I don’t tend to review a lot of anime made primarily for the younger bracket. Most of what I look at is at least targeted towards teens, if not Adults. So in some senses I have to really switch gears to look at something that’s clearly intended for more the grade school bracket, such as Ghost Stories here.
All the same, there are some basic fundamentals of storytelling, so I don’t feel I’m really at a loss to evaluate the topic. Especially not when the topic is what it is with Ghost Stories, hooking in to several, well, ghost stories (some of which even an invested westerner such as myself might be familiar with from other sources) to provide a horror-genre show for kids. Growing up in the West, I had things like “The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo”, and there’s a degree to which this is clearly cut from the same cloth.
However, it wouldn’t be entirely fair to judge a show for kids, again especially a horror show for kids, by the same standards used to grade works that are more mature and don’t have fetters placed on them by their audience alone. Because of that, I’ll be once again busting out the Pass-Fail scale for Ghost Stories, with the understanding that it should really be looked at for what it could bring to a younger audience, and that there might not be as much there for adults.
It is important to note, though: I watched this show, as I always try to, with subtitles rather than dubbed. The Ghost Stories dub is infamously unfaithful and according to some reports quite funny on its own, but I’m dealing here with the more conventional subtitled version.
Since the show is also extremely episodic, with many appeals back to status quo, I won’t be going over every single episode, and will instead try to restrict myself to the ones that make a significant forward motion in the story or explore something about the characters.
So, let’s start at the beginning. We follow our main character, Satsuki, as her family moves back to her late mother’s home town, which means she’ll be going to a new school as she deals with her grief. She’s joined by her little brother, Keiichiro, and ends up meeting her new classmates, Hajime and Leo (the former also being her neighbor), and their upperclassman Momoko.
A brief summary of these characters: Satsuki is mostly your typical protagonist fare – she’s brave and kind relative to her peers. At least rather than a lot of protagonists, she’s not a flat character: she has a temper, and could probably be described as feisty, refusing to take nonsense from people.
Which, of course, causes her to butt heads with Hajime, who’s kind of crude and absolutely a troublemaker. He doesn’t think things through, and does seem to enjoy needling people. Despite that, he does seem to have a good heart and will come to the rescue of his friends (including the ones who he might tend to shout at and be shouted at by) should they be in need. There’s some halfhearted chemistry between him and the girls (he clearly finds Momoko pretty and some of his interactions with Satsuki are made to come off as more tsundere-like than vitriolic, especially when he’s typically the first to step up if she’s in trouble) but this is a show with grade-school kid characters for grade-school kid viewers, and one about ghosts and monsters besides, there really isn’t any focus on anything between the characters as such. It’s basically on the same level as most western Saturday morning cartoons, except thanks to different mores we get a running joke of Hajime seeing Satsuki’s panties until the writers decide it’s played out and have the final punchline be her wearing shorts under her skirt one day.
Momoko is… kind of half a character? She’s sweet and meek, a lot like Satsuki isn’t, and while she can usually call Hajime and to a lesser extent Leo to heel without really trying, the big thing she’s got going for her is that she’s sensitive to supernatural influence, meaning that she often doesn’t say a lot as herself and instead provides aid at a critical moment, that aid actually coming from Satsuki’s mom and beyond the grave.
Leo, by contrast, is a full character, if a stock character. He wears glasses, is kind of socially awkward, and tends to know a thing or two about current rumors or, to a lesser extent, genuine ghosty stuff. He doesn’t quite get full know-it-all credit, though, as a lot of the “knowledge of things relevant to the plot” is passed on to other sources. He gets a little bit of a temper in exchange, but otherwise he’s a lot like the nerdy one who wears glasses in Pilot Candidate or the nerdy one who wears glasses in… you know what, I’m just going to say just about everything.
And lastly, we have Keiichiro. If the tag-along kid archetype annoys you, be prepared to kind of hate Keiichiro. And it’s not fair at all, but it is what it is. He’s a kindergartner who just lost his mom, it’s a little much to ask him to be making smart decisions and helping out the way a trio of fifth graders and a sixth grader can do things. But, for most of the show, his role in the story is to whine and/or get in trouble. That’s not to say the other characters don’t have episodes where their pride or prickly natures cause them to be the source of a good deal of conflict (Basically everyone but Momoko takes that role at some point) or that the other characters aren’t placed in distress (They all are more or less often) but Keiichiro gets a lot more and little else, making him basically the Scrappy Doo of this show. At least he gets a couple good notes over the full run.
