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Anime's Weirdest Dub?! Discussing Ghost Stories || Chatsu-Nani?!
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In this spooky episode of Chatsu-Nani?!, Satsunami is joined by fellow co-host Andrew to discuss the infamous English anime dub of Ghost Stories! But is the infamy unwarranted? Or is this an anime that Yo-can't hold up? Well let's find out together in this episode of Chatsu-Nani!
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Transcript
Missing Host and New Guest Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey Adam, you ready for this month's spooky episode? Heck yeah. Let's go, I'm all ready. Andrew, what are you doing? Well, seeing as Adam isn't here for this episode, I thought I'd stand in for him. Look, I brought my own script and everything. Give me that. Uh-huh. No, no. I don't even want to know how you would do that joke. Well, just wait till you get to the geopolitical jokes. And on that note, welcome to Chad Tsunami.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hallo everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Satsunami and joining me for this spooktacular episode is none other than the one and only Chibi himself, it is, Andrew. Andrew, welcome back to Chatsunami.
00:00:51
Speaker
I'm sure glad you're not on this podcast anymore.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, how are you doing today, Andrew?
Spooky Episode and Anime Topic Introduction
00:00:58
Speaker
Well, I'm doing pretty great, but do you accept Jesus as your personal Saviour? I'm fresh off of watching many of the episodes of what we're going to be talking about today, so I'm full of beans and regret, really. Yeah, today we are, of course, going to be diving into a particularly I don't want to be one of those guys, but problematic animes that has… well, it was popular since the late 2000s and it's famous for all the wrong reasons. So yeah, today we're going to be talking about Dragon… no, for all your reasons, I'm just kidding. that's next month
00:01:30
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And for legal reasons, that's not a joke. But yeah, today we are going to be talking about a rather, again, because we're nearly at Halloween, we thought, you know what, let's be thematic like the drama queens we are and let's discuss an anime called Ghost Stories. Now, for anyone out there who is an anime fan, you will know 100% what we are talking about. You'll be very excited to hear what our opinions are. But before we dive into what we think about this anime... I don't assume our listeners are interested in what we have to say.
Overview of 'Ghost Stories' Anime
00:02:04
Speaker
Listen, I love and hope, OK? I love and hope people care what I have to say. But before we go in, Andrew, would you like to explain to the nonwebs in the audience what this anime is about? OK, I'm addressing the nonwebs right now. Yes. OK.
00:02:20
Speaker
Hi, I'm sorry, but this is going to be a discussion on a pretty controversial anime from the early 2000s. It was a spooky anime called Ghost Stories, where as far as I could tell from what I watched, it revolved around a group of schoolchildren who are situated in the spookiest town in all of Japan, all located in this one schoolhouse, and their cat gets possessed. And the entire show seems to revolve around making their cat not possessed.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a Japanese goosebumps, isn't it? It is very goosebumps-y, I did think that at large portions of it. There is some death, some people disappear that don't seem to return later in episodes, so there is an element of this is a pretty spooky one, guys. Japan has some good horror stuff in the live-action world, like they gave us Grudge, they gave us Other Things, The Ring. Anything that climbs out of a TV. Yeah, they're a big fan of climbing out of TVs and that kind of thing. But when it came to anime, they often fell quite short. There was, within the manga world, you had your Jinji Itos, who was a very well-regarded horror manga artist and writer, but any kind of adaptation of his works to animation never really properly translated, was never really very good. And so there hasn't really been that much that you could really classify as horror anime that is successful.
