Gakkou no Kaidan

Years ago, all of the ghosts in a haunted schoolhouse were banished by a certain student. Now, they're back—and they want revenge...

Satsuki and Keiichirou Miyanoshita are two siblings recovering from the tragic loss of their mother. After moving to their mother's hometown, they learn that the local school they have transferred to is an old building—one said to be haunted. Despite initially brushing it off as a silly rumor, the two soon discover that ghosts are indeed real and that they're after them! Gakkou no Kaidan is the creepy tale of the lives of these siblings and their newfound friends as they try to survive the school's ghosts—with a little help from their pet cat along the way.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Amanojaku Main

Nakao, Ryusei Japanese

Koigakubo, Momoko Main

Sakuma, Kumi Japanese

Miyanoshita, Keiichirou Main

Mamiya, Kurumi Japanese

Aoyama, Hajime Main

Honda, Takako Japanese

Miyanoshita, Satsuki Main

Kawakami, Tomoko Japanese

Kakinoki, Reo Main

Tsumura, Makoto Japanese

Imai, Mio Supporting

Nakayama, Sara Japanese

Okabe Supporting

Saiga, Mitsuki Japanese

Sakata Supporting

Aoyama, Yutaka Japanese

Matsushima Supporting

Fukamizu, Yumi Japanese

Katsumata, Hideo Producer

Hagino, Ken Producer

Abe, Noriyuki Director, Sound Director

Kosaka, Harume Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Dec 10, 2015

Cebix

Recommended

The thing about this anime is that it is actually REALLY really bad. It bombed in Japan and it is easy to see why, the time this was released, there were so many good anime out that blew it out of the water and this anime doesn't do anything special. It tries to be Scooby Doo and also the cliche's and bland characters really hurts this show.

However......


Aniplex was handed the English dub of the show, knowing it was a failure in Japan and probably would be a failure here, it SEEMS they didn't take the dub too seriously. So what do we get? The best ... dub that has ever been done ever.
Let me try to explain; the show has so many logical fallacies and strange lip flaps, the voice actors decided to add really adult and funny jokes, often breaking the forth wall and mocking the show itself. It's like a fandub with comedians or an Abridged series, but full episodes.

The animation is poor, the story is thin and a more like villain of the week episodic series and the environments and sound designs are really really bland, what saves this show is the English Dub ONLY via Aniplex.


My advice to you is to watch the Dub, if we were basing this show on its sub in this review I would tell you to send this show to the closest pit of fire and exorcise the demons out of your house, but the English Aniplex Dub is a MUST see. Bare in mind the adult humor may be offputting to younger audiences.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Dec 11, 2023

literaturenerd

Mixed Feelings

Overview:

Ghost Stories is the amazing tale of a failed anime that became a cult classic through the absurd dubbing of the now defunct ADV films. The original is quite forgettable and not worth your time, but the infamous dub is DEFINITELY worth watching.

Background:

So who the hell was ADV? Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Texas dub studio ADV was the main rival of Funimation. Due to a series of terrible business decisions and an industry bubble burst, they went bankrupt and their best talent was poached by their surviving rival. They are basically the WCW to Funimation's WWE or the Sega to Funimation's ... Nintendo. ADV was best known for licensing, distributing, and dubbing Evangelion, Full Metal Panic, Elfen Lied, Robotech, and Welcome to the NHK. Unfortunately they also dubbed a LOT of shit titles and chose some real stinkers for their cable Anime Network and Comcast On-Demand selection.

ADV believed that they should only show the first couple episodes of good shows and show all episodes of their worst shows. That way fans would have to buy the DVDs for the good series and might watch episodes of the shows they would never buy on DVD. This strategy has a HUGE flaw. If your network is mostly filled with horrendous titles like Ikki Tousen, Moonphase, Magical Shopping District, and fucking Jungle de Ikou, then viewers are going to turn the TV off and never come back. When a Japanese studio forces Funimation to dub some series that flopped in Japan in order to recoup their domestic losses, Funi will quickly banish those series to cheap DVD without ceremony and pray that nobody finds them. ADV on the other hand would hold up those abortions for all the world to see! ADV basically said, "you bastards want to watch some free anime? We'll make sure you regret every second of it!" Consider that ADV wasn't even forced by the Japanese to license their worst show Jungle de Ikou. ADV voluntarily bought the rights from Media Blasters because their flagship network simply NEEDED a show that can melt eyeballs with its wretchedness!

The final thing you need to know about ADV is their...unique approach to dubbing. ADV really didn't believe in following the original Japanese text and was often quite liberal with their translations. This could help with comedy series where the original Japanese joke might not translate well, but it often screwed up their dramas. Every Eva fanboy can tell you that ADV's Evangelion translation omitted vital plot points, explained some things poorly compared to the Japanese text, and fundamentally misunderstood other points. Their translation of Elfen Lied also suffers from these problems. One of the key culprits of this attitude towards translation was Steven Foster. Attitudes online tend to be quite negative towards Mr. Foster, but he was very talented at spoofing terrible series with joke dubs whenever ADV gave him the freedom to do so.