With that, let’s dig into the inciting incidents in the first episode. After Satsuki and Keiichiro meet Hajime, Leo, and Momoko, it turns out that Keiichiro brought their cat, Kaya, to school because he was feeling lonely. Kaya runs off, as cats do, ending up entering the Old School Building, a classic setting for the paranormal. Once the main characters enter, though, the show decides to go big, and rather than an eerie atmosphere suggestive of a haunting they’re instead introduced to a cacophonous parade of spooks and specters, including classics like the man-faced dog or the haunted anatomical dummy. But, most persistent in its hunting of the kids is Amanojaku, a malicious giant who seems to hate humans but enjoy playing with them. As the group scrambles through the place, they find Kaya as well as an old diary written by Satsuki’s mom, revealing that she faced down against many ghosts herself, and recorded how to seal them. This is the “other source” I mentioned that largely takes the information role when it comes to the ghosts themselves. With a little help from the other side, they find the page for Amanojaku and perform the sealing ritual.
However, it doesn’t quite work right: many of the ghosts that Satsuki’s mother sealed away are running around again because local development has disturbed or destroyed the places they were sealed, including the camphor tree that held Amanojaku and that they tried to send him back to being cut down. This results in Amanojaku possessing Kaya instead, trapping him in the body of the cat until either the cat dies (something that the kids aren’t willing to accept) or all the other ghosts are themselves sealed away. Amanojaku will, from here on, intermittently vex the kids and help them, because he claims to hate humans, certainly likes trolling people, and also on the other hand rather wants to stop being a cat, which he can’t do if some other ghost gets the kids. Keiichiro in particular doesn’t seem to understand the whole ‘evil ghost possessing the cat’ part, and tries to take care of the now-talking Kaya, in the process actually bonding with Amanojaku… not quickly, but eventually over the course of the show, which is the good note that he actually gets, in that at least Amanojaku kind of sells the weird friendship that builds from Keiichiro’s youthful naivete.
That, properly, sets the stage for the typical episode-contained ghost encounters. We find such classics as Akagami Aogami (much less lethal than standard; in this show, people are just dragged to the netherworld, from which they can be recovered, rather than killed by most of the ghosts who actually do things), as well as ones that, while original as far as I know, have a very classic feel to them, like a ghost composer whose episodes leads to a tense yet somewhat humorous (to an adult in the daylight) moment where Satsuki is being stalked by an evil piano. There are also some that seem like either pure inventions or clever updates, like a ghost who once lured travelers to cross the river to the underworld now, frustrated by electric lights and such, modernizing to lure people to the underworld with an evil website (defeated by scanning in a protective charm). I know Japan, not being as shy as the west about mixing modernity and the supernatural, has quite a few “haunted website” stories, but the extra backstory is at least a first for me.
There’s honestly a lot of nice variety in the spooky stuff encountered in this show, as well as the emotions and motion in the plot. Sometimes, a character will be set up for a fall, like with a ghost that makes words spoken come true basically ambushing Leo when he’s performing a role in a school play where his character dies. Other times, you get some very legitimate scares out of atmospheric places, like a trip through a haunted tunnel that forces people to encounter nightmares, or a particularly twisted scenario in a haunted apartment complex. And sometimes, it’s just a monster that shows up and chases people around, forcing them to run. There’s a time and place for everything, from slashers to lingering curses.
But, whatever the ghost, the pattern is pretty similar, experiencing something scary, getting help from any or all of Amanojamu, the book, or Satsuki’s mother through Momoko, ultimately seeing the ghost of the episode sealed away, either forcefully or by resolving whatever business it has. It’s not bad, really, at least not at the level of the intended audience.
One episode towards the middle does stand out. Satsuki’s family visits the hospital where he mother died. The ghost of the episode takes the form of a nurse, and is said to appear to those who will die. It’s identified as a Shinigami (a concept usually translated as “grim reaper”), and the kids are initially afraid that Keiichiro is being targeted to be taken. However, this one, unconnected to the school house, actually isn’t malicious, and is only interested in Keiichiro to deliver a letter from his mother that she wasn’t able to hand off before she passed, proving that this one is a kindly reaper.
