Welcome back to another post everyone! And welcome back to another impressions post, basically a review without a score. This time we’ll be looking at the recently released Lore show. For those who may not know, Lore was made by a man named Aaron Mahnke who originally started out Lore as a Podcast series, the series brings about horror themed tales and events but grounds it to reality by explaining the real life scenarios that helped to shape our modern understandings, he represents how our tales of werewolves and vampires originally came about to put it in simpler terms. The series has now become a television series exclusive to Amazon, which came out on October 13th of this month. So I’ll be giving my impression of the show and please let me know if you agree.

*Might be some minor spoilers so please take that into consideration*

The Stories: Lore consists of six individual episodes, each that tell a completely different story from one another. The series is similar to the original Podcast series in that it explains the real history and homages of what is being represented within the stories. The core interest here is how each story is based on fact and, for some of the tales, seems unlikely until you consider the history and setting. Again Mahnke really establishes the importance of understanding the thought process behind these people of the past, and helps us to relate in a sense. There are definitely episodes far stronger than others do to what they are about, but the overall structure and premise is handled with great care in each episode.

If I had to pick my favorite episodes form the first season of this series, I would most likely have to go with the first, fourth and sixth episodes. The first brings about an actual superstition involving the traditions of making sure disease wasn’t spread, and to make sure that the dead was dead. The fourth episode involves a simple seance tale, but it also presents many great and intriguing historical facts regarding fairly iconic people of whom you may not have expected to be involved in such matters. And the sixth is a story involving a very real and famously known haunted doll.

The Look: The series does a blend of both live action and a variety of artistic animations. The animation is equivalent to that of paper mache and cut outs, but particular episodes have their moments of unexpected materials and styles. The look of the live action portions, which mainly take center stage of the series once the stories kick into gear, look really great as well. Each episode has to convey different tones and settings based on the time the story takes place, and luckily each one is unique in and of itself. There is no indication of using standard props or the same filming area for each section, when you are in Ireland you are actually in Ireland, at least that’s the feeling anyways.

The Presentation: Thanks to both the style and great storytelling, the presentation comes off as excellent. The concept of learning the true history of tall tales, or even just determining fiction from non-fiction, can be a situation where nobody is present to care. Similar to an actual history class in grade school, you really have to expand and explore the creative ways of introducing knowledge so that you do not lose your audience to boredom, and it is very fortunate that Mahnke is able to bring in his audience and relate to them so that they can stay invested. It worked well for his Podcast and it works on par here as well.

Overall: If you were a fan of the original Podcast series, or if you are a fan of horror as well as some pretty great historical facts, then this Amazon show is for you. You will appreciate the soft and intellectual narrations of the creator and you will love to see the different short stories unfold. The animations are welcomed to this kind of series and the sounds and facts accompany nicely. Please check out the series on Amazon if you can, you can also check out the Podcast as well as a newly released book, also sold on Amazon.

Thank you for reading this impression, this was a very anticipated show and I’m glad it was just as good as the original material it was inspired from. Check back tomorrow for another creepy post…