Anime Hajime Review: Ghost Hound

***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Ghost Hound. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

Eleven years ago, Tarou Komori (voiced by Kenshou Ono) was the last victim in a string of kidnappings. The trauma from the ordeal has left him with deep mental scars. Though Tarou was fortunate to survive, his older sister was not. Since then, those haunting memories have fueled countless nightmares.

Tarou has been trying to cope with what happened to him. As well as make sense of one particular side effect. On occasion, he will have a vivid out-of-body experience.

Unsure if anyone will believe him, Tarou tends to keep his ability to himself. Then during one instance, he runs into a young girl named Miyako Komagusu (voiced by Akiko Yajima). To Tarou’s surprise, Miyako appears capable of seeing his spirit form.

Coinciding with this encounter, Tarou’s hometown has been experiencing many strange occurrences. Adding to that, he meets two other people who also have out-of-body experiences. Like Tarou, Makoto Ogami (voiced by Soichiro Hoshi) and Masayuki Nakajima (voiced by Jun Fukuyama) have their own traumatic pasts.

For some reason, the spirit world has grown restless. Someone or something is stirring up trouble. Whatever it is, it could shed light on what happened eleven years ago.

Series Positives

I’ve put this series off for far too long. Ghost Hound has been on my “To Watch” list almost since the beginning of LofZOdyssey Anime Reviews.

With it being the Halloween season once again, what better way to celebrate? With a story of spirits and the occult, could there be a more appropriate way to ring in the holiday?

Of course, it would help if the series in question was good. Something that’s not a problem here. Ghost Hound was solid.

Alongside the all-important horror elements, this series was a breeze to get through. Never did it feel dull or dragged out. For the most part, this show was never rushed either. The pacing was almost always spot on. Don’t watch this one if you need to be aware of the time.

If you pause for any reason, don’t be surprised to learn you have lost a few hours. The story will suck you in that much.

Everything had some kind of purpose. Granted, that didn’t mean there was a narrative purpose. Yet if that wasn’t what was going on, in its place was some kind of build-up to a scare.

And scares were something this series pulled off.

Horror

Ghost Hound was terrifying at parts.

To start, there are other series that maintain a larger, more consistent feeling of dread. For instance, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni seasons one and two. In that story, the feeling of “something is not right” never went away. There was never a moment without a threat. Much of that had to do with Higurashi's juxtaposition of cuteness and derangement.

What this created for Higurashi was an unrelenting sense of unease. There were parts that were hard to watch. But the mystery was so captivating, it was hard to put down. Ghost Hound never reached that level of uneasiness. Except it was no less engrossing.

Ghost Hound’s brand of horror was a much slower burn. There were long stretches where nothing scary was happening. The story focused more on the investigation. What were the circumstances surrounding Tarou’s kidnapping?

There were times when the terror seemed to have been phased out. And that was when this show struck.

Higurashi is a much better series and a much scarier story. To this day, there is a scene from season one that continues to give me the creeps. It is still one of the most unnerving moments I have seen in anime. Where Higurashi tops Ghost Hound is in keeping the tension alive. Ghost Hound's advantage is in the sheer number of creepy imagery.

The opening seconds of this series set the entire tone. Nothing looked right. The dreamscape quality was unsettling. This was then followed by four outstanding episodes that should hook any horror fan. All culminating to the entrance to the abandoned hospital. What happened in there was a little bone chilling.

Another fantastic example involved Tarou’s therapist, Dr. Hirata (voiced by Yoshinori Fujita). A working rule for me is, if there are tiny ghost children running around, I don’t try to find out what's going on. I turn around and go the other way. Failure to do so would induce some kind of cardiac arrest.

What made this series, and Dr. Hirata’s scene in particular, so great was the use of sound. Ghost Hound understood the power music and ambient noise has on fear. This show knew where and how loud sound needed to be. By doing this, any shot can become nightmare fuel.

