#89: Ghost Stories (2000-2001)

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Director: Noriyuki Abe

Screenplay: Hiroshi Hashimoto

Based on the book series by Toru Tsunemitsu

Voice Cast: Tomoko Kawakami as Satsuki Miyanoshita; Kumi Sakuma as Momoko Koigakubo; Takako Honda by Hajime Aoyama; Makoto Tsumura as Leo Kakinoki; Kurumi Mamiya as Keiichiro Miyanoshita; Ryusei Nakao as Amanojaku

Viewed in the Japanese language version with subtitles

Synopsis: In an idyllic Japanese town, Satsuki Miyanoshita moves into her new home with her father and younger brother Keiichiro. Her mother, passing away at a young age, was a gifted exorcist of ghosts and demons who captured them in various parts of the town as Satsuki learns through an old notebook she finds in an old schoolhouse. Unfortunately, as construction begins around said town, these beings start to escape and she has to take over her mother's task; all with the assistance of the cocky neighbour Hajime Aoyama, nerdy ghost enthusiast Leo Kakinoki, the meek older girl Momoko Koigakubo, and a demon named Amanojaku who has ended up possessing the body of her pet cat.

It took over four months to finish all twenty episodes of Ghost Stories, which I confess was laziness on my part. Immediately though I can explain as well this was due to the one issue with Ghost Stories in terms of its structure - that the series was clearly never meant to be marathoned, and that for a more family friendly audience in tone, it is a spoiler when you realise your cast (always at the centre of the ghost threats) will never be harmed or get even in more than mild peril until the ending. This is an issue in Eastern and Western storytelling which is going to sap tension to everything, a vast difference to anime horror series based on an anthology structure, where a central character is usually an outsider whilst the stories are depending on episode specific figures that can be written to have good or bad endings without restrictions. This was a frustrating aspect that contributed alongside my aforementioned laziness in the long time viewing the series.

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Passing into the early 2000s where computers were used to make animation, it has aged with the simple colourful look, the world an innocent one which just happens to have death and monsters. Death itself is occasionally talked about in depth and an important aspect of Satsuki's back story with her mother, one of the few plot threads whose ghost is both revealed to be possessing the character of Momoko, never attempted to be obfuscated for the viewer, but also having in one of the more effecting moments part of talking about death as a natural state with a semblance of weight. It does it a lot better, for example, then one episode that concludes in a monologue about the circle of life but after a young girl resurrects a school rabbit by voodoo doll only for it to become a were-rabbit, and not the nice Aardman Animations version either.

For most of it thought, it's the equivalent of a ghost ride, one which has an unintentional humour in how easy it is for the junior ghost team to come across them but still about chills for thrills in the outcome. Ghosts in this world have moved online or possessing the radio studio in the school, they're headless gang members on motorbikes, or Beethoven like psychopathic pianists, which I have to admit at least kept things unpredictable even if the plots were usually the gang of leads, together or in character specific episodes, accidentally coming across peril. It has some ghoulishness but for the most part, it's not dissimilar to the Goosebumps book series in the West by R.L. Stein that I grew up with. In fact, if it wasn't for the reoccurring jokes about Hajime constantly seeing Satsuki's underwear and her to constantly chastise him for it, or the little bit of blood which is more appropriate, this would easily play on Western television with a little bit of censorship.

Incidentally, before someone asks, this review is entirely about the original Japanese dub version, aware that Ghost Stories' legacy is entirely about the infamous ADV English dub. The series flopped in its home land, arguably why it has the unconventional twenty episodes length rather than the usual twenty four or twenty six. As long as the character names and plotting were the same per episode, ADV were told by the series creators, Pierrot and Aniplex, to do what they wanted to this pre-existing turkey as it was already viewed as a failure, ADV turning it into an intentionally comedic dub that took the piss out of the material and deliberately went for offensive jokes. It was improvised greatly but noticeably it's also a dub directed by Steven Foster, one of the most divisive English dub directors in existence for his notoriously "loose" translations of the original Japanese scripts.  The little I have seen sides on profanity, incredibly dated jokes in the George W. Bush era mocking Republicans and Evangelicals by turning Momoko into a mad Christian zealot, and frankly a tone that might be insufferable to see all twenty episodes of even if they cast a favourite voice actress of mine Hilary Haag, when I used to like English dubs, as the lead. The first episode, to its credit, is interesting but whether it sustained a full show is an issue with this official parody dub.

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The Japanese dub version as it is was fine, only with the paradox that this team of reoccurring leads is both a hindrance and a virtue, on the short term repetitious in plotting but in virtue in how I grew to like these characters. In general, it's hard to kick to the curb a show, for all its low production value and moments of stumbling, when it's this innocuous. If it wasn't for the few inappropriate things, it would be a show for a kid which is charming. And in terms of the story of the lead's deceased mother, there's even an episode that actually tries tugging at the heartstrings. Eventually the repetition is just an excuse to focus on a cast who are significantly more naive; the paradox is compounded that due to the cast, characters more likely to be afraid and lost in the scenarios around them, it should arguably make the material more logical in how they react to it all in spite of the series' problems.

One good move, that does help, is that the story includes an actual demon in Amanojaku, who is at heart eventually going to love them as a group but is a mischievous figure, one who will help but only when he's bothered, and is compounded by the fact that he's stuck in the body of a cat after the end of episode 1. Like any Japanese horror anime, unless it's to do with vampires and Western tropes, I'm immediately going to be intrigued as they'll be showing Japanese mythology in all its idiosyncrasies even if the screenwriters were making stuff up; if Ghost Stories had expanded episodes to multiple parts, like Satsuki becoming involved in a group of girls involved in black magic, the series might've found a bit more meat to its bones without sacrificing the tone.

Beyond this, the only really ridiculous aspect is that end credit song, infamous in itself (Sexy Sexy by CASCADE) because of its highly suggestive lyrics and a chorus including the lines "sexy, sexy", a song that has become an earworm for me and is fun, but is in the wrong show even if (again with the paradox) it adds to the personality. Sadly the reason Ghost Stories is known still in the West, and deserving its own review, is that infamous English dub that has overridden the original version in niche anime culture. Whether that version is better for me or not depends on actually viewing it all; in the original Japanese version, I'm always going to have a soft spot for anime horror, not matter how many flaws Ghost Stories ultimately has.