#bc she has a high-pitched Japanese voice that would've sounded completely unnatural in English

[okayto]

Mini-Review: Ghost Hunt

High schooler Mai Taniyama accepts a job offer from the Shibuya Psychic Research Center as an assistant to its leader, enigmatic 17-year-old Kazuya “Naru” Shibuya. The firm investigates various strange phenomena at the behest of its clients, joined by a spirit medium, a shrine maiden, an exorcist, and a monk.

Look, this is my shit. A combination of mystery and the supernatural, creepy but rarely reaching horror levels, my biggest problem with this series is that it has 25 episodes and I WANT MORE.

You’ve got your everygirl protagonist: Mai Taniyami. Roped into helping when the assistant to the guy called in to investigate a possible haunting at her school gets injured, she proves to have a talent for sussing things out, and accepts a job offer.

Mai? Is great. She can be impulsive and might yell at her boss for not doing the right thing (in a moral sense), but in a way that felt fairly realistic to me. Plunge into danger to save someone? Sure, I can believe that! Ask questions that people seem to be ignoring? Also reasonable! She is our proxy, hoping for the best and caring for people when the Experts (particularly her boss) seem to be callous.

THIS ASSHOLE ON THE OTHER HAND

To be clear, Naru’s whole thing is that he’s stuck-up. He gets the nickname “Naru” because Mai thinks he’s narcissistic. He’s 17 and the head of a paranormal research agency, blunt and rude, and clearly hiding some secrets. He’s not so bad that you (probably) hate him, but he’s Mai’s opposite.

He ALSO has a communication problem, and we all know how much I want to reach into my screen and strangle people who don’t communicate. The problem is along the lines of “I let you think this thing we’d do would hurt people and so you got very upset and yelled at me in front of everyone, but it turns out we’re doing the thing in a way that WON’T hurt people!” but still, it’s an asshole move because I can’t think of a single instance where he couldn’t at least have said “I don’t have time to explain, but we’re being careful.”

The side characters are what really make the show great. You’ve got your Catholic exorcist, a young priest with a disposition as sunny as his hair...

...a teenage spirit medium who dresses in traditional kimono and has a crush on Naru, a shrine maiden unattached to a shrine (Ayako gets the short stick as far as character development and doesn’t get a chance to shine until the last case of the series, I am bitter), and a monk-on-hiatus who’s part of a rock band.

Monk is one of the best parts of the series: besides being just a fun (and competent!!!) character, he also takes the role of big brother/uncle to Mai, and they have a very sweet relationship.

While the characters are the heart of the show, we do actually have stories: the things they’re called in to deal with. These range from “minor nuisance in the park” to “evil entity actively murdering people.”

The story spends time with them, too! I think there was only one case in the entire series that was wrapped up in one episode. Everything else ranges from 2-4 episodes, so it can really take its time focusing on their investigations and drama. Most stories are what you’d expect from ghost stories: spirits, dark and creepy atmosphere, etc, but one 4-episode arc near the end of the series did feature an old hospital and murders and shots of blood (though no shots of actively bleeding people or bodies).

(This happened to the be arc in which my roommate joined me, so I was like it usually isn’t like this I swear please don’t leave I don’t want to watch this bit alone)

The manga it’s based on was never fully released in the USA (11/12 volumes came out before its publisher imploded, and it was never picked up again by anyone else) and is now out of print, so the anime is really your only chance to legally enjoy it in any form.

Verdict

English dub? Yes, and Mai’s English voice is one of my favorites--she actually sounds like a teenage girl! Tonally, in her indignation, everything! Everyone else is fine: Ayako the shrine maiden’s voice almost perfectly matches her Japanese one, and both capture that slightly-snobby-lady vibe. Catholic exorcist John’s given an Australian accent (I think in the original he speaks Japanese with a Kansai accent, so this is trying to convey the “different dialect” idea); older assistant Lin sounds exactly like a serious man in his twenties, and Monk sounds not just realistic, but perfectly captures his ability to switch from casual to serious, joking to caring.

Naru’s voice stands out the most as someone trying to match the Japanese voice, because his has elements of trying to lower the voice (not trying to make it deep, but...if you’ve watched a lot of anime dubs, you know what I mean--sometimes male characters in Japanese have a low-pitched, semi-softness quality that we really don’t hear in American English voices, so it’s always obvious to me when someone is trying to do that in a dub.)

Visuals: I mean, it’s from 2006 so it’s not going to blow you away, but it’s not ugly.

Worth watching? YES. PLEASE. I’ve watched the entire thing through twice now.

I mean, there are flaws. Often the female characters are relegated to watching and guarding while the males actively attack or defend. Naru should be nicer to the teenager he employs. The anime came out while the manga was still being produced, so we don’t get to delve into characters’ backstories, but the series does at least end happily.

Where to watch (USA, as of June 2020): Funimation (sub and dub)

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