It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that, for most in the anime community, “dubbing” is an insidious, charged word. That single word is powerful enough that, at it’s mere utterance, most anime fans’ faces will turn into an ugly sneer, their stomachs will lurch, and they’ll have to fight off the urge to violently vomit. Most fans strongly prefer subs to dubs and are quite inflexible in this preference. To them, dubs are of shoddy quality and even the best ones fail to capture the sense of the original work, due to changing the audio. If the reception of the dub of Ghost Stories is any indication, however, anime fans are more than willing to like, even adore a dub if it doesn’t at all care about being the equivalent of the original. Ghost Stories is a parody dub, through and through and this fact seems to have paid off for the creators. A somewhat lackluster show is now immortalized thanks to its dub. Almost everyone suggests to watch the dub rather than the sub. From what I can see, everyone absolutely loves it. My personal take is that everyone absolutely loves the concept and how marvel it is, more than the dub as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed my time with Ghost Stories, it’s just nowhere near a masterpiece. In total, jokes seem to miss more than they land and the show takes a while to hit its stride.
The original Ghost Stories was a formulaic, monster-of-the-week anime about grade school children having to deal with all manner of ghosts that haunted their school and the surrounding town. The distributors were worried that the show would flop in America, so save for some ground rules such as not changing names of any character or ghosts, the dubbing team was instructed to “do whatever else you want to make the show successful.” To the dubbers, this translated to making an irreverent parody series, filled with all manner of jokes. While the premise remains the same, the characters change wildly. The one trait that they share is that they’re all quite rude to one another, thus helping foster the irreverent tone I talked about.
I won’t be comparing the dub to the subs; most reviews I’ve seen seem to be preoccupied with the quality of the subs and it seems to me that this compromises them scrutinizing the dub. The bottom line is that, from what I’ve seen, you should really only have the dub in consideration when deciding whether or not you want to watch this show.
Starting off with the positives, while the tone of the dub is irreverent and the dub itself is a giant gag, the voice actors really care about their work. In this instance, their task is making people laugh. Because of this, performances don’t feel phoned in: every voice sounds like the actors are actually trying. Keiichirou sounds absolutely awful but that’s because his voice actor is trying to make him sound that way; every bout of inane babbling on his end (and the laughs they garner) are intentional. Rob Mungle’s performance as Amanojaku is absolutely a riot as he chews the scenery just from his voice. Whether he’s making some snide remark, making a joke, or just getting angry, I’m liable to crack a smile just because of how much fun he was having in the booth. Another standout voice actor was Brittney Karbowski as Mio in episode twelve. Her performance was just so over-the-top that I couldn’t help but laugh. Mio’s rabbit-loving antics combined with Karbowski’s performance really stole the show. There are several voice-based gags in this show but another one that I get a kick out of is Miyuki’s (voiced by Shelley Calene-Black) random, hysterical screams in episode 17.
And of course, the dub features amazing jokes. They make fun of everything and everyone under the sun. While they don’t always land (as I’ll get to shortly), when they do, they’re great. I particularly loved the episode in which Momoko reveals her backstory as a nymphomaniac drug addict; it’s so different from her current day self-righteousness that it’s absolutely hilarious. This show really endorses laughing at things that often one shouldn’t laugh at.
I most often found myself laughing at situational comedies rather than throway jokes. An example is the aforementioned bit with Momoko and also a section in which Satuski and Keiichiro’s father has his genitals mutilated after playing with a doll ghost. I also in general enjoyed the sex-related jokes and anything involving Momoko, as she was my favorite character of the principal cast (unless you count Amanojaku). It’s not really something addressed in the show, but it’s kind of hilarious that, even in the dub, the characters are still stated to be in upper elementary school when they each should realistically at least be about three years older.
Ghost Stories also employs meta jokes very well, as they actually hold a purpose in showing how ridiculous the show can be. One particular one I love is a variation of a monster running towards the characters. Their actions bound to the animation, they can only remark, “well, how about we stand here and stare at it some more.” Amanojaku’s hilarious heel-face-turn is rendered as, “Why am I doing this, it doesn’t fit my character arc. Oh well, I’m getting paid, it’s a living.”
