#226: Gregory Horror Show (1999-2000)

 

Studio: Milky Cartoon

Director: Kazumi Minagawa

Screenplay: Naomi Iwata

Based on an original premise by Naomi Iwata

Voice Cast:

Japanese Cast:

Chafurin as Gregory; Ayana Inoue as Nurse Catherine (1st Voice); Minako Ichiki as Nurse Catherine (2nd Voice); Nao Nagasawa as Neko-Zombie; Rei Sakuma as Angel Dog/Devil Dog; Yoko Asada as Roulette Boy; Erina Yamazaki as James; Hitoshi Takagi as Mummy Papa; Jin Yamanoi as Clock Master; Maiko Itou as My Son; Masashi Hirose as Death; Mikako Satō as Cactus Girl; Naochika Hayashida as Judgement Boy (1st Voice); Naoko Matsui as Lost Doll; Natsumi Sakuma as Mummy Dog; Ryūzaburō Ōtomo as Hell's Chef; Susumu Chiba as Judgement Boy (3rd Voice); Yoshiyuki Kouno as Cactus Gunman/Judgement Boy (2nd Voice)

English Cast:

Dave Pettitt as Gregory; Chris Simms as Angel/Devil Dog; Elinor Holt as Nurse Catherine; Kris Rundle as Neko-Zombie; Mariette Sluyter as Roulette Boy; Steve Olson as Judgement Boy Gold; Angie Beers as Lost Doll; Brendan Hunter as Judgement Boy; Brett Bauer as James; Byron Close as Hell's Chef; Carol-Anne Day as Cactus Girl / Lost Doll ; Gerald Matthews as Black Duck 1 / Bonsai Kabuki; Jonathan Love as Clock Master / Mummy Papa / The First Main Guest; Keith Hamill as Egypetit / Fat Chicken

Viewed in English Dub

 

Do you know who I am, they call me Judgement Boy!

Gregory Horror Show, when I first of the franchise, was merely a fascinating video game which I never got around to, only to realise a time later it was a tie-in. Ironically it is this game, a Playstation 2 survival horror game, released only in Europe and Japan, which is the first on internet searches prominently, gaining a considerate following despite never getting a re-release. The game, produced by Capcom, a much esteemed company in video gaming history, was a fascinating production, with an idiosyncratic visual style and as a horror game where you have to stalk the bizarre characters of the titular Gregory's hotel, whilst avoiding them chasing you. The anime series, a micro-series of three seasons and one spin-off, is just as idiosyncratic, the creation in premise of Naomi Iwata. A creator of many characters, also children's work, Iwata was even involved with a spin-off in the Pingu franchise called Pingu in the City (2017), a CGI show based on the claymation series that was seen on British television, as it clearly was around the world in various incarnations, about a cute penguin.

The episodes for seasons one and two are twenty five episodes, season three for twenty six and the bonus series The Bloody Karte for twelve, each episode two minutes each however. The first two follow a season long story of a person ending up at a purgatorial hotel ran by Gregory, an anthropomorphic older mouse who barely hides his sinister nature. The first series, the leads both unseen in first person with their voice over, follows a husband with child, a workaholic, who has likely fled from his life to this perverse horror show, the second series about a woman returning from the wedding of a man who broke up with her when she choose her career over an engagement offer. It is clear these reflect real life, even if Gregory Horror Show is an eccentric and ghoulish tale, all reflecting in these characters' average working life, be it the salaryman in the first season, the second in mind to the place of women in work in Japan, that of marriage and children being potential barriers of ever getting to a comfortable place in business.

The horror show itself in contrast, however, whilst with the metaphors being there, is delightfully weird. Alongside being an early attempt at polygonal three dimensional animation, the first noticeable details is that everyone looks like box people you built from cardboard craft designs. Subsequent work, like the 2007 manga Gregory Horror Show - Another World, switched from this aesthetic, but Gregory Horror Show stands out for this cutesy box people style from, especially as it helps paradoxically for a horror tale, in how strange the denizens are, and how more morbid it becomes with this violent juxtaposition. No one is realistically human or even human baring the leads, which is creepy in its own way as much as the cast are the kind you would want as plush toys in a Hot Topic/Blue Banana Goth store, which in itself is a huge virtue to the world building and personality.