Significance of English Dub
00:03:37
Speaker
And not to say that this breaks that mold that this is in fact a good horror anime, but it certainly attempts to be a horror anime to my knowledge. There's certainly a lot of comedic elements to it. So the version we watched was an English dub, but just the general kind of character acting in animation from it, you can tell it in the Japanese version, there was also a fair bit of comedy to the original series. So what we are covering today is the English dub, which
00:04:00
Speaker
I'll let you go into a little bit more detail as to why we listened to the dub today and not the sub, why there's so much significance to it being the dub. All right, listeners, get your notepads out because this next bit is definitely going to be in the chat tsunami test. so but I have my page of facts here that I honestly cannot wait to share with you guys because see when Andrew initially recommended that we do an episode in Ghost Stories, I'm going to be honest initially I was on the fence because I thought well there's not
00:04:31
Speaker
really much to talk about with this anime, because as you said, the reason we watched the English dub of this anime was purely because it is considered really more like a modern day a a bridge series. You know, it was very loose with the way it interpreted the source material, it still kept elements like the names of the characters and the names of the ghosts and how they defeated them because there obviously wasn't really a way that they could edit it to just make it a completely random death
Anime's Success and Misconceptions
00:05:02
Speaker
or whatever. So it was and interesting to see initially and then the further you go into it, the further you see there's a lot of, and I'm gonna get this out of the way now, I'm gonna get the big air elephant out of the room here or ghost stay elephant if you will, that there's a lot of very, nowadays anyway, and I suppose back then as well, very on PC humour, a lot of dated references, ah especially the dated references, but we will get on to that. So when you look at the original version, as you were saying there, Andrew, you have This story about a group of kids that are going into this haunted schoolhouse, they diff defeat a ghost of the week and everything that is centered around Japanese folklore like the yokai and such. But when you watch this one, this is a completely different anime because they treat the source material a lot more flippantly. They don't treat it with any reverence, everything's a joke, the humour's cranked up to a loving, in both in good and bad ways. And before I go on, there is a particular fact that I just want to put a pen in right now, and we will of course dive into it further their later on, but there was a misconception that when this anime came to the studio EDV films,
00:06:19
Speaker
that they were told that this was an anime that was very unpopular in Japan, that was bombing, that they wanted ADV forums to essentially adapt it for a Western audience and everything to turn it into their own thing. And then the ADR director, which again will also be coming back to him, Stephen Foster, he was basically the captain of this dubbing ship, he wrote it, he directed it, and it was his job to essentially localise and make sure that it translated well to an English dub. Now, before I go on and give a bit of backstory for this anime, do you know much about the backstory for this?
00:07:02
Speaker
Not especially. The anime itself I know is like an adaptation of a Japanese horror movie or a series of movies, which as far as I could tell, because I can't find much about it. It seems to have been a live action series of movies called School Ghost Stories. Did you look into that much?
00:07:17
Speaker
Well, would you believe it goes further back than that? It's actually based on a set of children's novels written by Toru Tsunimitsu and it was published in 1990. And as I said before, it was very heavily influenced by Japanese folklore and the creatures from that. direct as well because between 1995 and 1999, and again I was really struggling because it's really hard to find these films, but between 1995 and 1999, you're right, it received four live-action films as well as an FMV video game for the Sega Saturn, and apparently it also had a straight-to-video anime in 1996.
00:08:01
Speaker
So this whole misconception right away that all it bombed and everything and it wasn't that popular when it received so much attention in that regard and it wasn't until the year 2000 and I think it was from October 2000 which makes this episode very topical between October 2000 to March 2001. The show ran on Sunday evenings and apparently the viewership numbers ranged between 12% to 14% And for perspective, in case you think, well that's quite a low number, apparently in some evenings it actually outperformed some of the more well-regarded shows like Dragon Ball and Pokémon. That can be for a number of reasons. That can be because of the TV slot. I think the idea behind Ghost Stories, at least for this anime, was that it was supposed to be a filler show. If I've got the facts correct, one piece was supposed to take over that spot. I can't remember the name of the anime but they had an anime before it and they didn't want to immediately put One Piece onto Sunday evenings because apparently they tried that with another anime. They changed it from one slot to the other and they realised that their viewership just completely tanked for that show so they wanted to kind of pace it out. So the theory is that this was probably more likely a filler anime. I know ironic a filler anime. but they made 20 episodes and that was supposed to kind of pace it out until they were ready essentially to move one piece. If one piece needed anything it was more
Cancelled Episode Discussion
00:09:33
Speaker
filler. Exactly.
00:09:35
Speaker
ah But did you know this anime actually had 21 episodes technically? Ooh, a mystery 21st episode. Well, have you heard about this, the cancelled episode? In Japan or over here? In Japan, would you believe? Oh, interesting. For what they've said in the English dub, I think there's a fair amount more reasons to cancel it earlier than 21 episodes in. So what was the motivation for cancelling in Japan? The episode itself focused on a creature called, and I'm going to test your web knowledge here to see if you know who I'm talking about here, something called a Kuchisake Ona. Okay. Do you know what creature that could be referring to or person technically in Japanese folklore? Kuchisake Ona. Is it? No, who is it? So have you heard of the slit mouth woman? Yes, I think I have heard of the slit mouth woman. So the idea is you're walking home from the office. It's late at night. It's very dark. A woman approaches you and corners you and they asks you if you think she's pretty. If you say no, she kills you. If you say yes, she takes off her face mask
00:10:39
Speaker
and she shows you that her face is essentially being, well, not her face, but her cheeks have been carved right up to her ears. So then she asks again, do you still think I'm pretty? And then if you say yes, she'll cut you so you look like her. If you say no, she'll kill you. So I think the idea is that you're supposed to confuse her so that she gets so confused that you have a chance to run away or something. So it's like, do you think I'm pretty? And then you go, actually, do you think I'm pretty. What is beauty? What is beauty? Except in the eye of the beholder. But apparently there was an episode based on that and the only evidence that we have for it, other than the notes and things for it, is someone actually recorded the preview for the episode on their TV. Basically the reason that they got rid of it was because apparently parents were worried that kids who had cleft palettes were going to get compared to her. Oh, I see. So it was kind of like an outrage from the parents that they didn't want this. I don't want to say representation because it's obviously not representing them, but they didn't want kids to be made fun of because of it. But I find it really weird because I'm pretty sure I saw a screenshot of the live action version and she looks terrifying.
