Opening Statement to anyone interested in watching this anime:

Ghost Hound is an intensely interesting anime. Something that attacks you from every angle. The director that brought you Serial Experiments Lain has something else, very different for you. The simplest way to explain this anime is that it is very similar to Stranger Things if you have watched that. Although it portrays more than just a group of kids solving a supernatural mystery. Warning though, the first 5 episodes or so are really slow and drawn out, give it until at least episode 9 to determine if you should drop it or not.

The cast is a cast of characters that have faced extreme psychological trauma and are looking for ways to alleviate themselves, they end up getting to know each other and decide to help each other somehow. But what they end up discovering is something much larger than they could ever imagine. This anime also portrays in extremely obscure imagery, hence the "Cosmic Horror" tag. By uncovering the world of the supernatural, the cast ends up going much deeper than they thought they would.

By combining obscure imagery with the supernatural and psychological trauma, it makes a pretty damn solid anime. In all honesty I had a hard time looking at the dark for a couple of days while watching this. I think this can also attribute to the insanely ambient horrific noises that crawl from one end of the soundscape to another.

So should you watch this? If you're into horror, sci-fi, psychological experimentation, and mystery I definitely say give it a try. If you're expecting the Denpa in this anime to be mind blowing well you're not going to find much except for a couple of very psychologically churning scenes. I actually dropped this anime in the first 5 episodes on first watch and picked it up again later and found myself pretty impressed by the ideas rolling.

(Spoilers from here on out)

My likes and dislikes of Ghost Hound:

Likes: So I found the plot use of Out of Body Experiences immensely interesting. As someone that does experience a lot of reality dysphoria I found a lot of the events extremely relatable. I also loved the big colourless beings that walked around making illiterate noises, I find that to be a very good use of simplicity in obscurity. Honestly I found a lot of the scary scenes to be pretty damn scary, it tries to find a way to mess with your reality by not being like "hey these are big fuckin scary ghosts that are going to kill you" but instead is more like a collection of odd encounters with beings that psychologically damage others indirectly. The sound quality was beyond amazing, and the animation is a lot like Jigoku Shoujo with it's very watercolour-ish art style.

Dislikes: Honestly I am not a big fan of the cast they got on my nerves every once and a while. But in general I had a lot of issues with certain plots points like the pretty rushed ending. The fact that Miyako got off so easily made the ending setup feel kind of half assed. I found myself disengaging with the plot once and I felt like it wasn't going anywhere. I really do think there's a lot of wasted potential with this anime. Like I was intensely interested in getting scared more and hoping there would be more scenes that made me go "what the fuck". Sadly, the last 5 or so episodes were pretty tame other than the weird ass turkey "biopoid" things. There was a lot of stuff I didn't really like in the ending that made me go "ehh" and that's probably why I won't consider this anime a favourite of mine.

Conclusion: I think this is a fantastic work that just didn't hold up in the end, I hate being that person saying "oh the ending means it's automatically bad" but I'm being as positive as possible. I had a genuinely great experience for the first 17 episodes though, and I think all of that was really good and definitely a wonderful experience. I gained a lot of knowledge through this anime. Despite an ending that didn't succeed or triumph anything before it, I think this anime is one of many that could have benefited if it had a few more episodes.