Anime Hajime (Dubbing): Ghost Stories

Series Synopsis

As a child, Kayako Kamiyama (voiced by Marcy Bannor) exorcised the many ghosts haunting her school. Since then, twenty years have gone by and sadly Kayako has passed on. While preferring female partners, Kayako did swing both ways and has left behind her two children, the rude and bossy Satsuki (voiced by Hilary Haag) and the rather slow Keiichirou (voiced by Christine Auten).

The siblings move to their mother’s hometown to attend the same school she once did. Over the decades, the old schoolhouse that Kayako did battle in has become abandoned, but rumor is it remains exceedingly haunted. Plus it’s a piece of s@#$ so most people don’t want anything to do with it.

On her first day, Satsuki meets the perverted and self-proclaimed ladies man Haijme (voiced by Chris Patton), the radical right born again Christian Momoko (voiced Monica Rial), and Leo (voiced by Greg Ayres) the Jew. They all get dragged into the eerie dilapidated building after Keiichirou loses his pet cat Kaya, who he brought along because again he's not that bright.

Inside the dark, decrepit walls of the schoolhouse, like no joke this place ought to be condemned, it turns out that the rumored hauntings are indeed true. Instantly the kids are pursued by the terrifying and smart ass spirit known as Amanojaku (voiced by Rob Mungle).

Their plight seems hopeless until Satsuki discovers an old diary containing instructions on how to put the powerful spirit to sleep. The kids successfully stop the raging demon, but with his ancient seal destroyed, he is forced to possess Keiichirou’s cat, Kaya; a twist that is annoying to all involved.

After a moment to catch her breath, Satsuki discovers that the diary she found was actually written by her late mother when she was a child. Thinking the ordeal is over, Amanojaku gleefully reminders everyone that there are still nineteen episodes to go and due to recent urbanization plans to build over priced housing in the area, the seals Kayako placed have been broken. Now it is up to Satsuki and her friends to fight the many dangerous ghosts before they can hurt anyone. Or something like that.

Series Positives

I just couldn’t help myself; curiosity got the better of me.

The original Ghost Stories, which was only five reviews ago, is definitely one of the best horror anime I have come across. Then to hear the English version was nothing like that, my intrigue was certainly piqued.

While I won’t say that this will be the only time I’ll be looking at the English dubbing of an anime, I don’t think it’ll be that common of an occurrence. I am one of those viewers who prefer the original Japanese voice acting; subtitles are honestly not that big of a deal, I don’t why some people think they are.

In this case though, I was too tempted to check it out and I’m glad I did. This is a good interpretation of the same source material. Where the original is a benchmark for horror, this one does a pretty excellent job as a comedy.

The Dubbing

The main reason I have a problem with dubbing has nothing, or usually nothing to do with the English voice cast; albeit sometimes the picks are quite awful, but that’s a rant for another time. No, the actual problem is that translation is usually not one to one. Thus, when an English voice actor says a line, it is clear that the line spoken wasn’t meant for the character who said it. “What the hell does that mean,” you may be wondering.

Think of any great song from any language. It sounds as good as it does because the instruments, the melody, and everything else are perfectly balanced to produce the best possible product. A song’s lyrics play a key role in this because they are meant to have a poetic spin to them and thus do not follow the standard rules of basic speech. If you take a beautiful and meaningful English sentence and translate it into another language, there’s no guaranteeing that same effect is going to be there. In fact, it’s almost certain that it wont be.

This is true for dialogue as well. Every anime I have seen, to some degree, have lines or make references to things that would only make to someone who is familiar with Japanese culture. These types of nuances are insanely hard to get across to an audience of a different cultural background. And if a dubbing doesn’t take that into account, it sounds weird. This is true for any show from anywhere in the world in any language.

I hope I’ve made it a little bit clearer as to why I tend to stay away from dubbing. Now why do I even say all this because it seems like I’ve gone way off topic. Kind of yes, but there is a point. This version of Ghost Stories gets around all this complexity by forgoing the translation part.

