▪	RELEASED BY:		ADV FILMS
		▪	ASPECT RATIO:		4:3 FULL SCREEN
		▪	AUDIO:		ENGLISH AND JAPANESE DD 2.0
		▪	RUNNING TIME:		550 MIN
		▪	RATING:		TV 14
		▪	RELEASE DATE:		01/08/2008
		▪	REVIEW DATE:		02/06/2008
		▪	REVIEWED BY:		DAVEY C. JONES

SYNOPSIS:
A reluctant ghost hunter. Her babbling baby brother. A horny pre-teen. The nerd. A fundamentalist hottie. And a demon-possessed cat. Join the most hysterical group of Scooby-don’ts you’ve ever seen in the most gleefully controversial and gut-bustingly funny anime of the year!

The complete 20 episode series on 5 discs. 

REVIEW:
Heads up to viewers of this anime – you’re going to have to wear diapers to watch this show because you will lose it laughing! It’s so funny you’ll wet yourself! Ghost Stories is like the Japanese Scooby-Doo, except without the dog. Instead they have a demon possessed cat! How do these kids all get together? Well, the jock, the good girl, the whiney brat, the geek, and the cheerleader turned Jesus freak all end up at their ramshackle school on a very bad day. It seems the ghosts and ghouls, demons and nasties that were sealed away in a forest nearby just got freed – and they decided to take residence at the local high school! Now personally, if I was ever in a place where mannequins try to kill, creepy dolls try to eat me, or ghost and goblins try to possess me, I’d be running out screaming as soon as I saw the first one! It’s like in those horror films when the walls bleed and a voice says “Get out!” what do the people in the film do? They go in! The bunch of nut cases! What do these kids do? They decide to become ghost busters!

A lot of the show plays out like Scooby-Doo but way, way creepier. So it’s mostly episodic. There’s the odd 2-parter. It’s not until the end that a more ongoing story is set up, and even then, nothing too demanding. Basically you get a tour of horror through all the different ghost stories of all kinds (not just ghosts) that haunt the halls of Japanese schools everywhere. The Ghost Profiles  in the extras section tell you all about which kind of ghost story the episodes were taken from which is very cool.  There’re witch covens, corpse brides, demonic taxis, headless bikers, ghost nurses, possessed paintings, pet cemetery gone wild, and much, much more for fun with the fright-o-meter!

This anime is hilarious! Plus you sort of get two series for the price of one. There’s the original Japanese version there which takes things a bit more seriously than the dubbed. The dubbed though, that’s priceless. That insane anime director Steven Foster is up to his crazy high jinks again because he had the English cast do improv on the recording sessions and kept it that way all through the whole show. There are all sorts of current pop-culture trivia that‘s thrown in, nothing left unscathed. There’re references to pop singer Madonna, the movie Brokeback Mountain, and that’ s only two out of a hundred Western references made by the English cast. They rip up the screen, they are so frikkin’ nuts. It’s a riot! I can’t get over how many jokes they slide in under their breath. You definitely have to check out both the English and Japanese versions to appreciate how screwy the show is. And the motley crew of the English cast includes a lot of big names from the anime biz: Monica Rial, Greg Ayres, Chris Patton, Hilary Haag, Christine Auten, Rob Mungle, Illich Guardiola, and guest appearances of the likes of Kira Vincent Davis.

The animation is also funny, yet bizarre and creepy too. It goes from the gut-busting antics of the kids to some pretty eerie ghoulies in the show. Is there anything big time scary? Not really no (the mannequins creep me out). Most importantly though, the show is frightful fun!

EXTRAS:
Bonus goodies for ghosts and ghoulies include al the same stuff form the original single disc release! Normally DV does thinpacks but this set isn’t one of them. And it has all the bonus goodie sot prove it. There’s clean opening and closing animation, ADV previews, Ghost Profiles (BOO!).

IN SUMMARY:
Outrageous comedy pureed with horror! Its stories about the inept gang of do-gooding kids trying to stop the ghost, ghouls, and goblins lurking about. Frightfully funny!  You won’t believe what you hear!