Review of Ghost Stories

I have not seen the original version of Ghost Stories and I have no plans to. That's because I honestly couldn't take the story or events seriously now thanks to the English dub. Granted the story is an episodic 'Ghost of the week' type of show so there isn't much story to began with. Ghost appears, Ghost kills at least one person, Ghost is seen or interacts with one the kids, kids try find ghost, Satsuki reads about the ghost, Satsuki traps ghost, REPEAT. I just more or less explained the plot for EVERY episode. Why still watch aside from the comedic dub, for a changeof pace I guess. When your in a plot heavy show their is little to no freedom to skip episodes or start in middle and dart back and fourth while purposely avoiding the first episode to guess the plot/context.

In addition the dub does make the characters more interesting. Making a parent a Lesbian, an adolescent pervert guy friend , a hardcore christian female upperclassmen, and a retarded little brother are just some of the characters that never get developed in the dub because the show is episodic. The exception being the mother of course who is dead (not a spoiler since its stated in first episode.)

The visuals of the show look okay for the time but nothing I would force on to other people to watch just for the visuals. Which the dub does make fun such as the classic 'hands behind head with elbows pointing upward' pose or the 'eyes look like black arches' face. The most interesting animation comes courtesy of the ghosts but as previously none come to mind that were that memorable.

The music might give you the spooks but only if you've never seen anything horrorish, think violins whenever someone's sneaking around mood music. As mentioned above, multiple times, the dub is hilarious and the VA's play around with the fact that their a localisation and not the actual characters, though this third/fourth wall break is constant and therefore not stail.

Its very obvious that I enjoyed this for the dub and the dub alone else I would have given it a 6 or 5 because even though shows like Cowboy Bebop were episodic, they had a noticeable over-arching plot and character development that wasn't left to the end.

All in all, you could watch the sub or the dub since the localisation kept the story the same and has its own comedy. Watch if you need a comedic (or serious) episodic show to take a break from all your plot heavy anime that's taking itself too seriously (or maybe too comedically)