Sakura no Mori

When his parents are killed in a plane crash, Shinji Fukigami is left with the ability to see devils. That's already a rough deal, but things get worse on the day he finally confesses his feelings to his childhood friend Madoka — she's murdered shortly after, and the peaceful town of Sakura no Mori suddenly has a very serious problem on its hands. This 2-episode OVA from 1999 is adapted from a visual novel, and it leans hard into that DNA. You get a mystery setup with supernatural horror threading through it — think less 'cute ghost story' and more psychological dread with some genuinely dark imagery. Shinji teams up with four other girls to investigate the killings, and the whole thing carries that late-90s eroge atmosphere where the story is actually trying to do something narratively before the explicit content kicks in. If you've watched things like Bible Black or Discipline: The Record of a Crusade and appreciated when these kinds of releases actually bother building atmosphere and tension, this one scratches a similar itch. It's not going to win awards for animation — the AniDB notes on this are honest that it's mostly pans and zooms — but the story has enough of a hook that it doesn't feel like pure filler between scenes. Going in expecting a moody supernatural mystery with erotic elements is the right frame. Expecting high-budget visuals is not.