The music is surprisingly good for this show, if not a bit mismatched for the dub since it can get legitimately eerie at times. At first, I thought the music was generic or public domain because I swore I heard it before. As it turns out, I basically did, for the composer also worked on Inuyasha as a show that also dealt with monsters, I guess he couldn’t help but end up making an OST that sounds similar. The music isn’t bad, it can just be a bit distracting if you’ve watched Inuyasha.
The animation isn’t too great. The characters will be off-model very often. If you notice it, it can be very distracting, but I honestly was too busy focusing on the comedy to really care.
And now we move onto things that don’t work.
The dub can be quite crude and there are certain jokes that I just don’t find funny. Call my PC or whatever, but I find “jokes” about Keiichiroi being “r-t-rded” or a “f-g” pretty tasteless. I roll my eyes when Keiichirou and Satsuki’s mom being lesbian is framed as a joke in and of itself, like homosexuality is just intrisically funny. The same goes with Jewish jokes And I didn’t really find most of the black jokes funny either (yelling “Just pretend you’re being chased by a big black man,” to prompt a character to run faster), but that might just be because it’s harder to laugh when you feel like you’re the butt of a joke. One thing to keep in mind is that the dub holds no punches, just as its likely you’ll find something funny, there’s the likelihood you’ll find something unfunny. Hopefully it doesn’t get to the point where you’re offended, but if you’re anything like me, there will be and it will take some enjoyment out of the show for you.
One type of humor that didn’t do it for me were pop culture references. Unfortunately, there are many, many references in Ghost Stories and I got very few of them, leaving me annoyed and baffled. The primary problem with references is that they are very situational: either you get them or you don't. If you get them, great, you’ll have a laugh, but if not, you’ll be left scratching your head, wondering what’s the significance of what was just said. As reviled as they are, at least with Family Guy 's cutaway gags, even if you don’t get the initial reference, the show shows you why it’s funny. To some, it may seem lazy and an insult to viewers’ intelligence, but for crude comedies, I don’t think the point is to stoke viewers’ intelligence in the first place, it’s to make them laugh, and references often don’t do that because one has to get the reference. Plus, references are inherently lazy if nothing is done with those references. At the very least, Ghost Stories usually packages those references with jokes but they fall flat if you don’t know the reference. As a geek, I have a very specific range of interests and I wouldn’t get references that fall outside of that range. I got a Jessica Alba reference, but that’s only because she was in Fantastic Four. I got the Charlie Sheen and Oprah references, but that’s only because they managed to stay in the limelight. I can only imagine even less references will be funny for future viewers. Alanis Morissette, Steven Foster, Linda Blair, Al Sharpton are all names that I don’t know, yet they’re referenced, meaning those jokes flew clear over my head. Unfortunately, references are the most common type of joke in Ghost Stories, meaning I just plain didn’t get a vast majority of the humor. The references are fired in a machine gun manner: fire as many at the audience as you can in hopes some of them land. Making matters worse is that the cast really likes to run some references to the ground. Made all the more annoying because I still don’t get the blimin’ reference. I swear I’ll lose my mind if I have to hear that X is/will be deader than Y’s career (usually Christian Slater, whoever the hell that is). Oh, and comparing the events of the episode to The Ring which I’ve never watched.
I can excuse the overreliance on references due to the fact that the entire dub was apparently ad libbed. Honestly, that makes me impressed, though still doesn’t make them any funnier, it just makes me less annoyed at the cast.
Another problem is that the anime really doesn’t get hilarious until the ninth episode, “The Corpse that Roams in the Night – Shirotabi." There are certainly funny moments prior, but this is the first episode that I’d say is funny in its entirety. There are a few more afterward. While Ghost Stories is certainly funny, it's rarely gut-busting in its comedy. Some of its mean-spirited jokes and overreliance on references hurt it, but even without these, it’s oftentimes not that funny. It might be a bit dull for some viewers early on, so I might suggest watching select episodes (9-13). Still, as I said, there are laughs to be had in every episode, even if they’re not guffaws. The concept itself is quite marvel, so I’d recommend checking Ghost Stories, I’d just caution not to expect the magnum opus of comedy.
7.7/10
C+