Rarity and Impact of English Dub
00:11:54
Speaker
I'm sorry, she looks absolutely horrific. But if you are listening to this episode, you look beautiful. Love you. Don't kill me. She's gonna do the same to you now. You said the wrong thing. Am I pretty?
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think that just hammers on the point though that this was a popular anime. You know, it wasn't something that people kind of dismissed and said, oh, this is just something you stick on in the background and things. Something that I also found interesting was that this actually does have a faithful en English dub. Do you know about this as well? I think I had heard that there was a more faithful English dub that got made. I'm curious how faithful it is, if it's any good.
00:12:34
Speaker
The only episodes I could find, and again, all the media other than the actual anime itself that we're reviewing today is so incredibly difficult to track down. I think I had to go to the Internet Archive to actually find a couple of episodes and the sound quality was absolutely atrocious. You tell me I could find it on Amazon. When I look Amazon was like, yeah, we have it, but you have to do the trial with Crunchyroll. And I already have a Crunchyroll account. So I was like, well, maybe I can just check on Crunchyroll. And I look on Crunchyroll, and it only had the Japanese version. Didn't have an option to listen in English. And so I was really confused because Amazon had said, yep, Japanese and English, but you go through Crunchyroll. And so I was like, oh, I don't seem to have a way of watching this. And so I did have to go through alternative means in order to watch the episodes I watched. And for clarification, I watched seven episodes of the 20 episode series, just going to kind of get some context
00:13:26
Speaker
of the show. I can't claim to have seen all of it, so I do apologise. I may end up finishing it at some point with my partner because we did watch it together, but as it stands I've watched seven episodes. Yeah, it lends into one at some points where you're just like, right, okay, this is a similar joke, right, okay, we've got this and that. As I was saying before, the company who is responsible for this is ADV Films, which I think is no longer here. I don't know if it got absorbed into another company or it just flat out doesn't exist anymore. But as I was saying before, Stephen Foster is the captain of this very weird dubbing ship. Whenever he was interviewed and whenever the cast for the English dub were interviewed, they always said that this was a very unpopular anime in Japan. that They had to come in and localise it and make it great and everything. And I think Maybe that might have been true to an extent to make it more localised for English-speaking countries, but the way it goes about it is very... it doesn't hold up, does it? No, I mean, it's edgy humour is very much of its time, but even back, like, there were times my partner and I would look at each other and we'd go, even back then you couldn't say that. That was known to be not okay to say. There's some hard slurs they're throwing around. Oh, 100%. And this is the thing as well, this wasn't Foster's first rodeo because apparently ADV had also done the original dub for Evangelion. And again, I don't think it was as comical because Netflix apparently have done their own dub for their release, so there's different dubs out there. But he also did one called Sorcerous Stabber Orphan. Super Milk Chan, which ironically enough, he for some reason interjected his own live action sections into the show. I don't even know where to begin to describe it, it's like a cartoon girl who lives in this futuristic society and gets up to random things but then they have an episode of The Office in between. that's the best way I can describe it. But apparently, I think Cartoon Network, when they were deciding do they go with that version or a more faithful translation, they went for the faithful one, which is surprising. And there was another anime called Guin Saga. It just sort of shows that even before he got his hands on those stories, which came out in 2005, I just want to point this out because the original anime ran from October 2000 to March 2001 and it wasn't until 2005 that over a year we got the quote unquote funny dub of it. I'd also kind of look into ADV, find out more about this like absolutely bizarre company. My partner had actually asked when we were watching it if it was a Canadian produced thing because there were like certain references that she thought were very Canadian orientated, but I think they might have just been a North American sharing references there. So but I did notice that they also did Elfen Liad and also Full Metal Panic, both of which are pretty well-known and well-regarded shows. I don't know if the versions, those are other official versions. There's no other English versions of those, in which case that's quite funny. But most people I think will have seen the Japanese sub instead of the English dub for those shows. It's funny that there are some other well-known ones in in addition to Evangelion and Ghost Stories
Chatsunami and Myth Monsters Promo
00:16:46
Speaker
there. It's certainly an interesting anime, for sure. Initially, when you recommended this, I thought, well, we have a lot to talk about for this, but you know what? I genuinely think we'll have a lot. So, listeners and yourself, Andrew, as well, feel free to put the kettle on because we're going to dive into the wonderful world of ghost stories.