The reason why I was not only able to tolerate this dubbing, but actually enjoy it was because these were English lines said by English speaking actors. The situations felt more natural. I was able to retain my suspension of disbelief because my ear could accept that whenever a character spoke, they genuinely said their line in the language spoken.

There was actually a running joke when someone would throw in a random Japanese word. They were always appropriate to the situation, but they sounded f@#$ing weird.

Atmosphere

Before you decide to watch Ghost Stories you need to make a decision. Do you want to laugh or do you want to be scared? What I like about this version is that it gives you that choice. It’s the same exact story, with the same exact characters in the same exact situations. You are not going to be missing anything if you choose one over the other; for the most part, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Ghost Stories, both of them, proves the importance of atmosphere. You can take the same idea, but deliver it in such a way that changes the experience. All of the scenes and all of the episodes that scared the s@#$ out of me the last time were instead really funny.

In fact, what made this viewing even funnier was when it called out some of the bull crap from the original. It was never mean spirited, but it was personally gratifying when I got the chance to say, “Yah see, that was f@#$ing stupid wasn’t it?”

Series Negatives

I think this is the place to answer the ultimate question, which version is better? That's easy, the original Japanese.

Although I said the dubbing was good and the show did mitigate the majority of the issues I have with dubbing, it didn’t fully eliminate them.

You’re going to think what I'm about to say is obsessive nitpicking on my part, and you would be right. I couldn't get past all the small audible ticks a character would make. Things like um or gasp or what ever nervous fidgeting is because I don’t know the onomatopoeia for it. Stupid, small and insignificant, I get that.

That being said, I actually do have a real gripe with the series.

Constant Comedy

This version of Ghost Stories is trying to be different. It’s taking something that was scary and making it funny. It does this well, but that’s all it ever does. It doesn’t take a break, it doesn’t stop. In fact, whenever the first off color comment is uttered in an episode, it’s like releasing the flood gates.

In the beginning this wasn’t a problem because it was still a novel experience to see scenes that I knew as creepy be flipped upside down. But then it got old. Soon the rate of jokes went full automatic. By sheer volume alone, there a lot of jokes that worked. Conversely, there was also a lot of s@#$.

Then there were scenes that didn’t need to have a laugh, but all the characters spoke in one-liners. For instances, one of my absolute favorite scenes from the original was when Satsuki found a letter from her mother. It was a very touching moment that got me a little teary eyed, and I’m convinced that this version could have lightened the mood a little bit and still have kept the heartfelt nature. If I were to tell you the amount of drug related, homoerotic, and race charged jokes that were in this one scene alone there’s no way you would believe me.

Then it got to the point where the humor stopped making sense and was starting to feel forced. The last few episodes in particular were full of fourth wall breaking jabs, which were getting on my nerves due to their frequency. A reoccurring element involved the characters commenting on how the story and plot wasn’t making any sense. At first it was cute, but then it would stop. I eventual had to ask, are you still joking or do you really think none of this makes sense. That would be silly if it were the latter because the reason the plot doesn’t make sense is because you skipped over the entire point of the episode so you could tell a dick joke.

I understand that this version wanted to be its own thing. However, it could have pulled back and given a little bit of character development, heart, or even scares and still have kept its comedic integrity. The original Ghost Stories managed to gives a range of emotion and remain predominantly horror.

By the end of the show, the comedy was a little exhausting.

Final Thoughts

In retrospect, this may not have been the best series to marathon. Maybe had I given myself a break, the comedic aspect would have retained for a bit longer. But in the end it doesn’t matter because I did enjoy this version of Ghost Stories.

I said it earlier, do you want to laugh or do you want to get scared. Ghost Stories, both iterations, are well worth a look. They do their own spin on the same material and give two different, but enjoyable experiences.  

For a little bit of truth, I never thought would I would be reviewing, let alone recommending, a dubbed anime; that is of course it didn’t contain the words dragon or ball in the title. 

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