks! One can generate blinding, choking smoke that even forms mirages, one has tubular sleeve arms that act as flamethrowers, and the girl has a sonic scream! Their story is surprisingly pretty simple, however; they lived together in an orphanage, or something like that, until it caught fire and the roof caved in on them. They believed their teacher had abandoned them, unaware of how hard he had tried to find and save them in time. As ghosts, they actually prey on the curiosity of ghost-hunting children by generating internet videos of their own haunting activity. They're youtubers!!! Don't they know how much money and fame they could have been earning, instead of just trying to kill people?!
LAMIA
This is the big final boss villain of the fifth season, but we're going to look at her halfway through because the rest of the ghosts here are seriously that good. Lamia is cool as hell though, not to mention PRETTY. She's a tall, frightening, clawed woman with pitch black skin, but with stark white hair and mostly white clothes with blood red accents. She also has white bandages covering her eyes, splotched with blood, and if you weren't already swooning, yes she also has sharp teeth.Lamia is a "Reaper of Disease," and believes humans have "sickened" the world for long enough. She unleashes a supernatural contagion that gives people painful, swollen red eyes, fatigue and delirium, hospitalizing thousands, until she finally collects their souls to serve as an army of evil spirits. There's also something or other in there about infecting the entire moon and making it crash into the Earth, sure, why not! You can do whatever you want ma'am c:
CUPID
Of course Cupid shows up eventually, as a malevolent demon. His design is so 1990's Deviantart it hurts; a purple skinned elf boy with black eyes, white hair, giant black and white angel wings, a heart-tipped devil tail, horns, clawed feet, fangs and horns. I'm just surprised he doesn't have two different eye colors.In the world of Shinbi, Cupid is a rotten little creep whose arrows will give someone a horrifying stalker-obsession with the object of their affection, and even a bit of ghostly possession, as the girl he afflicts gets big, freaky eyes and jagged teeth. She also obsesses over the geeky kid I kept making fun of in my reviews; I love the crappy cake she tries to force him to eat, completely plastered with photos of him that probably aren't even edible. Haha.
SMILER
Speaking of Deviantart, or these days Tumblr I guess, you KNOW this guy would have a fandom if this series ever broke its containment. Smiler is a blue-skinned man held together by stitched, in a pink and purple suit with a top hat, and usually wearing a smiling, yellow mask. His true face is noseless, with luminous yellow eyes, black eyelashes, a slashed looking Joker grin and a really long, dangly green tongue, again, perfectly formulated internet sexyman material.Smiler has just the persona to match the design motif, too; a zany, sadistic demonic entertainer! We can assume he's been around a lot longer than digital technology, but by the time he crosses paths with Shinbi and his friends, the entity resides within cellular phones, presenting cruel and twisted prank challenges to popularity-obsessed children. He can even manifest through emojis!
HELL TRAIN
A more modern twist on a ghost train, specifically a subway train! Its front has been distorted into a black metal skull, and the lower jaw is split like insect mandibles, though dwarfed by the much larger, tooth-lined, glowing mouth in the forehead! It's a simple design principle, but gives the whole thing an awesome demonic worm sort of feel. It's one of those haunted trains you might accidentally board, if you aren't careful, and it'll not only take your soul....but burn it as fuel!Surprisingly, it's actually the soul of another dead child, and the story of how he died isn't all that deep. He sprained his ankle, fell onto the subway tracks, and you will absolutely never guess what happened next.
"ALIEN" GHOSTS
NEAT! This ghost consists of two things, and they're both awesome: one is a purple and white space alien combining all sorts of classic space alien aesthetics; its four opposing sets of teeth are reminiscent of Predator, its elongated dangling cranium is a like a floppier and veinier Xenomorph, it has typical big giant oval-shaped Grey Alien eyes, sucker-tipped digits, and also a surprising degree of Frieza from Dragonball Z in the mix; a similar color scheme, large round holes for ears, and the same segmented purple thingamabob on its forehead.The other component of this ghost is the alien's "ship," a blobby, fleshy, organic flying saucer with mechanical tentacles and a single eye! The two collectively constitute the ghost of a kid who was teased for his UFO obsession, and tragically fell to his death while trying to get photos of a shooting star.
Killer Boat and Swamp Twins
This one's just AWESOME! We get two different flavors of swamp monster in the same episode: one is a pair of algae-dripping ghouls with big, round, glowing red eyeballs and the other is an entire moss-encrusted boat with a giant shark-like mouth and a pair of giant arms with clawed, webbed hands! These spirits terrorize a campground that enforces a number of cryptic rules, including to never, ever pitch a tent near the water.So, of course the Swamp Siblings are a couple of dead kids. It's almost always dead kids. But what about the boat? That's actually possessed by the souls of both parents! The entire family was swept away and killed when a dam broke, and of course the damn dam broke because management kept putting off having it inspected. Not only are the spirits holding a grudge over their avoidable deaths, but they're stuck haunting two different forks of the same river, and can't rest until they're reunited.
Snail Spirit
This lovely spectral gastropod looks almost more like a nudibranch than a snail, if not for the shell of course. It oddly has a white mane of fur surrounding its small, dark head, which features brightly luminous eyespots, two glowing eyestalks and a cluster of oral tentacles. In addition to spewing slime, it can also manifest tons and tons of regular snails! It is not, however, the true antagonist of its episode; it's merely trying to call attention to the real threat!SNAIL BRIDE
....Yes, that real threat is another, totally different supernatural snail! This one is a blobby, dripping, grisly meat-colored beast with a lipless toothy mouth, a pair of gooey hands with slime-spewing suckers in the palms and and pupil-less red eyeballs in her fleshy stalks, a positively cool as hell design and another instant favorite of mine! You will however also notice the little boy trapped in what is basically some sort of kangaroo pouch on the snail monster's underbelly. This is a very weird, also very funny problem for a little boy to have, but you know there's a tragic backstory here.This ghost was actually a mother who lost her child a couple of centuries in the past, and was stricken so mad with grief that she tried to take someone else's child as a replacement, a routine her ghost continues to repeat. Why a snail, though? And what's her connection to that other phantasmal mollusk?? Evidently, the woman showed kindness to an actual snail in her final few moments on earth, moving it out of the sunlight before she died at the bottom of a well. Her compassion for such an insignificant little creature was a moment of divinity that elevated the garden snail's soul to a guardian spirit, but the sorrow of its human savior would transform her into a more twisted reflection of that final memory.
Can you believe we get TWO snail monsters in this series, at the same time, with completely different but equally rad aesthetics? And one of them's even a big giant horrible monster mom! Hell yeah! For those who remember this from our past reviews, yes, the series still gives every single monster a funny little recap song. I didn't have the energy to gather every single one, but, here's Snail Mom Ghost:
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