00:17:06
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami, a variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime and journal interests. Previously on Chatsunami, we've analysed what makes a good horror game, conducted a retrospective on Pierce Brosnan's runs James Bond, and listened to us take deep dives into both the Sonic and Halo franchises. Also, if you're an anime fan, then don't forget to check us out on our sub-series, Chatsunani, where we dive into the world of anime. So far, we've reviewed things like Death Note, Princess Mononoke, and the hit Beyblade series. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, and all big podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
00:17:48
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters! I'm Erin, a self-confessed mythology addict and occasionally scholar. Myth Monsters focuses on the monsters of global folklore and mythology. With sometimes a cryptid thrown in once or twice, we go from looking at Jackalopes to Gorgons to Wendigoes to Bigfoot from dwarves to elves.
00:18:10
Speaker
And honestly, everything in between. Why should I listen to this podcast over any other mythology podcast out there? Well, we're only 15 to 20 minutes long so we're perfect in time for your little commute. And also we focus on a different culture and monster every single week, a real in-depth look into modern media, where they're found in films, TV, video games and books, and also the origin description and if I believe they existed.
Controversial Humor Analysis
00:18:36
Speaker
So it's perfect for any short trips or if you're into any specific monsters that you fancy. So come join the fun every Thursday and stay spooky babes! And we are back. So do you want to kick off Andrew?
00:18:53
Speaker
disclaimer off the bat, we do not condone any of the particularly risky jokes that are said in the show. It's not okay to say then, and it is definitely not okay to say now. I cannot agree with that more, and I'm not even going to make a Pandora lawyer joke because, yeah, I 100% agree with you. I do think that when you listen back to it, it's definitely a product of its time, but I feel as if even some of the earlier jokes just don't really they don't really land. It's almost like, oh look, this is a slur. Oh look, this is an offensive joke. They're going for shock humour. They're not themselves being racist or homophobic or anything like that. They're just doing it for pure shock value, which is not an okay thing to do. It's not. It does not legitimize it just to be like, just joking. Can you tell I'm joking kind of thing? I don't actually believe these things. You're still making those jokes and you're still glorifying and legitimizing hatred towards minority groups. So that is never okay. That being said, There were elements of the show that were quite funny. They did create an enjoyable experience for much of what I was watching. I think if I had been watching the Japanese version, I quickly would become bored by the show. I think that what they had ad-libbed and produced made it much more watchable. You sometimes were wincing when you were watching it because of some of the aforementioned jokes, but it was more watchable than it otherwise would have been, I think. it was amusing enough that my partner and I will likely continue watching past the seven episodes that we squeezed in yesterday. Yeah, I have to say, after watching the first couple of episodes and then going down the research rabbit hole for this episode, it almost gave me an existential crisis of sorts, I'm going to be honest.
00:20:39
Speaker
this, which sounds are really weird for a show like Ghost Stories, because on the one hand, as you said, they have taken a show that is relatively...again, I'm not Japanese myself, of course neither is Andrew, sorry to out you in this episode.
00:20:54
Speaker
ah Maybe it's just like ah I am not as understanding in terms of the folklore and things like that. I don't have as much of a connection. So when I did see elements of it, I thought it was all right. But I never really thought, wow, this is a series that I would have been sitting on the edge of my seat watching week in, week out. But with the English dub. It feels as if on the one hand they've made it their own thing but I've got a question for you Andrew and this is a very important question I've been hanging on to. Do you think that technically this is the same show as the source material? It's a tricky one and you know what it reminds me most ah of? Sort of online abridged. oh yeah Because you've taken a template, you've taken the base elements and you're running with the same kind of path. It's like a choose your own adventure book in some ways mixed with Mad Libs because they've got a structure, they've got a path, they've got ah essentially an end point, which has been set about by the show that already existed.
