[Readers Request] Ghost Hunt – Episode 1

Ghost Hunt’s first episode has a pretty basic setup.
Mai Taniyama and her friends are staying late after school telling ghost stories, her friend tells one about the old school building near theirs and how it is supposedly haunted. The ghosts in the building rejecting the idea of the building being demolished and loosing their home. Their ghost story time is interrupted by a handsome, but suspicious young man named Kazuya Shibuya who appears to be an upperclassman and another girl who claims to be psychic and be suffering from ghosts gathered from their ghost stories.

After that evening, Mai drops by the old school building and gazes at it. Thinking it could very well be haunted, she sees a very expensive looking camera sitting in the door way and goes to check it out. While she’s there,  a man calls out startling her and she turns too fast and hits one of the shoe holders. Sending it toppling down, the man runs in and pushes her out of the way. Injuring himself and ruining the camera.
She finds out later that the man was Kazuya’s assistant. Kazuya, despite not being much older then her runs a paranormal investigation business and was hired by the principal to check out the old school building. With his assistant out of commission and his camera destroyed, he has her become his assistant as a way to pay him back for the damages done.

However, the principal doesn’t trust leaving the case to just a high school student. So he also calls in various other people. Including, a buddhist monk who has ‘come down from the mountain’, in other words, he doesn’t look a thing like a actual monk. A Shrine Maiden, who may be a little too old to be considered a ‘maiden’. A young Australian catholic priest and a 16 year old spirit medium that is famous on television.
The longer I look at this, the more it sounds like the set up to a bad joke.

They all have wildly conflicting ideas of what is going on at the school. The medium says with confidence that there are no spirits. The Shrine Maiden and Monk believe there is.
Kazuya, or Naru, as Mai begins calling him as word play on the word ‘narcissist’, which is pronounced narushishisuto. Is trying to find a logical explanation.

Meanwhile, Mai’s classmate who claims she has psychic abilities is also trying to claim that the building is haunted. That she can feel it and the ghosts are targeting her.
As I said, the set up is pretty basic but the content is a lot of fun.

I enjoy a lot of this characters. Naru is a particular favorite of mine because of how confident and sure he is of himself, but he still has a lot of personal weaknesses. A lot of Ghost Hunt’s strength is found in it’s characters. The plot really isn’t anything to write home about. The opening and ending sequences are among the most boring things known to man and the animation, while good, can be a little wonky in places.
Still, this show is charming and I am looking forward to being able to go back and enjoy it again since it’s been so very long since I watched it last.