Okay, the show started off with Satsuki (Hilary Haag) and her younger brother Keiichirou (Christine Auten) moving to a new school. Their mother passed away and dad appeared to be chasing work so that sets up the initial premise of the show. The catch was that dad met mom in this area, having gone to school together years ago. Their maternal grandmother was the principle of the school too so it a sense it's almost as if they're returning to a home they never knew. Upon moving into the new house, they play around and Satsuki falls, revealing her panties to neighbor (and fellow student) Hajime (Chris Patton), setting off the usual dynamic between two kids of the same age. The cast rounds out with Momoko (Monica Rial), Leo (Greg Ayres), and a demon named Amanojaku (Rob Mungle) but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On the first day of school, Keiichirou brings his pet cat, Kaya, to school and he gets loose in the old school house that is marked "no trespassing". They enter the place and along with the rest of the leads who follow, are soon confronted by a ghost, Amanojaku, who grows off their fear when he doesn't get treated nicely by them. The run around inside and find out Satsuki's grandmother dealt with various ghosts while working at the old school via a series of coincidences. They banish the ghost to a tree only to find that the tree has been cut down by developers building condominiums. That forces the ghost into Kaya (aren't all cats possessed anyway, making it hard to tell?) and the series finds the cast trying to rid Kaya of the ghost. The problem is that grandmother banished a lot of other ghosts who are now free to roam about and cause problems thanks to those mean old developers. Each episode of the show has the children fighting off a ghost and dealing with Amanojaku in order to save the day.

The episodes were 1) Tonight The Spirits Will Be Resurrected!!/Amanojaku, 2) A Hand Reaches Out From The Toilet/Akagami Aogami, 3) The Curtain Is Raised! The Cursed School Fine Arts Festival/Kutabe!, and 4) Requiem From The Dead/Elise. Each followed the junior league ghost busters as they set out to keep out of trouble but trap the ghosts using grandmother's book of handwritten notes. The DVD was kind of interesting in how it was advertised; the original Japanese language version was considered weak so English language dub ADR director Steven Foster decided to experiment with something new to anime (at least it was billed as such) and allowed the cast to adlib their parts to a large extent. The significant liberties taken weren't always favorable to the show though from the Born Again Christian ramblings of Momoko's character to the many references to panties, to the inclusion of numerous contemporary remarks (like using Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Paul Harvey and even local radio celebrity Michael Savage as reference points). I'm a supporter of creative experimentation but while the general thrust of the comments were similar to the original, hopefully faithfully, translation; the majority of them didn't work all that well (at least after I watched the original version). Fans get mighty particular about changes in their anime translations for the dubs so let the buyer beware.

For me though, the story fell flat in either language with the general formula striking me as too episodic to really enjoy and by the time the last of the four episodes finished up, I was left wondering if the rest of the series was going to follow suit. Boring is just about the only adjective that fits here and that's why I rated this one as a Skip It except for younger kids able to handle the ghostly apparitions trying to kill small kids at school. I'm sure some of the younger crowd will potentially be upset at the thought of going to schools full of ghosts trying to off them after watching this and the older crowd will get bored (except maybe for the so-called "snicker factor" where the mere mention of terms like panties will set them off). Give it a look if you must but don't say I didn't warn you.

Picture: Ghost Stories 1 was presented in the usual 1.33:1 ratio full frame as it was originally produced in for release in Japan. The show was made five years ago and while that doesn't sound like a long time, it dated the look of the show considerably compared to many other contemporary releases on the market these days. The animation style was limited to relatively few frames of actual movement. The lines were clean and while there were some parts that seemed to have some minor pixelation and/or compression artifacts, the overall show was about average.

Sound: The audio was presented in 2.0 Dolby Digital stereo with a choice of the original Japanese track or the newly made English dub (both with optional English subtitles). The music and special effects had some minor separation to them but the vocals almost all seemed to come from the center speaker. The dub was not as solid as the original track (and I'm a fan of several of the English language voice acting cast) since it came off as forced far too often. I didn't like the many religious references in the show either and while I wouldn't mind a separate audio stream like this, a straightforward dub would've worked better for me.

Extras: The best extra from my point of view was the profiles of the ghosts in the episodes, giving some basis for their origin, names and other basic information. The usual clean opening & closing, and trailers comprised the rest of the extras.

Final Thoughts: Ghost Stories 1 wasn't terrible but it never managed to connect with me in either the original language track or the heavy handed dub due to the many liberties taken with the source material. I never cared for the characters, thought the writing was about par for a generic Saturday morning cartoon (yup, I went there, using the "C" word), and didn't find the situations the children were in to be very imaginative. I know Japan is big on ghost stories in general but unless there's something of merit about a story, it gets old quickly for me. ADV Films has made far better versions of other series so I'll stick with the better ones rather than force myself to like their weaker material like Ghost Stories 1.

If you enjoy anime, take a look at some of the recommendations by DVDTalk's twisted cast of reviewers in their Best Of Anime 2003 and Best Of Anime 2004 article or regular column Anime Talk