Anime Review: Ghost Stories (Dub) originally Gakko no Kaidan (School Ghost Stories)
After the death of her mother Kayako, Satsuki Miyanoshita moves to her parents’ home town with her father Reiichirou and little brother Keiichirou. The children are to be enrolled in the new elementary school which was built right next to the creepy and decrepit old elementary school building. Living next door to the Miyanoshita family is obnoxious boy Hajime Aoyama, who will be in the fifth grade with Satsuki.
On the first day of the new school, Keiichiro has brought along his cat Kaya. It gets spooked and runs away into the old school building. The siblings are joined by Hajime, his occult research fan buddy Leo Kakinoki, and sixth-grader Momoko Koigakubo, who met Satsuki’s mother when they were both in the hospital. The old school building turns out to be heavily haunted, and the children commence screaming in fear and running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Eventually it turns out that most of these ghosts and spirits were sealed away into “spiritual sleep” by Kayako when she was in elementary. Urban development nearby has destroyed most of the seals, thus the current infestation. Fortunately, Kayako left behind a journal with explains how she dealt with most of the ghosts. The fear eating demon Amonojaku is defeated but as a side effect, he’s now possessing Kaya’s body. Now the kids will have to listen to him snark as they face down other ghosts!
This 2000 anime series adapts the popular in Japan book series Gakko no Kaidan by Toru Tsunemitsu. These are collections of urban legend-style ghost stories popular among middle school students and other schoolkids. For the purpose of the anime, they just all happen to one group of children. The original version is mediocre to okay, depending on the episode.
In 2004, ADV Films got the American dub rights, and that version was recorded and released in 2005. It’s not clear if ADV was given free rein for a loose translation or if the director just decided he didn’t like the original scripts, but it became a gag dub. The storylines were kept the same, but characterization was exaggerated or distorted, and many many more jokes put in.
In the dub, Satsuki is even more short-tempered and insulting, Keiichiro even more babyish, and Hajime even more of a horndog. Momoko is recast as a fundamentalist Christian who will not shut up about it, and Leo adds Jewishness to his oddball traits. Amonojaku stays about the same, an evil, sarcastic fellow trapped in the body of a housecat (the dub voice is deliberately like Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.) And everybody makes a lot more early 2000s American pop culture jokes.
The humor is hit and miss. Many of the pop culture references are dated. The “meta” jokes about the fact that they’re in an anime series gets more frequent as the series progresses. (“It’s the final episode! Does this mean we could die?” “Well, there’s no sequel!”) It hearkens back a few times to the era when dubbed anime would try to pretend it wasn’t taking place in Japan. The jabs at fundamentalists and the Bush administration never get old.
On the other hand, there are a lot of jokes that come off as racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or just plain crude. Most of these have aged badly.
Honestly, Amonojaku is the best character.
Content notes: Some blood, several people die, including one suicide. Rabbits also die in one episode. In addition to the stuff mentioned above about the jokes, there’s a considerable amount of salty language in the dub. (More like eighth grader vocabulary than fifth grader, but concerned parents think you should never talk like that at all.) Hajime likes looking at girls’ underwear. (This is a trait he has in the original.) Amazon rates it between 16+ and 18+.
Overall: This is part of the American anime fan’s heritage, and was notorious in its day. If you can handle the offensive humor, there’s a lot of good jokes too, and some middle of the road plots. Recommended primarily for nostalgia purposes.
