Category: Finished Series: Horror

One thing that I’ve been wondering about this series: what’s going to be the point? Will it just feature Tarou and the others exploring their fears, or is there going to be some kind of crisis or issue that will be introduced in the second half of this series? I originally thought that as soon as the characters were introduced, random cases about the supernatural and spirit-world would take over this series, but the current episode really showed me that Ghost Hound is about Tarou, Makoto, Masayuki and Miyuki. Where the cyborg-rabbit from the OP comes into picture… I have no idea though. This episode shows a bit of development for all four major characters. We start where we left off in the previous episode, with the old guy who can see spirits as well. He appears to be friendly, but the conversation quickly ends when he mentions that if you remain out of your body for too long, you won’t be able to turn back. If this was a series like Dennou Coil, I would have expected that in the future, someone won’t be able to turn back, but with Ghost Hound, I have no idea whether this was meant to flesh out the spirit-world a bit more, or some sneaky way of foreshadowing. In this episode, Masayuki tries to confront his own fears by climbing over the edge of his school’s roof. He’s okay for a short while, but becomes terrified after a gust of wind hits him. The result of this we’ll see in the next episode. Meanwhile, we get introduced to some people who were befriended to Makoto’s mother, who I assume is dead now as well. One noteworthy person is currently running in the election for major. This episode also shows that Makoto doesn’t like this guy, though I’m not sure why yet. It could be your usual Makoto, or something of which we haven’t heard yet. Meanwhile, his grandmother has health-problems. Tarou, meanwhile, has had some very bad nights of sleep, and ends up fainting in front of Miyuki on the stairs towards the shrine. He gets taken to the hospital, where he is examined. The main doctor seems to be an old acquaintance of Miyuki’s father. Miyuki, when she finds out about this, gets strangely enough angry and leaves. Obviously, there’s enough potential left for our characters, and I suspect that the first half of this series will continue to develop them. But what will happen after that? I have no idea.]]>

I’m quite interested to find out the direction in which Ghost Hound is heading. The episodes have been progressing quite naturally, and while I thought that the previous episode concluded the introduction for this series, this episode made me think that this series is still quite busy introducing its concepts. Reminds me of Ergo Proxy, that one also took ten episodes before it got to its “proxy-of-the-week”-plot. This episode again was mostly building-up, but despite this it was an excellent one. I like anime that don’t just shine in their climaxes, but remain interesting throughout their entire airtime. The episode starts with the day after the last episode, and it’s interesting how Tarou, Masayuki and Makoto reacted differently to their hairs being cut off at the previous episode. Tarou didn’t care, Masayuki bought a really big hat, and Makoto found it a good time to go to a barber to just cut all of his hair short. The three of them all get a bit more development as well. Makoto seems to hate his family, which consists out of his mother (or was that some kind of maid?) and grandmother, of which the latter is some kind of spiritual figure in the village. I don’t think that the three of them have really recovered from the murder of Makoto’s father, and they grew apart after it. This is quite similar to Tarou, especially his mother still can’t forget about her dead daughter, and that is causing quite some problems in his household. It’s not like how they keep fighting, like with Makoto, but Tarou and his parents keep hiding their worries. In this episode, we also see Tarou claim that he’s the most scared of upsetting his mother, because she already is so incredibly fragile. Masayuki’s background is still one big mystery, but now we know too that his parents are about to divorce, and they had a fight this episode. He’s chosen to not worry about that too much, and it seems like he doesn’t want to have to do anything with it. It’s also still a mystery what Miyako’s powers are. Does she allow our threesome to experience out-of-body experiences? Did she have some kind of traumatic experience in the past too (notice how she lacks a mother).]]>

