Character names, names of ghosts, how to defeat the ghosts, and the basic plot of the show. These were the four things that the dub team at ADV Films were told that they could not change when creating the English dub for the anime “Ghost Stories”. Everything else was fair game. And oh, what a game it was to them.

As I explained in my last blog post, anime dubbing is the process of creating and performing an English script to replace the Japanese audio in an anime, to make the show more digestible for English viewers. As I explained in the post, dubbing can change the meaning and emotion of scenes due to constraints in following the animation as well as overcoming the language barrier. This is not what happened to “Ghost Stories”.

The story goes like this: Ghost Stories bombed when it aired in Japan, and when its rights were given to ADV, they were sent with the message to “do whatever” to make the anime better. Steven Foster, the lead writer and producer of the dub, and his team at ADV took this job and ran with it. The original script was thrown out the window, actually, there wasn’t even a script at all. The voice actors were allowed to say whatever they wanted. Whoever got to the studio first on the day of recording could say anything, and the rest of the cast were forced to improv around it. Quickly, it turned into a competition of who could be the funniest, who could say the most outlandish things, and who could completely change their character.

The most charming part of the dub is how real it felt. The actors speak candidly and actually enjoy what they say. Watching the show chronologically offers another treat: you get to see the show devolve into chaos. In the first episode, few jokes are made, and the voice actors seem to be doing their best at a faithful adaptation of the original story. However, with each passing episode, the voice actors get bolder, they begin to build off of bits that they created, and the plot goes down the drain. By the last few episodes of the series, the voice actors talk about how bad they think the show is and ask each other about what the plot even is.

When the show first came out, many fans were outraged. The dub is incredibly offensive. However, today, the show has reached legendary status. If you’re ever in the mood for a good laugh, I fully recommend the show. Though, warning, it is extremely offensive to everything. Here is a quote from one of the lead voice actresses about the show, “This show’s whole purpose was to make everyone angry. We wanted to be equal opportunity offenders”.