Ghost Hunt

Ghost Hunt's backstory and setups of how the various supernatural forces operate are well done, as well as the actual mysteries they are involved in. However, what distracted its best qualities are the forced relationships and relying on predictable tropes to advance plot elements. My impression is that Ghost Hunter may have been altered to cater to target audiences by dumbing down the plot and dialog at some points, but when the actual investigation storyline calls for complex explanations and logic, the characters inexplicably gains 200 points in IQ to figure everything out.

Case in point: after almost a year working for ghost hunter experts, the ... main protagonist was told they there were two children of the family being investigated were behaving strangely, and when she meets them, they are constantly repeating about they wish how their relatives would die. While it's obvious to the audience they are possessed, the protagonist is completely oblivious to this possibility until the plot conveniently calls for that moment later on for dramatic effect. Better options would have been to make their possessed personalities less black and white or simply not mention these kids beforehand. Throughout the series contain very poorly implemented scenarios of a) main characters become oblivious to obvious clues, b) withholding key information (i.e., the girl has ESP, gets a vision but doesn't tell anyone about it until the 3rd act) c) unconvincing situations forcing characters to become alone or in danger and d) overtly reliant in chibi style comedy to excuse logic gaps.

The culmination of these effects ultimately makes the main protagonist Mai a every unpleasant character. She's supposed to be the everyday girl, but is stupid while the story needs other plot elements to take shape, super-talented and powerful when when the story calls for a solution, overdramatic to force tension between her and her friends, and is somehow excused from her ignorance because she's supposed to be 'just like us'.

But this is somewhat bearable, since the actual cases they are investigating are truly well fascinating. What made them great was that we cared about the people involved in the cases, we were sympathetic to their plight. Unfortunately, the series gradually moved away into 2-dimensional antagonists and threats in order 'power-up' the main characters.

I was interested enough about the case to bypass the faults in order to find out the resolutions. But really, I just wish they were confident enough in their core story to not have to throw in these cliches to appeal to young kids. I wish the main characters were competent, mature, present their relationships with subtlety, so that I don't have scream at my laptop at that the main culprit is the teacher and not the girl while the characters are wasting my time.

The story started out well for me, but to be honest it wasn't good enough to keep me interested for long. The problem with an anime like this is that there are hardly any common threads throughout each episode block. Every 3 or so episodes features its own storyline and while that may work for a title such as Jigoku Shoujo there is no balance between character development and plot to really engage the viewer. We hardly learn anything about the characters besides there occupation outside "ghost busting". And the female lead seemed too naive, which is pretty ironic seeing as that was the only ... thing that kept her character remotely interesting. In the end, I watched 15 episodes and then skipped around a bit to see if things were getting interesting…they didn’t. After that I skipped right to the final episode just to see what happens in the final scene, that was about the extend of my interest.

The art work was reasonably good all the character models were well drawn and diverse. However, outside the ghost scenes the scenery was a little bland, nothing remarkable here.

The intro song was what initially grabbed me, it was haunting yet enchanting at the same time, but also made the anime way more appealing then it actually was. As for the BGM... to be honest I can't really recall much, but that goes to show you how much of an impression it made on me... very little.

The characters were actually quite appealing with the exception of the female lead and the male lead's sibling. The rest of the cast had very colorful personalities and made you wish that the female lead would just die and be replaced by one of the other female cast members. The female lead's personality could be characterized as foolish, bland, and naive. The male lead's brother could have just as easily been written out. He served no real purpose and was just there to prevent this series from becoming a harem anime.

I guess the enjoyment factor was there for the first 15 episodes then it became a complete bore. The characters weren't engaging enough, and the plot simply wasn't good enough to support the lack of character development.

Overall I would say this is a C grade anime that just isn’t fascinating enough to keep the viewer enthralled.

art: the art is fine not my personal favorite but that is up to yoyu if you like it or not. same thing goes for the animation. i didn't come across any annoying bugs. the animation is the avrage level for 2007.

sound:
mostly classical music. it is very easy to like one good point for this anime.

characters:
the 2 main chracters had so mach potintial to grow and change. the sidecharacters were nice too. so far so good but the charcters hardly made a minor change in all the 25 episodes. no romance, not a chnge in relations no change of noting.

story:
the story was nice ... in the 3 first chapters. it had a nice main idea- logic+ghosts. this is one of the animes that have a different story for every few chapters and it was very disappointing. the story had so much potential yet didn't go anywhere.

if you like somthing light to wach this will fit just dont expect too much from it

Ghost Hunt, in a short sentence, is Scooby Doo for teenagers. A flawed but watchable show, I came away from Ghost Hunt glad that I watched it, thinking it was decent but not blown away by any stretch of the imagination.