What Ghost Hound did is something many subpar horror stories don’t get. Sound can be effective when used in the right spots. But it can be as effective, if not more so when it isn't there.

An audible cue releases tension. It's like holding your breath underwater. No matter how long you force yourself, you are eventually going to need to take a breath. That relief from coming out of the water is what a musical stinger can do in horror.

Now imagine if that release never comes. The scare is much more unexpected. You are anticipating some kind of indication. You are waiting for that sign to tell you can stop covering your eyes. The boogeyman has gone, therefore we can continue.

Ghost Hound didn’t always have that. This created more sphincter reducing moments than any jump scare can.

The Characters

Other than its horror elements, Ghost Hound's best feature was its characters. This was a cast you will want to follow and learn more about. That’s going to become more important later on.

This series created two distinct groups. The first involved strong story arcs for our leads. The second was a sense grounded-ness from the supporting characters.

When working together, these two groups enhanced the scares. As well as made the story easier to stick with.

Tarou being the victim of a kidnapping was never underplayed. This was something he dealt with throughout the show. It wasn’t a onetime background detail abandoned in the later episodes. Tarou struggled to come to terms with what happened to him and his sister.

The nightmares and visions caused by the incident were a constant issue. Tarou knew this was something he would need to face. His dilemma wasn’t a reluctance to do so. Rather it was him trying to figure out what he wanted to come to terms with.

Tarou also had a keen awareness of what other people were thinking. This wasn’t always perfect, he did make mistakes. Except he wasn’t naïve. He could sense when others were heading down a dark path.

This made Tarou both sympathetic and enduring. Though he had every reason to reserve himself, he went out of his way to help. Perhaps a tad mature for his age, Tarou saw that there were many people affected by what happened to him.

Makoto was Tarou’s opposite. Where Tarou tried to face his past head-on, Makoto wanted nothing to do with his. This made him difficult to work with. He was standoffish and tried to solve everything on his own. He had trouble trusting others and there was no one he could open up to.

Yet it was nice to have Makoto around. He was a reliable source of clarity. Given his family’s line of work, he could adapt to the unnatural phenomena going on.

Makoto’s story based itself in misinformation. He knew he didn’t have the full picture. There were people keeping the truth from him. As a result, he could only react to what he experienced. Much of his hatred was something he was trying to make sense of. Makoto saw no problem reevaluating once he had a clearer understanding.

While Tarou and Makoto needed each other, there were complications between them. Without Masayuki, neither boy would not have been able to move forward. And of the three guys, Masayuki had the most complete character arc.

When we first met him, Masayuki was a prick. He was the kind of person who tended to get on everyone's bad side. He had trouble staying out of people’s business. Then once the story revealed why he was like this, he became a lot more interesting.

Prior to meeting Tarou and Makoto, Masayuki was a factor behind an unfortunate outcome. The aftermath of that outcome weighted on his mind. It’s hard to ignore what he did, yet it was clear he would never let it happen again.

By the end of the series, Masayuki became the necessary instigator. He was the one who could refocus Tarou and Makoto. Without him, his friends would have struggled to come to the answers they were looking for.

Last, there was Miyako. Unlike the other three, there isn’t that much to say about her. And that is why I like her character. For most of this series, she was the wild card. She was never open about what she was thinking. Yet there almost never a moment you didn’t know what was going on in her head.

Miyako seemed to have some insight into what the three boys were experiencing. Except she never said anything about it. This wasn't because she had a bad attitude. It was because she was a grade schooler. She was a kid. She had her own things to deal with. Her mature act covered up something much deeper. Her connection to the spirit world was something she would have preferred not having.

Speaking of which, the spirit world was its own entity. It played by its own rules. Thought concerning, its reasoning was simple to grasp. It was in the human world and the side character's motivations that weren't as clear-cut.

