Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Yes, even for this franchise, there are some creepy things happening. This is particularly prominent with Garupa PICO! subseries, which has several Darker and Edgier episodes, AND deaths. note
Examples outside of Garupa PICO!:
- Although for some it's somewhat comical and funny, Tae’s expression after hearing the news of Space closing down in the anime's 1st season, in Episode 10, is rather unsettling
◊. - The entirety of The 6th Afterglow event in-game. The atmosphere is creepy and tense the moment girls first step foot into their school after hours.
- Moca mentioning the ‘Seven mysteries of Haneoka’, each a chilling tale.Moca: There's the midnight piano, the moving anatomy model, strangers in the mirror, the extra staircase... The sound of basketballs in the gym, the well...
- You might have noticed that that’s only six mysteries, and you’re right. Moca doesn’t remember the seventh. She remembers it later, however. This happens right before an unseen presence rushes at Afterglow, they all scream, and the screen turns white.Moca: They say the ghost of a student prowls the halls at night, looking for someone to play with, and playing pranks on people...
- Somebody unseen mimics Tomoe’s voice, leading to confusion and fear from the five girls.
- The girls start singing one of their own songs, and the piano inside the school’s music room starts playing along...
- The fact that the story doesn’t even end with Afterglow all making it out of the school, making how they did a mystery.
- The mystery of the well turns out to be Nightmare Retardant in the Cursed Well and the School Spirit event. Turns out the ghost in the well is just Kaoru, and the story of the ghost pulling students into the well at night was just Hina tripping and falling into the well, bringing Kaoru with her.
- Moca mentioning the ‘Seven mysteries of Haneoka’, each a chilling tale.
- This Lisa card◊ is more than a little unsettling, what with her empty eyes and pale gray skin. This is because in the "Terrible Horror Night" event, it is revealed she is the true identity of the rumored ghost girl in red clothing at CiRCLE's rehearsal studio.
Examples in Garupa PICO! (season 1):
- The first episode right from the start has the start-up build of a rainy day at CiRCLE, with a thunderstorm, the inside of the building without lights and creepy music, and each band is dramatically revealed with the expressions (though it is a little scary for the cases of Pastel*Palettes and Hello, Happy World! members). Some can see the point and think the entire Garupa PICO is significantly Darker and Edgier and will keep the tone for the entire series. Some of the members have somewhat unsettling expressions when showing up with their names and epithets.
- The sixth episode, and Hello, Happy World!'s first dedicated episode in the series. Towards the end of the episode, it is revealed that the Misaki is possibly lost in the Michelle land, and Kanon is really worried about it. Given that a lot of Michelles are in the amusement show, and the Michelle walking out at the end of the episode walks away slowly while not revealing specifically anyone inside the bear costume; For some fans, they consider this as the series' first actual "death".
- The ninth episode, although starts light-hearted and cute, has Rimi's obsession of eating chocolate oronets gets revealed and out of hand, on the third day, she eats a snail that she mistakes for a chocolate cornet, and turns into one herself, starting with her arms, then. Thankfully, it's just a dream, but the cutesy art style and Junji Ito-esque story make for a rather unnerving mix.
- Even before that, Tae says (while making a surprisingly unnerving face and pointing her finger) that if Rimi keeps eating chocolate cornets, she would turn into one. At first, Rimi (along with Kasumi and Saaya) laughs about it, but after what happens above, Tae expresses regret that she only meant it as a joke and didn't expect that this actually jinxed one of her bandmates and her friend.
- And there's this Twitter post from Rimi's VA that takes the summary of the episode's heart-breaking scene as a Madness Mantra.
- The 11th episode has Misaki's parachute unable to come out after skydiving from a presumably very high altitude before falling to death. But like her implied demise from five episodes earlier, Misaki gets better.
- Right after that is the 12th episode's scene of a prayer ritual to Babano-sama to cure Ran's cold sickness, courtesy of Moca's idea. To some, it looks like as a ritual sacrifice, and they're sacrificing their childhood friend.
- The 14th episode has the entire Hello, Happy World! hiking a mountain while it's snowing, and at the end, the entire band members freezing to the death on top of the mountain. The lack of the usual ending music doesn't help at all, and is likely by far the darkest episode in all of the Garupa PICO series.
