Important note: This should come as no surprise, but I watched and will be reviewing the famous English dub of this anime. 'Cuz who gives a damn about the sub? Certainly not the Japanese licensors, which is why they allowed what happened to happen in the first place. Lol. So what I could gather was the actual plot of Ghost Stories is that it's basically about a girl, along with her brother and friends, finding out their ex-homosexual mother was the ex-principal at their school's old building, and that she did a lot of work with ghosts before she died. In her work, she learneda lot about what the ghosts were, and how to put them away so that they would stop being problems for the humans who attend the school. And then after the old building gets abandoned, ghosts haunt it, and the main characters have to put them away, often using the information that their mom gathered. And no, I am not breaking the MAL rule of summarizing the story because I am giving the perspective of someone who watched a different script from the one used in the synopsis.
FULL DISCLAIMER: I am not saying that any of the character traits mentioned below have any sort of causation or correlation between each other. I promise you that I am just giving an overview of the characters. Anyway, the main character is Satsuki, who is the daughter of the aforementioned ex-lesbian principal. She is probably the closest one of the main cast to normal. And then there are the four deuteragonists: Keichirou, Hajime, Momoko, Leo, and Amanojaku. Keichirou is Satsuki's retarded, dyslexic brother that is also incapable of modern human speech. He has a signature scream, and he can occasionally manage to bust out a sentence or two. Hajime is, is... yeah ok I kinda lied because he's also kinda normal but I guess he enjoys bullying Keichirou and he sometimes gets horny. Momoko is a homophobic born-again Christian who used to be a junkie slut. She also knows Satsuki's and Keichirou's mother, from working in the conversion camp where the principal was turned straight. Oh, and of course, she hates Muslims and thinks all Jews are going to hell. Which leads me straight into her perfect foil, Leo, who is a horny Jewish loser. Throughout the show, Momoko keeps trying to get Leo to convert to Christianity. The two of them honestly make a perfect foil. I really couldn't name a better duo if I tried. Then there's Amanojaku, who is a tsundere cat possessed by a demon who does nothing until all of the characters are in big, bad, trouble. I got no clue why he's the most favorited character in this anime because he's definitely generic af and the least funniest, but whatever I guess. Just another day on MAL.
The comedic aspects that Ghost Stories are known for is actually mostly character-based, instead of just offensive statements at random. Yeah, go figure. That's probably why it took me four episodes before I could really start to get into this show, and appreciate/laugh at the jokes. But even then the jokes don't always land. In fact, they don't land nearly as much as I expected from watching funny clips compilations on YouTube. This was actually surprising to me, because I cracked the hell up when I watched the out-of-context clips on YouTube. You also have to have an understanding of American culture in 2005, the year the anime was dubbed in English, to understand a lot of the jokes too. Like there's a running joke throughout the show where characters reference Christian Slater's dead career. Who the fuck is Christian Slater? I was a little baby zoomer back in 2005. Ok but it's kinda ironic that the joke is about his career being dead and I don't know who he is. 😆 At least Imma smort American zoomer who knows about stuff like Condoleezza Rice, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh I guess. To get back on track, if the jokes don't hit, then there's not really much enjoyment to be had with this show because the story definitely won't hit. Monster of the week type beat with no consequences at the end of any episode. Hell, even the Japanese licensors knew the story was pretty shit lmao no one was paying to watch Ghost Stories. At least the majority of the jokes are based on the stuff in the paragraph above, the offensively humorous character traits.
Art and sound are pretty standard I guess. Nothing special. Funnily enough however, the script is self-aware of its animation errors during some scenes. OP and ED are pretty banger too. Moreover, I was impressed with Greg Aryes's performance as Leo, because normally I cannot stand his voice. But I have a newfound respect for him after hearing him nail so many Leo lines, and even more after knowing that the voice actors' scripts were actually their own improv.
Ok people of MAL: listen up because based daddy Bengofo boutta bust out some truth. Aight. You ready? Here goes: The most important aspect of anime is enjoyment and there's this mystical thing called subjectivity. In the end, this magical element of enjoyment composes 100% of what influences my score on an anime or manga. And you know what? I had quite a moderately good enjoyment of Ghost Stories. So I give it a 7/10. But don't take that the wrong way; usually a 7/10 from me would still be recommendable, but I don't recommend that you watch this anime in full by itself, to be honest. Since the story is boring and many jokes don't land, I genuinely think you're better off just watching the funny moments compilations on YouTube because then, if you don't find a joke funny, it'll fly right by you as the video goes onto the next clip.
Now what even happened for Ghost Stories to get the dub that it did? Well in my amateur zoomer research, what I discovered was that no one in Japan gave a crap about this anime so sales were very low. As a result, when it was handed over to ADV for them to dub it in English, they were told to basically do whatever the fuck they wanted with the script as long as they kept the characters' names the same. And so, the voice actors decided to do offensive improv and got paid for it.
Tl;dr: Some funny character based comedy that doesn't always land. Have an understanding of American culture in 2005 if you want to watch this, which you shouldn't do in the first place. Just watch funny clip compilations on YouTube. Many of the jokes are still incredibly funny even without the context of the situation.