This series used misdirection. There were a lot of characters that weren’t easy to trust. That had to do with this show doing everything it could to make everyone appear some degree of shady. Have you ever seen a show or movie and the villain just looked evil? There were many people in Ghost Hound that looked like that. This made it hard to determine who was doing bad things.

With a combination of horror and characters, this series hit most of the right places.

Series Negatives

At the beginning, I mentioned how the first four episodes were superb. They were well made and scary. This led to the terrifying hospital scene. With this being so early in the series, I was both excited and worried. Excited because this was shaping up to be a masterful horror show. Worried because it was so early.

Either way, it wasn't as if something would come along and put a sudden end to this road to glory, right?

Whoever thought our trio’s spirit forms should be bubble-headed fetus looking monstrosities is a jackass. Why was this a good idea?

Ghost Hound was doing so well. It had the freedom to whatever it wanted in the spirit realm. It could have had the boys look like anything. The story was building up to something. Then surprise. What am I looking at?

Having been on the edge of my seat no less than five seconds earlier, this was beyond underwhelming. There was some creepy stuff in this other world. Like the black giant creature that was the spirit of Tarou’s kidnapper. It was a simple design, but it was unsettling to no end. It looked like something you would not want to run into.

Too bad when the boys were in their stupid bubble bobble form, a bit of the suspense went away.

This got better. The spirit world did become fine. Once the boys learned they could change their appearance, this no longer seemed silly. Why they weren't projections of their physical selves from the start, I don’t know.

Yes, this show was scary. But almost none of the scares happened while in the spirit world. In fact, it was these moments that brought Ghost Hound down. This was a good show, but this was what prevented it from being great.

Well, that and one other thing.

The Story

This story got way too complicated. And there was no reason why that needed to happen. This show would have been a lot more palatable had about half the psychological babble not been here.

Ghost Hound tried to sound intriguing by using a bunch of technical terms. In the beginning, it wasn't much of a problem. Yet there came a point where you needed a doctorate in multiple fields to follow along.

I don’t care about the multitude of theories to explain hallucinations and visions. I don’t about the different treatments used to council mental trauma patients. I don’t care about the intricacies concerning the inner workings of the human brain.

There didn’t need to be a logical reasoning for any of this. We could see the ghost. These weren’t illusions to these characters. It wasn’t a trick of the mind. Why did this show insist on putting a science to this?

Also, our main characters were in middle school. It would make sense why a trained psychiatrist would know what’s going on. Not for a second do I believe these kids would grasp these concepts as quickly as they did. Let alone contribute to the conversation.

And this was only half the problem.

There were several things going on at once in this series. None of them were what I would call straightforward. There were conspiracies, secret organizations, and mysterious scientific research. As well as ghosts. Each of these angles received a decent amount of explanation. It got to where Ghost Hound wrote itself into a corner.

It would take super expert writing to get out of this mess.

Or, you know, having these similar events be coincidental would get the job done too. So basically, half of this story is complete bull s@#$.

At the start, I said Ghost Hound, for the most part, didn’t feel rushed. The one time it did was at the end. This story had an ending. But it never had a real resolution. It’s never a positive when the second to last episode is not wrapping things up. Instead, it feels more like there should be, at least, another five more to go.

This story was a mess. That is why I emphasized the characters. When the series focused on them, that was enough. It was humans reacting to the weirdness happening around them. This didn't require a lecture on brain science to understand what was going on. This was more relatable. Thus, that made the horror that much more real.

That kind of simplicity is what saved this show.

Final Thoughts

This story had problems. There was too much fluff to it. But to be honest, the scientific explanations didn’t happen that often. When they did, that was not fun. Yet that wasn’t the majority of this show.

In reality, this series was scary. It understood how to portray effective horror. Images and sounds working together to create an atmosphere of unease. There were also characters worth following. Each with their own set of issues that kept your attention.

Ghost Hound had a few stumbles. There were a handful of misguided choices. Except when this series got it right, it got it right. If you are looking for something for your next fright night, why not give this one a shot?

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