00:21:55
Speaker
And they've decided to alter who the characters are, their personalities, their backstories, their motivations, and their dialogue to fit a story that they want to tell in an amusing way that mirrors what is happening in the animation that's in front of them. It was very much as if they were given a show that was completely muted and they had to guess what was said. That is how it seems at times, that they were just kind of guessing. And they'd be very meta within the show. Like if the lip flaps were moving too quickly, that they would just kind of pretend that they were just matching the lip flaps, but just making kind of nonsense sounds because they didn't make references. like I couldn't sort of match that lip flap or I could be bothered sort of changing that or whatever. And then one of the characters references like, don't you remember from episode one? And so they have these little kind of meta jokes within the show that these sort of actors and writers had put together, which has made it its
Western Misconceptions and ADV Films' Role
00:22:46
Speaker
own thing. And arguably, yeah, I think it is its own show. And it is likely far better known to the Western world and it's by no means mainstream. Your average person does not know about this show. And even probably you said anyone who's a weeb likely knows about this. I actually disagree with that because I very much did not know about ghost stories until pretty recently. And you're at a massive weeb.
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a pretty big weeb. I often listen back to your episodes where you wrote to me as an anime aficionado or like resident weeb. And I'm always like, I don't know about that. I'm even more casual than that. But I do have a decent knowledge of anime. And I've heard about it from other sources, both yourself and from Trash Taste podcast, they've referenced it before. And those are the only two times that I heard of ghost stories until we set aside time to watch this for this episode. So it's not that well regarded. However, it is better known for this than it is for its Japanese version. No one spoke, in my knowledge, about the Japanese version. It was always discussing the English one. So I think that this is, in the Western world, the more successful the show. Yeah, I have to say I have a dilemma about how I feel about that, to be honest, because you're completely right. As I was saying in the intro, there was a Animax
00:23:58
Speaker
think it was. They did a low budget English dub of it and it was a lot more faithful to the original and I think that was only shown really in Southeast Asia like Singapore and the like and it's interesting because I don't feel as if ghost stories really got that chance in the West. to experience that and maybe not that dub because all things considered that dub isn't exactly the best, you know, you're not quoting it going oh this is the best thing ever but it never really got a chance to entrench itself into the West to be like oh this is ghost stories, it's about a group of kids who fight ghosts and other supernatural creatures. It never really got that chance because ADV films got their claws into it and said right we're gonna make this
00:24:46
Speaker
essentially a dark comedy. And like you said, and I think all of the voice actors and actresses also agree that this was a show that would attack absolutely everybody, no matter what your sexual preferences were, no matter what your gender was, no matter what nationality you were, everyone was criticised, made fun of, which I think Stephen Foster, he has kind of alluded to the idea that he had made it as if it was like South Park. I don't know if that was his intention that he suddenly wanted to make it kind of South Park-esque where he would make all of these fourth wall breaking jokes and make it very meta because it's something you touched on there that he had almost or it seemed as if he had this blank slate to do whatever he wanted and I don't think that's necessarily true because the big
00:25:38
Speaker
myth behind this was that, as I said before, they said, oh, you can do whatever you want, this show bombed in Japan, which I find absolutely baffling because, as we saw by the evidence, it clearly didn't. If a show bombs, it never sees the light of day again. Just ask Netflix, haha. Netflix, please sponsor.
00:25:57
Speaker
ah But you see how they had a video game, they had four films that came out over there, they had a TV special as well for the anime, and they had enough people to cause an uproar that they had to cancel the Kuchisake Onai episode, so by all means that's a complete fabricated tale. And I think Foster's reasoning behind it and again I'm not attacking the guy or whatever I'm sure he's a lovely guy and all of that but I feel as if his choices were very interesting in all the wrong ways because he has said that oh financially it was a flop and everything which again I don't know the exact figures of how much this anime made and again he criticises that this was only one season and you know went for 20 episodes and then all of a sudden it was cut short in its prime kind of thing and again that's not true it almost feels as if it is a filler anime for ironically enough.