Art-

The show itself looks fine- probably well above average for when it came out- and has a few standout moments. Some of the ghostly entities themselves- particularly an evil spirit rising up from a well in the second arc and a frail, blood-covered ghost emerging from the darkness in the seventh arc- were really well done and were memorable. There are also multiple scenes throughout ... the show in which a large number of spirits are all on the screen at once and those are typically visually appealing. Mai, the female lead, also has dream sequences relating to the current case throughout the show and those often have nice visuals as well.

With all that said, both the opening and ending sequence are among the lamest, most boring and generic I've ever seen. With so much material and so many characters to work with it is unbelievable to me they couldn't find something better than, quite literally, a bunch of spheres changing colors. The opening sequence seriously reminds me of my desktop screensaver in which a random generic shape bounces across my screen, changes colors and then keeps doing it as it changes to a different color. I think they could have done a lot better.

Sound-

For the most part the voice acting was quite good, but I've got to call out the character of John Brown, who in the anime is from Australia. The fake Australian accent we get in the dub is god awful and not remotely believable. Half the time he sounds more Scottish than Australian. I can understand wanting to hire someone you know and trust- and they did indeed hire industry veteran Jason Liebrecht for the part- but he's literally from Texas and the fake Australian accent is rough to listen to. Hiring an actual Australian wasn't necessarily the play either, as it's entirely possible their accent would be too thick for Western audiences to properly understand at all times, but I think they could have done better than this.

The soundtrack was good. I know "good" is a lame and generic word for something, but that's just what it was. It was better than "okay", never bad and it wasn't quite "very good" or "great". Good is the right word. In particular, the music during the scenes in which the characters confront the main baddie of the arc, which is almost always some kind of ghost/spirit/apparition as opposed to a human, stood out to me. That said, there wasn't any track I felt compelled to add to my playlist after the fact. The music did what it needed to do and was respectable and that's the long and short of it.

Character/Story-

This area is likely where I had the most complaints, but it's a mixed bag as opposed to all bad. Starting out with the positive, almost all the self-contained arcs were enjoyable little short stories in and of themselves, felt different from one another and had different kinds of resolutions. For the most part each character among the fairly large main cast actually mattered and contributed and it didn't feel at any point like it was a one man show or like any character was utterly useless. Everyone always did something, or multiple things, to help solve the problem.

The thing is, the anime chose to focus so much on the individual case by case arc by arc situation that was occurring that nothing else ever developed beyond the absolute bare minimum. There simply is no overarching plot, period. There just isn't. At the end of the anime there really aren't any bigger picture longstanding questions to be answered because, well, those questions simply were not asked in the first place. Character relationships do not progress in a remotely believable way. By the end of the show the main cast has worked together for over a full year and yet their relationships have not progressed whatsoever. They all still talk to each other, know about each other and feel about each other exactly as they did in the first or second arc. It's to the point where you could watch the arcs, other than the first which sets everything up, in a completely random order and it would not change anything.

There are countless small examples of this that individually are eye-rollers and not a big deal, but together, adding up over time, really begin to detract from the show. For example, nine months into working together main character Mai makes it clear in a conversation with Monk she has no idea how old he is. Not believable. Likewise, Mai has a crush on the male lead, Naru, pretty much from the start though she constantly notes he's a self-centered, arrogant jerk. How does she feel a year later? She has a crush on him and thinks he's a self-centered, arrogant jerk. Her crush has not grown nor faded. She's not gotten over it and moved on with time nor has she fallen even more in love. It's simply exactly the same as it was a year ago with zero progression or development for better or worse. Again, not believable.

The arcs as a whole do not feel connected. We're largely watching a number of self-contained short stories- each having its own mystery- and that's the whole show.