Beyond that, the other episode that really bears mentioning is one later on that features a painter ghost. This ghost is unsealed by Satsuki creating a painting for the school art festival, and accidentally recreating the painting her mother used to seal the ghost. Ultimately, the twin paintings function as a time portal, causing Satsuki to go back to when her mother was in elementary school, encountering both her mother and (briefly) her father as peers. For a gratuitous time travel episode, the emotions are worked very well, so that it’s really meaningful to have Satsuki interact with the past.
On the whole, though, there’s not much of a sense of progress to the show. As many ghosts as get sealed, we don’t really come to any sort of understanding that we’re getting closer to the goal of sealing all the ghosts. Honestly, if anything, it’s more like that angle is abandoned since many ghosts are encountered that don’t seem tied to the old schoolhouse, the renovations of the area, or the previous round of ghost sealing.
Despite this, there is one element that does give forward motion: the characters. Though their growth is somewhat subtle, it’s absolutely there. Over the course of the show, Satsuki does a lot of growing up and doesn’t have to rely on mom’s undead training wheels as much, a fact that actually shows fairly well in the episode where she meets her mother in the past. Hajime grows very nicely too, being less of a jerk in general and much less of a jerk to Satsuki in specific. Leo, as something of a more secondary character, has much less of a growth arc, but he still does get over some of his prideful temper. And Keiichiro, of course, befriends Amanojaku. Keiichiro doesn’t really grow through this, remaining the tagalong kid who doesn’t really understand much of what he’s getting wrapped up in, but Amanojaku, surprisingly, gets a lot of growth and development through their bond, going from a nasty ghost feeding on fear to actually a fairly reliable friend to the humans that he likes. Really, the only character who doesn’t benefit from growth is Momoko, who still doesn’t really come into her own when Satsuki’s mom is needed less.
Despite this, the final episode does roll around, with the arrival of a powerful ghost (or evil god, if you prefer) called Lord Ohma, who targets Satsuki in order to get her out of the picture before she can, like her mother before her, become strong enough to seal him away. Oddly, though, the episode mostly focuses on Amanojaku, the fact that he’s kind of happy staying a cat, and a promise he makes to stick by Keiichiro. In the final conflict, while Satsuki attempts to gather her power to perform the sealing, Amanojaku ends up standing up and fighting against Ohma. Amanojaku even has to leave Kaya’s body (which he had apparently long gained the strength to do), cursing that he has to break his promise to Keiichiro in order to save his friends. It’s actually got a great deal of good emotion. In the end, both Ohma and Amanojaku end up sealed (dragged to hell, nearly) and presumably more totally than usual. However, a last scene sees Keiichiro resting under a tree when a strange wind pulls in some of the flowers that “Kaya” said he’d see with Keiichiro, and a hint of sixth sense and a familiar sinister laugh tells us that’s where Amanojaku rests, more or less at peace.
And that’s Ghost Stories. It’s an easy Pass, but to say any more highlights why that’s its grade. For adults, there’s not a whole lot of substance. If you want to be introduced to some Japanese ghost stories, there are probably better sources (particularly text sources) that will explain famous hauntings, urban legends, and supernatural strangeness. If you want a compelling story and strong characters, there are better. It’s entirely watchable, and sometimes even has markedly good moments, but on the whole it’s very average, and probably wouldn’t make its way out of the C bracket. However, when analyzing this as a show specifically for kids, and comparing it to other shows for kids? Ghost Stories is actually pretty darn good. In the opening I compared the scenario to Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo, and while it’s been a while since I’ve seen that show, I remember enough to say that it feels like a very apt comparison, except where this show is actually complete, among other differences. The variety of horror, in particular, is really good. Not every ghost operates the same way or is solved the same way, and the scenarios are pretty much all be in the right band that would be scary to kids, but still ultimately “safe” enough to come back from, so that I wouldn’t worry overmuch about giving out nightmares. Of course, more sensitive kids probably wouldn’t like it, but ones who are fond of spooky stuff could eat it up. So, in context, it would be rated much higher, at least a full letter grade and possibly more.
All in all, you can probably take from that whether or not you’d enjoy Ghost Stories. If you’re in the mood for some horror that’s aimed at children but not so childish as to be unenjoyable, give it a watch. If you’re looking for more, give it a miss.