Audience Reactions and Precedents
00:26:57
Speaker
the filler king itself, one piece. So there's a lot of misconceptions that have arisen from this and I think there was another video that I also watched and this was very helpful in my research from a YouTuber called i think it was Mercury Falcon and they went into a good amount of depth into this What's interesting as well is again when they said that they were throwing this anime at ADV to dub, they waved the license fee for it. So it almost felt as if they were saying, oh yeah this was an absolute bomb, do whatever you want with it. But it sits uncomfortably with me because can you imagine Andrew writing a story or you know a children's thing and saying oh this is a show about kids that chase ghosts. Like imagine you wrote your equivalent of Scooby Doo, Canadian Scooby Doo if you will, and someone took that and then filled it with a bunch of pop culture references and very risky jokes. How would you feel about that as the author of the original source material? I wouldn't be very happy because it's not essentially a parodying it, it's using it as a medium for making their own jokes that would potentially sour the original material in many's eyes. And so it's kind of associating your brand, your intellectual property with risque humor and with offensive humor and with just general edge and cancellable comments.
00:28:24
Speaker
it would not feel very nice to see your property used in that way. So the anime itself was kind of spin-off of these movies. And so quite possibly is the case that the anime was supposed to be like a tie-in with that that didn't quite go to plan and they bailed on it after 20 episodes. They didn't green light it for anymore and we was like, all right, you guys do with it what you will kind of thing because It might have gotten decent viewing figures, but I guess they kind of had earmarked other properties that they wanted to put in instead that they felt were better than that. And so this was very much was a filler. Maybe just back in the early 2000s, there was less on TV. So maybe it just got better viewing figures then. Because I mean even the dub itself has lent itself to a particular term, and I don't know if you've heard about this term, called Fosterization, which essentially is just the descriptor for what Stephen Foster did to this anime, that he took it and he put in his own commentary, his jokes and things, and it's something that he wholeheartedly embraces. He says that this is something that you proud of you know because he saw a compilation video on YouTube that I think has been taken down since but he saw that compilation video and all the love it was getting people were laughing at it although the one weird thing that I have to admit I've noticed is if you look at the comments of these videos is they all sound very similar. It's like I'm from this country and I find this hilarious. I'm gay and I find this hilarious. You know those kind of comments and I'm like obviously it would be because they were written years ago but I feel like this sounds like bullets are just right. What it reminds me of is, I don't know if you're is in tune with the American politics stuff, but there was a guy that wrote, like, as a black republican, I believe that this is an offensive role. I would vote for Trump and that kind of thing, but they'd forgotten to log out of their usual profile, which is clearly shown as like a white guy, because they must have made a second account to seem like they were a black person. And so people would be like, you've just outed yourself here. You've made this mistake. Yeah, that seems to be a very common mistake on the internet.
00:30:31
Speaker
I always remember if you somehow find yourself with an old account that you're going to reply to yourself at the very least sign out of your other one for God's sake but yeah again and I don't think that Mr Foster is aware, I don't think he was going around putting these comments but at the same time you're kind of sitting there thinking I can see that there is a bit of a divide to nowadays ever since the news came out of course that it wasn't just a case of oh they threw an anime at them and oh they had this amazing opportunity because as I said it wasn't until the 17th of July in 2006 that Yu
Humorous Yet Flawed Creation
00:31:12
Speaker
-Gi-Oh! abridged came out and although that obviously wasn't an official dub that was
00:31:17
Speaker
essentially one of the precursors for the way a bridging would evolve on the internet but this predates it of course by a whole year and technically you could probably say this was if not the first and definitely one of the first I was the father of a bridge series. I think a lot of what you see from the bridge series you kind of know and what we talked about in our episode about a bridge series kind of comes from this. I think that a lot of the people who were abridgers were familiar with this. Because the thing is, looking back to what you said at the beginning of the episode, I do think that there are some funny moments in this anime As I said, there are some moments where you think, oh, this would not fly today. But looking past that, there are some genuinely funny fourth wall breaks. Like, I think it's Leo at one point. He comes in panting and he goes, oh my God, those were the fastest lip flaps ever. Momoko, I think in the original dub she was a psychic, but she has become a devout Christian. As you were joking me, have you accepted the Lord Jesus as your saviour?
