#49. Ghost Hunt (2006)

From https://res.cloudinary.com/sfp/image/upload/oth/FunimationStoreFront/1308232/
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Director: Rei Mano

Screenplay: Reiko Yoshida and Rika Nakase

Based on the light novel series by Fuyumi Ono

Voice Cast: Kaori Nazuka as Mai Taniyama; Yuuki Tai as Kazuya "Naru" Shibuya; Ken Narita as Koujo Lin; Kenji Hamada as Hōshō Takigawa; Kousuke Okano as Osamu Yasuhara; Masami Suzuki as Ayako Matsuzaki; Nobuhiko Okamoto as John Brown; Rie Kugimiya as Masako Hara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: When she accidentally damages a specialist piece of technology used by a pair of paranormal investigators at her school, sixteen year old schoolgirl Mai is dragged in to help said investigators Kazuya "Naru" and his bodyguard Lin to repay the costs. Their group, first investigating her school, swells up to include an Australian Catholic priest named John Brown, a self professed Shinto shrine priestess Ayako Matsuzaki, a Buddhist monk Hōshō Takigawa and a popular TV medium around Mai's aged named Masako Hara. Mai will eventually become a full fledged member, with latent talents she didn't know she had, as this team stays in this new form to investigate sinister supernatural cases over multiple narrative storylines.

Ghost Hunt was pure catnip. In spite of being pretty conventional in plotting and tone, I confess it's impossible for me to give an un-bias review of this twenty six episode show because I was completely entertained by it. A show which surprising manages to both be fluffy, fun paranormal horror yet delves into surprisingly grisly material the further it goes along. The creation of Fuyumi Ono¹, which had a manga adaptation by Shiho Inada which influenced the animated adaptation, it gladly embraces stereotypes of anime and stock tropes, managing with them to stay breezy and intriguing as it goes along. Structured with one template - the team investigate a place, are violently threatened or injured or possessed, and eventually uncover the mystery - a lot of the series is about its characters' personalities and how they both gel together emotionally and reoccurring jokes about them teasing each other. With a lead heroine in Mai whose the traditional high spirited schoolgirl but is easy to irritate, everyone in the paranormal group follows a stereotype. John the affable priest. Ayako the proud, confident woman who, despite being apparently in her early twenties, has jokes about her being "old". Hōshō, the cool and trendy Buddhist priest who you discover has left his sect in favour of joining the ordinary world. Masako the quiet, modest girl who always wear a kimono, and of course Naru, the mysterious and very young head of the organisation whose salty, almost emo personality makes him more attractive. It could've been tedious to sit through these stereotypes from other anime you've seen, but the combination works.

From http://www.basugasubakuhatsu.com/blog/
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The first reason is actually part of Ghost Hunt's most distinct and interesting personal touches, that in this world these drastically different theological and belief groups can co-operate fully. Christianity, Shintoism, Chinese mysticism in Lin, paranormal science - all of which works together without any conflict and complete cooperation between the members. It's a nice, positive message that never gets brought up explicitly, and poses a really significant issue with the supernatural in this world as it means that a Catholic or a Buddhist exorcism both work as well and depends on what's appropriate to the specific incident, suggesting some complex theological issues where all belief systems exist at the same time. Instead it's about the characters themselves who get along but have various pieces of their background drip fed to the viewer alongside certain emotional issues, such as both Mai and Masako being both infatuated with Naru and about more blunt to each other about this. That this works, without becoming generic, is the second factor in the series' favour.

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The tone is so affable at times its amazing especially with how the series piles on the darkness more and more as the narrative arches, usually three or four episodes, build up. For all the humour its tackling pretty gristly subject matter from the first few episodes on, with only one story openly light and humorous entirely, a one episode tale where a ghost is splashing couples with water in a park out of spite. Even the Christmas story, two episodes long and immediately after, is bleak and involves an orphanage. But it's still within the tone of just being sinister with just some threat. Of cursed schools and possessed dolls.  Then it continues to escalate with the potential of a school's worth of students being sacrificed to ward off a monstrously large hex over an entire academy. But that doesn't top when it gets to The Bloodstained Labyrinth and The Cursed House stories, the last of the series, where things get even more darker for what would be pulp horror for teenagers. Where there's blood sacrifices and characters introduced for those stories will be picked off and killed. It's actually for the series' virtue that, even when it still has the humour and sense of excitement that's from the beginning, that it just pushes up the intensity of the material instead for a sense of escalation. The only real issue for Ghost Hunt is that, whilst it has an ending, it could've easily gone on. Whether it would've succeeded is to debate, especially if it tried to bring in actual dramatic stakes for the central characters, but this is again another series where one is left for more.

From https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/ghost-hunt/images/6/67/
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All the episodes are conventional television anime. Pretty okay, not as elegant in character design as the manga, but it's a series that lives up to being pure pulp. Ghost Hunt really likes to use the "To Be Continued" screen to wrench tension a lot, ending episodes with characters in peril so much for a cheap but effective shock. It's not the pinnacle of horror but I like Ghost Hunt nonetheless. It's visibly fascinated in the subject in all the religious and spiritual topics it takes tangents to explain in detail. How, whilst the heroes are pulp invisible, their stories start from creepy haunted house stories to mass murder and a whole family, one by one, being possessed with homicidal tendencies whilst never ditching the humour even in the bleakest of points. Right from an opening credit track that evokes a Theremin noise amongst its ethereal orchestral music, Ghost Hunt is openly popcorn anime with blood instead of butter on top of it I happened to enjoy.

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(1) Fuyumi Ono by herself is a prolific fantasy and horror writer, also known for another adapted to anime called The Twelve Kingdoms (1992-present). Her husband Yukito Ayatsuji is one of the founders of Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, and whose most well known novel in English would be Another (2009), a horror tale that was adapted both into  live action and a 2012 anime adaptation [covered HERE as Entry #9]. Thus making a married couple who would be fascinating to get together to talk about their work collectively.