Addressing the arcs themselves, I have a more positive than negative opinion of them to be sure, but they were not without flaws. Many of them are extremely predictable, with the most egregious offender being the third arc in which they hint extremely strongly who the villain is by the second episode and then drag it out for two more episodes only to confirm yes, the one we made it clear as day is the bad guy is in fact the bad guy, much to the surprise of all the characters.

As an in general the arcs that were four episodes felt a touch too long and could have been wrapped up in three episodes. Two would have been too few but a lot of the time with four there was too much talking both at the beginning and the end with overly drawn out explanations. Three would have been the sweet spot. Mysteriously, there was one single episode in a show that was otherwise filled with multiple episode long arcs, that was completely self contained that began and solved its mystery all within one episode. That episode in particular felt completely unnecessary and super rushed and was a low point of the show. That episode simply did not need to exist and it added absolutely nothing to the show as a whole.

And, finally, there are a plethora of conveniences and too many instances of characters being outright stupid. A main character says in a conversation SHE FORGOT SHE WAS PSYCHIC. Come on man... Is that remotely believable? Likewise, in one of the mysteries a child character who is unable to speak is playing a game of hide and seek and he chooses to hide on a rooftop when bad weather hits and the adults can not find him. Zero explanation is given as to how he got up there in the first place, but there's visibly a ladder leading up to where he is so we can assume he climbed it to get up there. Fine. Why then could he not use that exact same ladder to get down? Likewise, with adults directly below him calling for him and looking for him, even though he cannot speak could he not do ANYTHING- push the ladder down, throw his shoe down at them, smack his shoe against the side of the building to make noise- ANYTHING- to get their attention? He doesn't, and instead the character literally dies up there and is never found. Because, you know, even after the fact no one would think to climb the ladder and check. There were too many times where characters were that level of stupid for the sake of the plot needing them to be. A lot of events shown in this anime would not be possible if characters with common sense were involved.

Enjoyment-

This anime can be enjoyable if you come into it with the right expectations. I came in blind and this anime didn't have a couple things I expected it to have- namely an overarching plot whatsoever and moments that were actually scary- so I was a bit underwhelmed. The show doesn't even have jump scares and I can't imagine any adult would be truly frightened by anything shown here. It approaches atmospherically creepy once in a while but that's as far as it will ever go. There isn't anything that happens in this show that will leave you sleeping with one eye open. Basically, to enjoy this show you need to come into it with the understanding you'll be watching eight different self-contained short stories that happen to revolve around the same group of characters solving the case, much like Scooby Doo and the gang, but nothing more.

Overall-

Ghost Hunt is one of those shows in which the viewer must have the right expectations in order to enjoy. If you're someone who needs depth and character development you'll find more frustration than enjoyment here, as it simply does not have those things. However, if you can enjoy self-contained short stories and just take things for what they are with no expectation of anything grander Ghost Hunt might be worth a watch. The stories themselves are fairly interesting, the characters are likable and it's not a dark or nightmare-inducing show 99% of the time. A decent watch for the horror or mythology anime fan but nowhere near an all time hidden gem.

+Large cast of likable characters that all contribute
+Eight different mysteries that feel unique from one another and are interesting to watch
+Solid voice acting, minus John Brown

-Non-developed, non-progressing interpersonal relationships
-Plethora of conveniences/characters being dumb for the sake of the plot
-Frequently predictable

OBJECTIVE RATING- Strong 6 Weak 7
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 6.5

Ghost Hunt is the closest anime has gone to truly being in the supernatural genre. Horror and the supernatural generally does not translate well in animated digital form simply because we already know from the start that is not real. There is simply a lack of mystery and eeriness that live action can easily produce hence the reason why anime of these kind rather goes to the mystery, thriller or romance path. It was a bold move on the part of the anime but the execution is only half decent.

The show is pretty good in executing how supernatural events occur and I applaud it ... for that, its biggest weakness (that being that this is an animated show) is turned into one of its strengths as it can be technical without losing out its appeal which is hard to do with this genre. In most supernatural titles the phenomenon could not be explained without the show losing some of its mystery element yet this show incorporating them only adds up to the supernatural appeal

Yet on the other hand this show from the start shows half skepticism towards the supernatural from the start. All the professionals aside from our main character Shibuya seems to be inept or impotent when faced with the supernatural and it is up to our supercompetent mc to fix things up.
The show goes technical into these phenomenon yet poorly handles how they are resolves and simply goes to the "the mc can solve it because" path. There are real world reasons (albeit whether the phenomenon themselves are true or not is up to the viewer) why certain things and actions, such as salt, garlic, certain words, holy water, kagura dances, etc. are used in performing spirit appeasement and exorcism yet by all means it appears to the viewer that all their work is extremely useless and the practitioners appear to be useless one trick ponies. It loses its touch with the supernatural when it approaches its resolution because using the "genius mc solves everything" one of the worst trope used in any form of entertainment.