I think that this episode marks the end of the introduction for this series, and next episode should really start this series off. I’m also glad to see that Ghost Hound has been getting better and better with every episode, and I loved the things that happened in the current one. The horror-elements really work. The one who surprised me the most was Masayuki. Due to the phobia-exposure, all three of the main characters have an out-of-body experience, and you could see how Oogami and Tarou were used to it, while the experience was entirely new for Masayuki, and this showed. Once he loses his control over the situation, he freaks out and doesn’t know what to do, but follow the others. His personality seemed to have developed in quite an unstable way, though this could also be because he suffered from his trauma only a few months before, instead o Oogami and Tarou, who’ve had their horrible experiences since childhood, and have learned to live with their fears a bit. There were a few moments in the animation where the animators took a bit more than they could chew. The breathing-scenes may have looked god on paper, they looked kind-of fake to me. The rest of the animation for this episode was nice and crisp, though, but perhaps the CG was a bit intrusive here and there. I also wonder why Masayuki was so scared to get his hair cut off, at the end of the episode as a cleansing ritual. He could be just scared of all the things that happened to him, or is there something to his background that has yet to be revealed? I loved Miyako at that moment, though, when she scolded the guy. Her role can become quite interesting for the future episodes. She also reminds me of Jigoku Shoujo: not Enma Ai, but Tsugumi. The only difference between the two of them would be that she’s way more serious and less playful. Apart from that, though: she lacks a mother, has out-of-body-experiences and knows what happens at locations, miles away from hers, while she does, she freaks out and gets comforted by her father, and the two do have similar character-designs as well.]]>

I am SO glad that at least one series of the new fall-season has horror-elements. It’s really shaping up to become one of my most favourite genres, especially because the Japanese style of storytelling works so damn well with it. And I don’t mean the gore-style horror. Anyone can cut off limbs or draw scary monsters. The horror I’m referring to is the psychological one. Another thing I like about this is how horror-series can often captivate me throughout their entire airtime, in comparison to, say, dramas, which more often than not only stand out because of their climaxes. The horror in this episode was excellent, and at the same time it developed both Tarou and Masayuki, as the two of them, accompanied by Oogami go to see the abandoned hospital, in order to try and make Tarou remember. It also seems that all three of them suffer from traumas. We already knew this about Tarou (kidnapped along with his sister who’s now dead) and Oogami (witnessed his father after he killed himself), but it also seems that Masayuki hasn’t had a perfect youth: he killed a classmate of his. For the exact details, I need to watch the subs, but it’s clear that he’s still haunted by it. What also surprises me is how close Tarou and Masayuki suddenly are. Last episode, Tarou was getting all tsundere when Masayuki tried to approach him, but the current episode did start with Masayuki, who invited Tarou to his place. We also see a bit more of Miyako, who has visions of Tarou’s childhood. Could she have some kind of post-traumatic disorder as well? The episodes so far were deeply rooted in psychology, so I can imagine that she has.]]>

Okay, if this episode didn’t remind you of Serial Experiments Lain, then I don’t know anymore. There is just no other director who relies so much on creepy sound-effects to create an atmosphere as Ryutaro Nakamura. It does work, though, and I liked this episode a lot. It’s still mostly a case of building up, but things are getting more intriguing as we learn new information about the characters. It seems that the main character’s sister was his older sister. The two of them were in a fight when they were kidnapped. The face of the kidnapper was also revealed in this episode, and the freaky thing is that he looks like just an ordinary guy. He was killed by a truck afterwards, though. The guy in suit, who we saw in the previous episode, seems to be some kind of detective or psychologist, who hopes to find out more about what happens through hypnosis. It seems that the case still isn’t solved after all these years, but I wonder why… could it be that the body of the main character’s sister still hasn’t been found yet? Overall, I was able to follow most of this episode, though I’m going to need to watch the subs later when they come out to fill in a few things I didn’t pick up, especially regarding the reasons why the brown-haired guy is so curious and likes to investigate. It could be in his nature, but I’d like to know that for sure. This episode also sees the main character (I really need to find out his name), discovering the place he’s been seeing in his dreams. It seems to be beyond a shrine, where the girl who managed to see him in his dream-state in the previous episode lives. Apparently, he had no idea where he had been kidnapped before, and he the shock of the kidnapping probably made his sub-consciousness to lock out some of these experiences, like the kidnapper’s face. When he also tried to enter the area, he suddenly entered a dream-state, which seems to back this up. Then the final main character seems to have had a similar experience when his father(?) ended up dead, right in front of his eyes. We don’t get much info about him, though. Either that, or I failed to pick it up. Regarding the animation, this is et another one of these shows that couldn’t keep up with the high quality of the first episode, and the animation quality has gone down. Despite this though, it still looks very good, but there may have been a bit too much recycled scenes. What also intrigues me is the OP. It somehow reminded me of xxxHolic, and I feel that once the characters are established, the creators are going to treat us to the stories of these different beings. Or it could be that this series is just like El Cazador, where the OP and ED have nothing to do with the show itself. :P]]>