This is not a kid's show however, and that has to be emphasised, with the characters even as one episode guests are creepy bunch nonetheless. Gregory himself is a mother's boy brow-beaten by a mother who is stealing guests' souls with the intention of slurping them as a youth formula. Series two introduces James, Gregory's nephew who can be perfectly described in how he is in the game as a mechanic, that he will come to you shouting and skipping about excited when he spots you, which is not good when you are sneaking around or trying to avoid attention. There are a lot of characters throughout, too many to describe, but among the most distinct and found over the series include Catherine, a pink nurse dinosaur who, with giant needles, is not only fixated on drawing all a person's blood out of their bodies, but explicitly has a sexual thrill from this; Neko-Zombie, a horribly scared cat who is chained up near the guests' rooms and is an ally; the candle chef who hates "puff-puffs", smoking in general or anyone criticising his cooking, welding a giant knife; a young girl who is looking for her doll, which is the split personality with its own face; an angel dog who has an alternative devil side; and an assortment of zombies getting drunk in their graves, roulette wheel boys who play dangerous games of luck, a mirror who shows your real self, and even a bonsai tree man who enters your dreams for nefarious means.

One character needing a separate sentence, and part of the clear themes of the show's horror, is Judgement Boy, a sentient floating scale which weighs one's heart with materialism, clearly challenging guests and patrons with difficult moral questions based on their past transgressions as a guilt complex. There will be many Judgement Boys, and Season Two shows their factory/training camp, and they represent the themes of guilt, anxiety of work and life in general. Even the likes of Catherine represent obvious fears of needles, pain and judgement. Considering Death, actually an ally in all the episodes, has the Swedish flag on his hat, clearly a nod to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), does show that, whilst that example is a very silly tribute the Swedish auteur might have never expected, Naomi Iwata  had serious intent behind this creation of his even if mixed with the absurd.

The tone and cuteness helps more too in how the show, episodic in tone but following a progressive narrative of twists and turns in the first two seasons, has aged as early 3D animation. Baring some very dated moments which fulfil my passion for obsolete polygonal animation, it has managed to escape full obsoletion because the art style is deliberately unnatural and like a box character play set. Season Two still manages to get even more macabre than the first, between the more ghoulish content (Gregory getting an axe in his head, an attempting hanging) and the finale involving the hotel being burned down. Even if there is also a cartoonish logic, this is a creepy show of death and the grotesque, more so as it comes clear in the first two seasons the hotel is in a world outside of real life. This show has an existential side to the horror even if you do not find it "scary", with the final episode of Season One showing the real world on camera through real photos, and the drudgery within them, [Spoilers] which leads the male lead of that season to return to the hotel. [Spoilers End]

The third season of Gregory's Horror Show, with the subtitle The Last Train, takes the series in a different direction. Existing in a context out of the first two, Gregory himself is the lead, but he is not in the hotel with his mother. Instead, he is on a train, one which is sentient as he eventually has to communicate to it when things go amiss. Clearly, he is running away from his life, which becomes more increasingly obvious though the series, like before, continuing beforehand with having a gallery of unconventional figures enter through the cars of the train into his path. Moments are overtly absurd, such as that the train has to stop because the ghosts of samurai warriors, who will presume the first person they met is their master and demand orders, have blocked the rails, or that on this train, radioactive and genetically modified peanuts are available to consume even if it recommended not stick to the modified ones. The candle chef is the caterer, killing guests and serving them if they disagree with his cooking, and Gregory just finds himself bringing poison in his medical bag when needing a cure for illness. Like the other seasons, there is barring one cringe worthy sequence, where Gregory is revealed to like hip hop (which is not a bad thing) but proceeds to rap (which is a bad thing), a consistency here only matched by a very abstract conclusion as the others continued with. This has an ending, in another context, which would be called out as being a cop-out, but here makes sense to the series' logic.

The Bloody Karte was the last of these, following instead Catherine, the pink dinosaur nurse whose inability to not try to take all the blood from people is contrasted by her quest for love. For pure ghoulishness, this proved the funniest of the quartet for me, simply because, following the structure that each segment introduces a character for that moment, this becomes a cavalcade of incredibly morbid humour. Whilst Gregory gets off scot free with just being hung upside down in the cemetery off a tree continually, some of the male characters who break Catherine's heart for not being her ideal, or being gold plated rather than actually made from gold, are very dead when she has her revenge on them. It does offer the sweetest of endings, a women running the hospital eventually and bonding in their own world, the season more a series of farces about men in the end, but for pure twisted jokes, this one won me over without being too long to get repetitious.  

The main three seasons had US releases through Geneon USA, the ill fated physical media arm of Geneon who were shut down 2007. Sadly, Gregory Horror Show the series is caught in a limbo and was never re-released. Most likely knows this franchise for that video game which, paradoxically, has the same voice cast in the English dub as the animation, but never got a US release. This is a shame as, without wanting to talk of the video game, worthy of its own time devoted to it, these altogether are a unique piece of eccentric anime horror I was won over with.