As for the characters themselves, they are not very memorable which is neither a good or a bad thing for an unconventional anime like this where the theme is the main draw. Their interactions are hardly worth of praise so I'll leave it at that.

Overall this could have been a very great anime yet it half fails on the execution leaving it easily forgettable. If you want a new approach on the supernatural genre this is a good go but its half chewed approach on each case's' resolution means that you have to take it with a grain of salt.

P.S: If you can't be bothered to read all of this, scroll to the bottom of the review for an extremely simplified and very short review of the show. My gift to you for all you beautiful lazy people out there.

I think fear is an extremely interesting state of mind. It's fascinating to experience and see what scares you and what doesn't. It's that wide variety offered in the horror genre that makes it so popular and prominent in entertainment. However when it comes to horror in anime, it isn't really its forte, and I think that it's mainly due to the very similar ... nature of a large majority of them. With heavy emphasis on gore and grizzly death scenes, a lot of necessary elements to making a good horror takes a backseat. Now of course, in no way shape or form does that mean that the shows are bad or not worth your time, but it does mean that for some people it isn't going to be the horror experience that they were looking for.

Having watched many horror anime, I can wholeheartedly say that these shows are really more uncomfortable to watch than they are scary. However discomfort is only one aspect out of many. I personally believe that if a horror anime is only able to make you feel one thing from a state of mind with a huge array of encompassing aspects other than discomfort, it isn't a good horror anime.

However over the years I have been fortunate enough to experience some horror anime that isn't necessarily bad, and the one that I'll be reviewing for you today is, Ghost Hunt. This show originally started airing back in October of 2006, and finished airing in March of 2007. It's a light novel adaptation with animation done by Studio J.C.Staff. So after two complete recent viewings, here is my review for Ghost Hunt.

Story:
The story follows a first year high school student named Taniyama Mai who ends up getting involved with Shibuya Kazuya, the president of the Shibuya Psychic Research Company. While Kazuya was conducting an investigation on her school's abandoned building, Mai ends up interfering and after a series of unfortunate events, Kazuya hires Mai to be his assistant to make up for the damage she caused. Thus begins the ghost hunting adventures.


First let's start with the good. The story is presented in the form of arcs. Each arc lasting between three to six episodes. Each arc covers a specific investigation that our characters are assigned. These arcs can be really hit or miss. They can either be extremely creepy, unnerving, and scary, or just extremely boring. However the way that they pace each arc, for the most part, is well executed. The slow and tense buildup is paced well and offers us insight into what exactly our characters are up against, but not to the point where we know exactly what they're dealing with. An extremely interesting element that the show has to offer is that it isn't completely grounded in reality. Because of this, during the initial exposition of each arc there's this sense of mystery to what the characters are actually dealing with, and it helps add a layer of suspense that would otherwise not be there. The show also likes to include tools, procedures, and jargon used by “real” ghost hunters. This helps mask this element of the over the top supernatural elements of the show. It bounces back between this facade of being accurate, and being more akin to a fairy tale.

When the story of each arc really starts to pickup and we start seeing unnatural things happen, the order in which we receive this information is done well. There is this smooth sense of gradual growth. We aren't thrown straight into the thick of things, rather we see the little clues, and small conversations slowly build into a worsening problem until we reach the climax. It is indeed formulaic but it's effective and get's the job done when it's done right.

Regardless of these good elements the show has multiple notable flaws in it's story. The first major problem is that the show attempts to mesh genre's that don't mix well together. It shoves in this pointless shoujo element that feels extremely jarring to watch and experience. The fundamental flaw in this is the fact that the romantic tension, and over the top character drama can really take you out of the horror experience that the show is supposed to be offering you. Other than that, there lies another problem in a few of the shows arcs.