Plot:

Ghost Stories is a highly formulaic series about grade schoolers that fight a new ghost in each episode that is based off a Japanese urban legend or myth. The series was intended to be frightening fun for small children that introduces them to classic scary stories. The problem is that it isn't remotely scary or creepy, is WAY too repetitive, and none of the characters are likeable or memorable. The characters spend the first 1/3 of every episode denying that something clearly supernatural is supernatural. When they finally decide they are facing a ghost, the main character Satsuki gets out her dead mother's ghost journal and looks up how to defeat the ghost. They defeat the ghost and everything ends happily. That is the summary of EVERY SINGLE EPISODE! The original series is also notable for completely unnecessary and unwanted fanservice. These are supposed to be kids in elementary school and yet the anime has panty flashes every 5 seconds and a closing theme song called "Sexy Sexy". That's just fucked up!

Steven Foster of ADV decided to change the characters and actually give them traits that differentiate them. One is a Jewish nerd, one is a self righteous evangelical, one is absurdly perverted, etc. The Foster dub is filled with ridiculous pop culture references and constant insults directed at the show Lost, the band Creed, Toby Keith, and Christian Slater's acting.

Be warned that the Foster dub is also wildly offensive and irreverent with frequent gay jokes and casual racist jokes. This was 2005 and this series serves as a kind of bizarre time capsule of that period and what was acceptable then. America was a lot less angry and bitterly divided. As a result, people weren't as sensitive and there wasn't the same pressure to be "PC". We all casually hated the douche in the White House in 2005, but he was an establishment dick not so different from our previous 4 asshole presidents. The hate against Obama after 2008 was completely unique and so strong that the backlash transformed the far right from a shadow of a joke into a serious political power. Now Hollywood is cracking down hard on hurtful jokes and trying to avoid association with the new Right. Pulling a Foster and constantly using the words "retard", "faggot", and "nigga" with reckless abandon was highly frowned upon then too, but today that shit simply wouldn't fly. NO ONE would greenlight such a show with a PG rating when even South Park usually bleeps or avoids those words in 2016. It isn't the most clever dub, but it is so outlandish and shockingly tasteless that you kind of have to laugh.

Art:

The art is by Studio Dean and as you would expect it is at least passable. It isn't the prettiest series ever and doesn't have breathtaking visuals, but this thing clearly had a decent budget behind it. I'm sure the net loss in Japan was significant after this shit bombed!

Sound:

The soundtrack is Kaoru Wada pretty much rehashing his work from the Inuyasha soundtrack. While I really love his work in that setting, it feels completely out of place in this spooky children's series. The same soundtrack can be good for 1 anime and a complete miss if given to another. This feels as out of place as pairing Pokemon with the band Disturbed. I already mentioned the wildly inappropriate use of "Sexy Sexy" and the opening theme while less pedophilic is still completely out of place.

Overall:

This is not a good anime. This isn't the most clever writing for a dub. This absolutely IS something that you should see though. This shit is absolutely hilarious and provides a window into the state of dubbing during the anime boom years in the US. This was when studios could buy terrible anime and treat the dub like a complete joke because they were so flush with money. They were simply that confident in people buying anime in huge amounts. I miss those days sometimes. I really do.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 24, 2022

MrConnman123

Not Recommended

Ghost Stories is a weird one, this review isn’t about the show itself but rather its English dub which should be a red-flag straight away.
Y’see, when Ghost Stories was being localized, the localisers basically had full creative control over it, since it was a very Japanese-centric show with heavy themes of Shintoism and whatnot, the chances of it appealing to a western audience were slim (also Steven Foster moment) so they made a gag dub which is praised as being supposedly “hilarious” and a go to example for Redditors defending localisation changes and English dubs.

Thing is …it’s not that funny, don’t get me wrong, it ... definitely has its moments (the lip-flap joke in particular is great) but I feel like most of Ghost Stories’ fanbase came from people who watched compilations on YouTube and not y’know, the actual show…
The actual show only has like 2 or 3 good jokes per episode and that novelty-factor quickly dies when you realize that in-between you just have dated pop-culture references from 2005, a bunch of boring shit, generic sex jokes and laughably out of date internet memes which almost loops back around to being ironically funny…almost…

But even then I’m just not a fan of localisation changes from a fundamental level, I’m someone who believes in preserving artistic vision and integrity no matter how lacklustre or subpar it may be.
Not to mention how the localisers basically had to lie about the show being a flop in Japan in order to paint the dub in a good light, it also gave the English-speaking anime community the idea that the original Japanese version is some kind of infamously terrible anime, now I can't say either way since I haven't seen the original Japanese version but I feel that it's un-fair that the original show has such a terrible reputation arbitrarily.

Now there’s an argument that could be made saying that the show is better off being remembered for being terrible than being forgotten and fading into obscurity but personally I think it would’ve been better off having been forgotten rather than having lies spread about it and a mostly unfunny dub that shits all over the artistic vision made by people who probably have Ukrainian flags in their Twitter bios.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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