00:32:29
Speaker
I mean you've got so many other characters and again you've got some very god damn it anime moments as well. Yeah. We don't even have the grace to blame Japanese humour for this. It was very much a couple of American people who thought this would be a funny joke. The constant kind of referencing of panties and those kind of elements there. There's lots of references about characters getting laid and stuff and they were in elementary school. It was very weird for that. The thing is, and maybe it's just that I don't really gel with the majority of his humour, but it feels like, you know when you're with a group of people and you have that one person that constantly makes jokes, and initially, you know, one or two other jokes might be funny, but because someone's validated it and said, oh, that joke was really funny, they continue to be the funny man. Even though no one's really said, we don't need you to be funny, just be yourself, but he's continually lapping on joke after joke and he's throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Being very attacked right now. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry you had to find out this way Andrew, but... ah probably good reasons that is indeed a joke but no in all seriousness it feels as if he's throwing everything at the wall as we said he makes gay jokes racist jokes ableist jokes transphobic jokes transphobic jokes yeah xenophobic jokes
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, I have to admit, some of the jokes, obviously they weren't exactly right, but some of them were done in a way where you thought, okay, I can see the humor in that, but then other ones were just really lazy. I don't know if you got to the tunnel episode where there's a joke with the main boy character Hajime goes to sign and I think it's down to the tunnel. again, a Japanese folklore story and he says jokingly, oh, it's written in Japanese. See if they ended the joke there. That would be very funny because, you know, you're like, well, obviously he's speaking in English and can't translate it. That is the joke. But then he goes a step further and he says a very racist caricature of how people try to speak Chinese and Japanese. Chinese. And then he says, oh no wait, that's Chinese. For obvious reasons I feel completely flat for him, a bit more so because it just felt quite lazy. I didn't feel as if, again, if he'd stopped at the first hurdle, which I feel as if with a lot of his jokes
00:34:51
Speaker
If he stopped at the first bit, it would be really good. But the problem is, is that there's no moderation. Stephen Foster could be a really lovely guy in real life, so I don't want to hold this against him too much. But I feel as if it's kind of gone to his head a little bit, that he's created something that people have latched onto, but he's kind of riding the wings of it, you know? He's saying, oh look, I'm the father of fosterisation and I fosterise this. anime almost as if he is the reason that this anime is so popular and again I have very conflicting feelings about that because there are a lot of funny jokes in this anime and I do like some of the humour but when it doesn't land it really doesn't land. Yeah I didn't see that episode as far as I can recall so I wonder if it was the last episode that you're referring to. No, I think it's... Oh, I can't even remember. I think it's either the first 10. After the fifth episode, I was kind of flicking through them and again, watching clips on YouTube as well to get a refresher before this episode as well. And yeah, that's one of the ones that always comes up in the compilation video where, yeah, he reads the sign and then he makes it, oh, look. I'm speaking funny Chinese, haha which again isn't very funny. I don't know why you think saying, oh we attack everybody, therefore you can't attack us kind of thing. I feel as if that is a really weird defense to take.
Reflecting on 'Ghost Stories' Legacy
00:36:21
Speaker
It's a kind of closing point though for me personally. I do think that this is a very interesting anime to look at because it's an anime that is very unique. It's an anime that is almost a once in a lifetime chance for them and will never get an anime like this again. And it has its funny moments as we said. It has some really interesting moments and then it has the moments where even the bad bits of the anime, it amplifies them with the very risky jokes about the characters underwear and things like that. They just crank it up to 11 and have Hajime just act like a creep essentially and I don't know if that's technically faithful or not to the original. I'm sure there was probably a joke thrown in there
00:37:07
Speaker
at their expense but yeah some of it comes across as really weird. I do think that it is an anime that if you're deadly curious about an official anime dub and how it got here definitely go check it out but go into under the caveat of course that a lot of this humour does not hold up in terms of sensibilities. If you're going to go into this please be aware that there is going to be a fence of humour and I know a lot of people will probably be listening to this thinking, gi oh Satsu, you're such a, you know, you're so soft, but I'm gonna warn you now, I'm not just gonna say, oh, it's up on the anime, go watch it, and you know, you go and watch it, and it's, yeah, it's not great, but what about yourself Andrew? Yeah, it's one of those things. And likewise, you don't want to necessarily recommend this show because, and especially from what we've talked about today, it was largely everything we said was why this show was bad, why it's not okay. There is that for sure. And I would not certainly recommend it to many people. Anyone who I would say, check it out, I would provide context of I do not find these jokes funny, just so you know that they do make these references and it's not okay. But As we did discuss, there were moments that did make me laugh and were enjoyable. I want to take a shout out to the piano episode. That was my favourite. I don't know if you have a favourite in particular, maybe we'll get to yours in a second. But that episode, Makara and I watched and were almost in tears laughing at being cornered by the piano and the piano coming out of nowhere and just like various little jokes added into that episode. I mean obviously the piano coming out of nowhere it was already in the animation so that was already there but I don't know if it was played off as humorous in the original one but it was really really funny when we watched that so we enjoyed that a lot. Was there any kind of particular moments or episodes that stood up to you? I mean the racing one was quite funny at times. This sounds terrible after what I've said but there was a particular scene in one of the later ones where
00:38:59
Speaker
i don't think the episode itself was overly funny but there was a bit where the main two girl characters are in the hospital and they're having a flashback and I think in the original it's supposed to be I think her mum dying maybe or like a really traumatic moment and all the nurses rush in and the dad rushes in and they close the door in this poor wee girl's life outside. But the main girl, Suzuki, is standing outside of the room and in the job the dad turns round and says, listen, Suzuki, you only get a chance like this once in a lifetime. and he just runs into the room. Honestly, I think it just completely took me off guard. I was howling, I was like, oh my god, and it does cut to the present day and Momoko was just looking at a horror find going, oh dear god.
