Review of Ghost Stories
Looking for Mystery, Horror and Supernatural? Good luck with that and have fun with a different anime. No, really, at best this is a cliche boring parody that’s not even remotely scary. And I’m not necessarily talking about the dub which adds ‘ridiculous’ to the adjectives and pushes everything up to the eleven. It starts with Satsuki Miyanoshita and her family moving to the hometown of her late mother. However the real thing starts when all of the main characters walk into an old school building (for different reasons) which is still on the premise of the new school and it’s closed. Don’t ask why, apparentlythat makes sense in Japan. After being chased by a ghost, meeting another schoolmate and conveniently finding Satsuki’s late mother’s diary about exorcising demons, they accidentally make their cat possessed. Which isn’t half as funny as it could have been. Then relevant plot happens at the very end. In between we have a lot of episodes that follow exactly the same pattern. A random ghost appears, the gang freaks out and doesn’t know what to do and then they magically rediscover mom’s diary that has the answers to everything. They usually rediscover it in Satsuki’s bag or her room. No, they never learn they always act as if they’ve seen the diary for the first time.
It wouldn’t be so bad even if you can tell what’s about to happen all the time if they hadn’t used already overused ghost cliches. Creepy doll? Check. Ghost in a mirror? Check. Headless rider? Check. I could go on and on and I’m certain that with everything I mention you’ll go “Ah, I’ve seen that in ...“. It doesn’t help that when you saw one episode you’ve seen them all.
Characters aren’t that great either and if you’re one of the unfortunate souls that are watching the dub, like me, they’re far worse than bad. In dub, everyone breaks the fourth wall. That wouldn’t be bad if it didn’t happen in every scene done by every character. Although dub does the good thing of making fun of the stupid characteristics and dumb mistakes they make. Like calling Satsuki’s brother retarded or making fun of characters’ illogical behavior etc.. Although the dub overdid it with the constant religion jokes and by ridiculing every single line there was literally no atmosphere. It wasn’t scary because everyone was constantly cracking stupid jokes and it wasn’t funny because they were always about to die… and the jokes were really bad.
Natures of the characters are as bland as their actions. All of them are very old archetypes that don’t even try or pretend to be anything more than that. We have a stereotype female lead, stereotype male lead that, of course, have constant romantic moments but say they hate each other. Then we have a cry baby that doesn’t serve any purpose a latent medium that gets randomly possessed with the spirit of Satsuki’s mother and a spirit obsessed nerd. Anything you imagine belonging to those stereotypes, it’s here.
Animation and sound aren’t the strong points either. They’re both already dated and the sound was very repetitive. Character designs are quite dull too. Although I don’t think the animation was particularly bad it was really underwhelming. Everyone froze while talking and in movement in vehicles there was an obvious repetition to scenery. The ghosts were trying too hard to be scary and turned out to be a mash of “seen this” and “what the hell?” and not in a good way.
I have to say that this is one of the few shows I really wanted to enjoy but couldn’t. partly because the dub is seriously horrid and partly because the story writing isn’t any better. At least the dub made me laugh here and there unlike the plot. The plot almost did too a few times. But I was too distracted by the infinite plot devices and plot conveniences that I couldn’t laugh. Too bad nothing got really explained. You just get hurled into a slow and boring roller coaster that makes repetitive up and downs then quickly kicked out at the end and the roller coaster closes. For good. With no refund.
If you are new to stories about ghost, this is a must see. It’s a perfect introduction where you don’t have to worry about being distracted by characters or plot and you have time to digest all clichés and overused ghosts that go with the genre. You might even laugh. But if you are actually looking for something scary and you are a busy person that’s very picky about their anime. Don’t bother. It’s not worth your time.