- The 20th episode of 1st season has several elements of a Slasher Movie on a performance show. Right from the start, it is revealed that Tomoe's been kocked out unconscious. The girls cannot call the ambulance because the phone line is unavailable. Then, Ran leaves the house, presumably freezing to death (since there is a blizzard outside of the house) claiming that she has rehearsal. Later, it is revealed that Eve, Marina, Himari, and Kasumi are also knocked unconscious, leaving with only Ako and Rinko. The latter smacks and knocks out the former with no warning, revealing to be the true culprit behind almost all of the girls implied deaths, all while apologizing for knocking out her closest and best friend that trusted her the most.
- The 23th episode has Maya telling a ghost story, which spooks poor Eve. Eve bluffs out saying that she's totally fine, complete with her voice cracking, to try to convince her bandmates to shift the topic away. Then Hina proceeds to continue the trend of the others telling more ghost stories, with each ghost story resulting in Eve being horrified, and in Chisato's case, the ghost story was so scary that it not only scared Eve, but also the others. Eve covers and hides herself in the bed. Chisato starts telling another superstition that weird things such as objects suddenly moving and the lights suddenly going out. Right when Eve tries to deny that, she gets interrupted mid-sentence as the light turns off, and the other girls disappeared from the room. Eve really freaks out this time. The other Pastel*Palettes girls revealed that this was a prank, but after this point, Eve had enough, and starts swinging out a katana ("to exorcise evil spirits") at her bandmates, this time they're the ones who are actually terrified of Eve herself. Let this be a lesson to know for these girls: don't try to exploit Eve's fear of horror stories.
Examples in Garupa PICO ~ OHMORI (season 2):
- Remember how the original Garupa PICO had the opening scene of a rainy, stormy day in the Live House ''CiRCLE'' with the lights out, and girls making a dramatic entrance? Episode 7 of OHMORI repeats this, complete with the entrance of RAISE A SUILEN members breaking through the windows of CiRCLE (with Mashiro and Tsukushi's shocked expressions, and Tsukushi narrates their introduction dramatically). "The CiRCLE Pentagram" appear slowly coming from downstairs, in a similar way how Roselia made their entrance from below the stairs.
- A minor and humorous case of this in Episode 2 when Poppin' Party struggles with getting to agree on an idea for a menu item for Saaya's bakery. Tae has a similar unsettling expression not unlike in the first season of the main anime. Then the camera cuts to Rimi, who also has a depressed expression, saying that she can't think about any more ideas (although the English subtitles says "No thoughts. Head empty."). The background music during both of those scenes is also quite gloomy, as well.
- The first scene of episode 11 reveals the girls are in a pitch-black dark place. Everyone is also revealed to have bumps on their heads, implying they had bumped their heads on ceiling walls. While it doesn't last for long, MASKING eventually finds out that she and everyone else in the Tsurumaki's family Submarine, including: Himari, Maya, Rimi, Hina, Yukina, and Kokoro herself, are stuck in the middle of Antartica, implying that they freeze to death.
- Episode 19 of OHMORI has Mashiro got lost on a station in because she was asleep. She calls the rest of Morfonica about her situation. There were no trains coming at all, there is nobody in the station. The station she's in is known as the "Murasawa" station. Nanami says that there's an urban legend about people who get off an abandoned station and try to return by following the rails back go missing. It is implied that a train got to pick up Mashiro, but the rest of Morfonica hasn't gone anywhere. The phone communication with cuts off, implied that Mashiro is lost after the call has ended. The rumor itself is based on the Japanese urban legend of the Kisaragi Station, and it is implied that Mashiro got lost exactly in the same way as the girl in that urban legend.
- Episode 22 of Garupa PICO, while not as dark as the above example, has a few share of it's own: The start of the scene depicts Arisa in a sihoulette that makes her look menacing; Tae's weird explanation about chocolate cornet pointing north by Hooke's law, but later the cornet spins and hypnotizes Rimi into thinking she is a cat; and although they only appeared for a while, PAREO and CHU2, who has been trailing Poppin'Party (the latter wasn't even aware of it), got tangled up in vines of massively overgrown plants in the jungle that covers Arisa's home.
