Ghost Stories (English Dub)

Genre(s): Parody, Comedy, Horror

Age-Appropriateness: 17+ (Strong Language, Profanity, Crude Humor, mild frightening images)

Platforms: Amazon Prime, Crunchyroll

Episodes: 20

TheAwersome Rating: 8.5 / 10 (So good, but so wrong)

Premise: When nearby construction disturbs a spiritual resting place, its disgruntled denizens do what any supernatural being would do after a rude awaking – they terrorize the local school. And that means it’s up to a scruffy band of young ghost hunters to expel their satanic schoolmates before everyone gets sent to permanent detention! Meet Satsuki, her crybaby brother, the resident class stud, the school nerd and “psychical researcher,” a born-again beauty, and a resentful, demon-possessed cat in the funniest, scariest school you’ve ever enrolled in.

TheAwersome’s Thoughts: Necessary history: this show absolutely bombed in Japan. Terrible sales because it was a terrible show. If you watch it subbed, you’ll notice its pacing is terrible, writing makes little sense, and characters are insufferable. Because of this, the English dubbing team was told to do whatever they wanted with the show, just don’t change character names, general premise of episodes, or the general method for vanquishing ghosts.

The result is a combination of the heckling comedy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and story-twisting of an Abridged Series, where almost nothing is off the table. There are tons of references, and the 20% of them that you get will have you dying. The humor in general is best classified as “Dark humor” (read: Offensive) so make sure your kids aren’t around. And maybe not your parents. But Boy Howdy this show had us cry-laughing so often, it truly is a gem worthy of your time. It’s one of a kind, and it’s probably best if it stays that way.

TLDR: MST3K meets Abridged Series humor in this hilarious parody of itself where Voice Actors were given free reign.

No trailer does it any justice, but this mild clip will give you a fair idea

Something funny about this show is that a lot of the horror elements were actually quite well done and genuinely creepy. So, every once in a while, between cry-laughing you’ll get blindsided by full-on horrific elements, so there’s a bit of whiplash. That’s probably another reason why this originally bombed: it looks like it was originally targeting children (what with an elementary school aged cast and all) yet had elements that would give them nightmares for weeks.