00:39:46
Speaker
ah So there are a lot of funny moments in it but as we said if you are going to check this anime out, go in with a pinch of salt.
Final Thoughts and Future Plans
00:39:54
Speaker
Also feel free to check out Stephen Foster's YouTube channel. He actually does have a YouTube channel. I actually did watch some of his videos talking about it and he does go in depth about talking about the backstory of host stories and how they came to be. Some things I kind of think I don't know how accurate it is, but for the most part, it's very insightful. If you are looking it up, his name is spelled like S-T-E-7-E-N instead of Steven. It's really strange. I don't know how you would start to pronounce that, but yeah, definitely go check out his channel. And I don't mean that in the way of, oh, go to say, oh, you're full of rubbish or whatever. No, no, no, no. Just go through, listen to what he has to say and everything and it's interesting what he does have to say yeah that's all I can really say about this anime it's a time capsule that probably is never gonna happen again but you know what I suppose we're lucky to have
00:40:49
Speaker
depending on who you ask we're kind of lucky both in good and bad ways to have experience that I suppose so on that note Andrew thank you so much for bearing with this anime and watching it. Thank you very much for having me on and getting the chance to both finally watch some of this anime or mutilation of an anime and then get to talk about it. It was an enjoyable experience yesterday I did fall asleep financial initially and then kind of doing a re-watch once I woke up and I'd picked up my part from work We watched it together and we had a good time watching it. There was the moments that we were gritting our teeth over, but we were laughing. The little boy whose name I'm blanking on now babbling and just making no sense occasionally. Might have annoyed me at other times, but I found very funny, especially when he'd be in the background and they'd be talking to each other and you just kind of hear him continuing to cry. That was funny. That was clever humour. I did enjoy that. The ironic thing is when I listen to the Animax, the hub of it, it doesn't sound any better when he starts to cry. It very, very similar. And I don't know whether they took inspiration from that or they just made the weirdest noises ever. her But yeah, no, I agree with you. That was pretty funny. So yeah, thank you so much for giving me the chance to talk about this. yeah I think I probably will try and watch some more of the show. So if anyone has anything else to say about it to us that we didn't cover, then we're happy for you to message us on our very social media applications.
00:42:05
Speaker
and actually on that note where can these lovely listeners find your content Andrew? Well you can find me on many episodes of Chat Tsunami. I've not been on for a little bit because we've had the break from the previous season and you will hear me next month for Dragon Ball Month for one or maybe two episodes. I don't know what schedule I'm being pulled in for but you'll hear me next month. And then, yeah, there's a huge, huge amount of episodes that you can sort of catch up on and that we've been in together, both anime and non-anime. Usually something nerdy though. You can check us out on Chatsunami on that. We do also have a separate series, Stop, Drop, and Roll Initiative. There are only two episodes out of that currently. Eventually a third episode will come out, mark my words, and that you can find me, Chatsunami, and two of our other hosts, Robotic Battle Toaster and Martin McAllister, the wrestler, on Stop, Drop, and Roll Initiative at SDRI pods. Yeah. And then you can follow Chatsunami on all social media platforms.
00:42:56
Speaker
your ways thats you so as you were saying if you want to check out board offa contentate together and we have ah way of episodes together you can check us out our website chatsandabmi dot com as well as all good podcast ah also want to give a huge shout out to our pandaloian patrons robotic battle toaster and sonia thank you so much as always for supporting the show but if you would like to become handle ordering Patreon and get exclusive content, early access, access to bloopers, to let's play content, all of the works for as little as £1 a month, then you can check us out at our Patreon, patreon dot.com forward slash chat tsunami. But until next time, I will see you again, Andrew, next month when we do Dragon Ball Month. But until then, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay indoors, folks. The oni will get you. Oh, God! Tyler, she's beautiful.