- Althrough brief and minor, there's also a moment in Episode 23 where Aya tries to invoke and overcome her fear of scary stuff by taking a walk to a haunted tunnel at nighttime while streaming and holding the selfie camera phone upside-down. She eventually pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
Examples in Garupa PICO FEVER! (season 3):
- During the middle of episode 2, Poppin'Party members have to hike down from the mountains while the weather gets foggy. They keep hearing strange sounds, superstising what would be the source of these sounds, and later, the rumbling sounds leads them into start running away, and everyone is scared (except for Tae, who keeps a calm face, at least for a while anyway), making guesses of what is the possible source of scary sounds. It eventually leads into Arisa tripping over a tree root, causing a chain reaction of the girls grabbing (and being grabbed) by each another, forming up a human wheel, that rolls down through the mountains and crash. It is revealed at the end that these sounds come out from a figure that they thought is a ghost, turns out to be Michelle, who is seen punching a tree.
- Episode 10: the book that Ako found (which turns out to be Mashiro's notebook) during some scenes is depicted with the dark aura, and is implied to be the dark secrets. Ako takes a fascination when found out said book, and at one point while she's reading it the aura also spreads into herself. When Ako refuses to give the book back to Mashiro, the former dares the latter into reciting a verse from "The Black La Vie en Rose". As Mashiro recites that verse, she emits the same dark aura similarly to the book. Mashiro's own voice while reciting it is also fairly creepy. This event alone reveals Mashiro's own Hidden Depths: her subtle, otherwise subtle Chuunibyou side to come out.
- Episode 11 has Mashiro's own question being ignored by her own bandmates, and she starts worrying that she would've get replace, shipped into an underground labor camp, and she would have to fight for her life against fearsome beasts. Even though she is a worrywart, these thoughts are terrifying. Thankfully, it doesn't last for long at all.
- Episode 14, however, is one of the few Darker and Edgier episode amongst the otherwise more light-hearted third season:
- Roselia members enters a haunted mansion as their "training camp". From the start, there are unusual noises being made (some of them even scared Lisa, as she's the most easily scared amongst them) Then Yukina, Lisa, Ako and Rinko look out for the seemingly missing Sayo. Yukina discovers a hidden door by the dumb luck of standing against a statue and her body's weight pushing it.
- The room turns out to be dark, there seems to be blood in the room and someone, though it turns out to be Sayo, eating potato fries because she got hungry, though the initial reveal of her face qualifies as a really scary moment itself, complete with red Glowing Eyes of Doom.
- The kicker at the end, the camera cuts to Ako and Rinko, followed by a cut to the outside of the mansion while it's still raining, and a scream while the letters "Fin." in spilled tomato sauce (the same as what otherwise appears to be floor on the floor from earlier) appear with crumbs of potato fries falling nearby the sauce. At least unlike the original's episode 14, it cuts to the usual ending theme of FEVER.
- Episode 15 naturally has these, as the episode has horror movie stories as its central theme, although parodied.
- The opening begins with a scene based on Friday the 13th where a woman panicks when noticing the axe of a lookalike of Jason (with a hockey mask) breaking part of the wall, with the woman screaming as the screen cuts to the word "END" (this time in actual blood) appears. Then, the camera reveals Rimi and Nanami, the resident Nightmare Fetishists of the cast, and talking about horror stories and making up two different scenes on a horror story.
- The first one has one of the two friends being knocked down by the "killer" (also wearing a hockey mask). The victim is Tae, the witness is Kasumi and the "killer" is Arisa, though it ends in a plot twist that Kasumi gave a Bear Hug to Arisa anyway (owing to the once-a-episode running gag of Kasumi hug-tackling Arisa like the previous two episode, that is lampshaed by Rimi saying that Kasumi has always been like that).
- The second scene is a re-enactment of The Ring: two girls (Mashiro and Touko) witness the TV's bad signal, revealing the spirit (played by Tsukushi) is about on the way to come out of the television in similar way to the original story, although it also ends with a plot twist: someone else (Rui) took the remote and "turned off" the TV, causing the spirit/Tsukushi to be stuck with only her arms and half of her upper body emerged out from the TV. She remains that way at the ending scene.
