On second thought, part of me is grateful that this season’s shows failed to grab my attention. Anyway, same deal as when I did a huge post on Code Geass after catching up with the series. Slow weekends sure are nice to put me in the mood to step back for any shows that slipped through my eyes during the previous season’s premiere. Ghost Hunt also had some priority over the other shows during my decision phase as well since I did hear the title once from a friend who reads the manga.

Ghost Hunt is a little hard to label as Retsgip said. It clearly fits in as a supernatural genre series, but I wouldn’t quite drop it in as horror either. Actually, that’s one of the complaints I need to share before using up the rest of this entry to praise it like madman. Ghost Hunt just isn’t scary enough with the exception of the second case which only gets a decent rating from me only because of the doll. Readers who are familiar with the game Fatal Frame II, which was freaky and addictive at the same time, might want to give it an extra point for this one scene where Mai spots a child’s spirit peeking inside the house though. Let’s just say the similarities brought back memories and made me jump for an instant. The following stories did involve actual ghosts, yet failed to hold much justice since they were all about humans who just had some grudges and decided to use occult powers to get revenge on his or her surroundings. All it has is that cool factor for people who love to take the antagonist’s point of view and enjoy the massacre, except that’s not what we’re looking for here.

To start off on it’s flaws, Ghost Hunt gets pretty ridiculous with its predictability. First case, was pretty straight forward. Anyone can easily tell who’s responsible for all that mess. Heck, if all fails you can just check the main site to see who are the main characters and single out the oddball. The fact that psychic powers are existent in the story dumbed it out a little too. Second case was pretty good as I have said before since I saw none of that coming. I’m currently watching the arc dealing with all those Kokkuri-sama rituals so I can’t say too much about the rest from there, but the third case with that psychic girl and the biology teacher was pretty lame as well. You don’t have to watch too much of those thinking shows to catch on with the real culprit here. Intuition alone should have been enough here. Maybe it’s just me, and it’s not that obvious to everyone, but it all tied in too well when that what’s her name sensei suddenly asked for Mai’s name not long after the shows detailed in on how the curse is supposed to work. Maybe watching a Death Note beforehand might have helped you get the last few experience points for the level up if you weren’t quite there. I literally banged my head on the wall when Mai carelessly gave out her name. Apparently the predictability issue does improve from what I have heard about the manga from that friend I mentioned earlier, but I’ll wait and see about that personally.

Shibuya Kazuya, or Naru-chan if you would please. His real name seems fine enough to remember though since it actually rhymes. I could have sworn he was voiced by Takahiro Sakurai from the serious Jin (from Innocent Venus) vibes I got from him, but apparently I’m a retard when it comes to telling to male voices. He’s actually voiced by Yuuki Tai whom I haven’t heard much of except for as Da Capo’s lame, lethargic male protagonist. At least I settled down knowing that I’m hearing the same voice behind Kobray from Super Robot Taisen Alpha 3. Anyway, awesome character. He does seem like the typical silent and stuck-up type of guy, except he turns out to be quite the funny guy in the dry humor kind of way. It’s just because he’s straight-faced all the time. I get the feeling he’s supposed to be a parody character at times.

Then there was Taniyama Mai. Recently I’ve discovered that she can get pretty dense like all typical shoujo series heroine. Dense as in when you can no longer call a girl cute for making mistakes. She’s just getting a tad bit stubborn with denying her precognition abilities. Makes you want to slap the girl silly for always trying to keep it to herself. If she can fix that, or if we just ignore that part of her, Mai is lovely. Seriously, watching her gun for Naru-chan brings out the inner girl in me. Go Mai, don’t lose to Shana I mean Louise no crap, Masako. Too bad she looks god awful in the manga. It makes me wonder anime conversion is usually the better deal for shoujo manga’s. Now don’t go bitching at me though, I did say the world usually there. And I probably shouldn’t say this out of making a fool of myself, but I do have this hobby of anticipating the next outfit Mai would wear on each day. More skirts please. I mostly likely wouldn’t have bothered to take a peek at this series if all those Mai screenshots never caught my eyes. Forget the others, I don’t care much for them. Bou-san gives away that comfortable atmosphere like Kurz Weber from Full Metal Panic though.

Aside from what I mentioned earlier, I will ensure it is good stuff. Remember this is JC Staff, and not Kyoto Animation. No mind blowing animations here. The strength here comes from its consistency. Personally, Ghost Hunt is interesting enough to keep you from minding too much about the average animation. Weird part to note is how Ghost Hunt’s one of the rare shows without the staple opening and ending themes like the anime for Tsukihime. I don’t really know what to say about that. A formal opening could have helped even though it is fine as it is. Maybe it’s a just way to get you to focus more on the actual show or to save every single penny on the budget they’re on. Hey, I like the sound to the latter theory actually. Oh yeah, almost forgot to compliment on how they explain everything from different type of psychics to all that onmyoji stuff. It’s one reason why I got interested in this series. Time keep up as the subtitles come out then. This show gets too technical to blog properly from just watching the raw which I will still download since there’s a serious lack of Ghost Hunt screenshots. And yes, I did scratch out Code Geass from my blogging list. It seems I almost forgot that I haven’t been pleased with Sunrise as of late when I first picked it up.