Recently found out about the most insanely hilarious Japanese Animated series called GHOST STORIES (Gakko No Kaidan). While a fairly serious “School Kids Fighting Ghosts in School” type of show a la Kindaichi no Shonen Jikenbo, it is the American translated, dubbed version that is all the roar lately!
Usually the English Company is given scripts to work from for each episode, but when American distributors Animax acquired the series, none was included. Apparently the series actually hadn’t done very well in its initial run and when they contacted Japan about the details, were given carte blanc to write whatever they wanted…and did they ever!
Upon hearing that they could do whatever they wanted to the source material, they decided to turn this run of the mill and highly clichéd Ghost Story show into a virtual parody of itself with self-aware characters (“Is this the first or second time we’re ripping off The Ring?”), totally un-PC personalities and scripts filled with crass f-bomb loaded dialog, I’m telling you, this stuff was freaking HILARIOUS!
Even funnier is that every single voice actor here is part of the real anime network, so the voices spewing out all this silliness are “legitimate” voices that you've heard in "real" shows talking! Watching interviews with Chris Patton (Hajime) and Rob Mungle (Amanojyaku), all veterans of the animation voice over field, every single one of them happily said it was some of most fun they ever had!
Over time the notorious Ghost Stories English Dub has developed a cult-like following and its DVD release was more successful than the original Japan version! Going onto the web, so many of the lines from the dub have become classics, for me, the single greatest line has to be when they had a character with his initial “V” on his shirt, he announces to the Class “The V on my sweater stands for Very Big Deal...but that’s beside the point.” Oh my GOSH, too funny!
