Ghost Stories

Synopsis

Ghost Stories follows Satsuki Miyanoshita, who moves with her family to the hometown of her deceased mother. On her first day of school, Satsuki, her brother Keiichirou (a first-grader), Hajime Aoyama (their neighbor), Momoko Koigakubo (an older schoolmate), and Leo Kakinoki (a classmate and friend of Hajime's with a penchant for the paranormal) visit the abandoned school building adjacent the current school complex and discover that the building is haunted.

It is soon after revealed that Satsuki's mother was responsible for sealing several ghosts who haunted not only the school but also the town, which are now inadvertently being released due to urbanization taking place in the surrounding area. Satsuki's mother left behind a book detailing how to exorcise the ghosts once and for all. In her first confrontation, Satsuki faces a demon called Amanojaku, but in the process, he is sealed within Satsuki's pet cat, Kaya. Although Amanojaku does not want to help Satsuki at first, the danger soon threatens to envelop the town and it is left up to Satsuki, her friends, and Amanojaku to stop the ghosts. With Amanojaku's help, the friends finally are able to exorcise the ghosts.

Characters

Satsuki Miyanoshita (宮ノ下 さつき, Miyanoshita Satsuki)

Voiced by: Tomoko Kawakami (Japanese); Hilary Haag (English)

Satsuki moves to the hometown of her deceased mother with her father and her little brother Keiichiro, where she finds that her mother confronted several evil entities that haunted the town, which included Amanojaku, and wrote all her supernatural experiences in a diary, which is entitled "The Ghost Journal". Satsuki is very strong, brave and determined within, but sometimes a bit moody, mostly because of Hajime's reckless behavior.

Momoko Koigakubo (恋ヶ窪 桃子, Koigakubo Momoko)

Voiced by: Kumi Sakuma (Japanese); Monica Rial (English)

Momoko is a sixth-grader and Satsuki's best friend. She seems to fear nothing, even in dangerous situations, and is very brave when it comes to helping Satsuki and the gang confront the ghosts. She also has a psychic connection with Satsuki's mother. In the ADV English dub, she is a born again Evangelical Christian from a posh family, and almost every sentence she utters contains a thinly-veiled reference to Christianity. She mentions that she was a heavy drug user and a sex addict prior to becoming a Christian.

Hajime Aoyama (青山 ハジメ, Aoyama Hajime)

Voiced by: Takako Honda (Japanese); Chris Patton (English)

Hajime is Satsuki's neighbor. He is strong and courageous but has cowardly tendencies. Despite this, he is one of the most reliable of Satsuki's friends. In the ADV English dub, Hajime is a stereotypical anime protagonist with a slightly horny streak.

Leo Kakinoki (柿ノ木 レオ, Kakinoki Reo)

Voiced by: Makoto Tsumura (Japanese); Greg Ayres (English)

Media

Fuji TV, who owned the series' Western distribution rights, approached ADV Films to produce an English dub. Fuji TV allegedly gave the ADV Films staff very few constraints when writing the new version; the only rules were "don't change the character names (including the ghosts); don't change the way the ghosts are slain (a reference to Japanese folklore) and, finally, don't change the core meaning of each episode".

The English dub deviates significantly from the original script. While preserving the basic plot structure and storyline, the new script revolved around topical pop-culture references, politically incorrect gags, and fourth wall breaking jokes about the original show's low animation quality, anime clichés, and poor lip-sync.

The English script was written by Steven Foster and Lucan Duran, but hardly used or followed in the actual production. Instead, the dialogue was almost entirely improvized by the English voice actors, who were told that the plot must hit the same major beats as the original version and the characters and world must remain internally consistent, but otherwise were allowed to say whatever they pleased. According to Foster, whoever showed up to the recording studio first for any given episode could improvise anything they wanted, those that came later had to build upon the tone and jokes established earlier.

On the weekend of 19 August 2005, at the 2005 Otakon anime convention, ADV Films announced a North American DVD release of Ghost Stories for the following October. The original Japanese audio and literal subtitle translation are also included. Volume 1 was released on 22 October 2005.

On 28 August 2013, Discotek Media announced that they acquired the series' license and would release it in 2014 with the ADV dub and the Japanese audio with English subtitles. The complete series was released on a three-disc set on 25 March 2014. Ghost Stories and its dub were also released on the anime streaming platform RetroCrush in February 2021.

Reception

The anime's original run was highly successful in terms of audience and readership ratings. According to Animedia, the series was ranked 9th out of 10 by readers as the most anticipated anime of 2000. It peaked in the magazine's top 10 anime at least twice: it was given the ninth highest audience rating of 11.8% for December 2000, and was given the seventh highest readership rating of 37.3% for episode 8. The series had an overall top audience rating of 14%, which placed it 12th out of 30 when it comes to anime (2000s era) with a rating of 11% and above.

The English-language dub has also received feedback from critics in the field. Dhruv Sharma of Screen Rant praised the characters of Ghost Stories and their developments as "well-written", though he wrote that the animation style was "a bit dated". /Film's Hoai-Tran Bui called the dubbed version of Ghost Stories the "best and worst anime dub", describing it as "raunchy, wildly inappropriate, [and] self-aware".