Some of these arcs are downright boring. The reason is because a lot of the investigations prior to these are far better paced and introduced, and to a greater extent, the stakes are far higher making it seem like the story is moving backwards rather than forwards. Watching through these arcs is extremely daunting. The pacing is too slow or too fast, the characters become utterly stupid for some reason doing things that they would normally never do, and the conclusion to these arcs are unsatisfying or feel undeserved.

For the most part the show is able to offer moments of terror and discomfort whether it be through imagery, it's dialogue or the decent pacing. However there are multiple issues that really prevent the story from being the best that it could have been.

Characters:

The characters in this show are at best serviceable and I think that it's one of the shows weakest points. Starting with our female protagonist, Taniyama Mai, she's extremely unlikeable as a lead, but because she's painted as the innocent girl who wants to do good, we can get behind her basic ideals. But that's really the extent of her likeability. She falls into a category of female leads that come off as extremely preachy, and sometimes you actually begin to get annoyed with her as there are moments where you think to yourself, “are you seriously thinking about that in this current situation?”, and it's moments like this that really take you out of the experience. Along with that, it never seems like she grows as a useful character. We do get to see her become more accustomed to certain things, but she ultimately ends up still being underused and pointless. It feels as if she was only included to satisfy the shoujo aspect of the show, which strengthens my point that she's is practically a useless character.

The male protagonist of the show is Shibuya Kazuya. He is leagues better than Mai as a character. Although he does have the typical archetype of super smart, quiet, cool guy, there are hints that there are layers to him, as we learn more about who he is and why he does what he does. But to my disappointment, any resemblance of this character plot point developing is immediately eradicated as it's hardly ever touched on again. Conclusively this makes the character two dimensional and stale, and considering that he is a lead character, it's unacceptable.

As for the side characters, they too are simply just okay. I will say that the diversity of the cast is nice to see. You don't have to deal with all the characters having similar personalities. However the major flaw with these characters is that they're simply there because they have one part to play in the arc of the story. Even then they're only used to either worsen the problem, or lighten the mood. They're relationships, backstories, and overall personalities are non-existen. They simply rely on the extremely generic moral code and belief that they are the good guys to garner some sort of sympathy from the viewer.

Ultimately you only care enough about them to fear for them in moments of peril but at the same time you aren't able to really get attached to them. It's almost as if the writers couldn't be bothered to expand and flesh these characters out after they were given a brief introduction. It's because of this lack of care and attention given to these characters that a lot of the arcs in the show are poorly done. Writers can't simply come up with a story and fill it with uninteresting and poorly written characters and hope for the best. A story with terrible characters will simply amalgamate into a show with terribly written characters and an equally terrible story.

Art/Directing:

This is by far the best aspect of this anime. The bland and dark color palette that they chose to go with really helps add to the atmosphere of the show. There are some scenes where they use the darker colors to their advantage. The actual use of the color in combination with the art makes for a sleek looking show. The character designs look appealing, albeit some of them look like they were pulled straight out of a 1980's romance shoujo manga.

The interesting thing about the way that many scenes were directed and drawn is that they harken back to the very basic art of horror. Not showing what we should fear. There are multiple moments in the show where because of a certain way the frame was positioned or drawn really helped to emphasize the anxiety, the fear, and discomfort.

Without giving away too much, there is a scene that is shown from the perspective of a fallen camera, and what we get is an extremely tight shot where very little is visible until we see the decapitated head of a doll. It's directing like this that really helps make up for a lot of the issues this show has.

I didn't have any major problems with the art with the exception of Mai's character design. Compared to the other characters having a sleek and stylized design, she looks completely out of place, with her awkward body proportions and over the top facial animations. She sticks out like a sore thumb and really breaks the continuity of the overall art.

Music/Sound:

Another aspect that this show does extremely well. The music is exceptional. It offers fantastic atmospheric and tension building melodies that really keep you engaged in scenes that need you to be. Even the opening song isn't your typical J-Rock or J-Pop song to get you hyped for the episode, rather it's this eerie yet bombastic piece with opera like vocals to accompany it. To be completely honest, I found the opening song to be scarier than some of the actual “scary” scenes in this anime.

As for the sound design, it's okay. There's nothing too special in this anime that sticks out. I mean I'm not gonna say “wow the sound the of that cup shattering was really well done”. They're creepy enough to help certain scenes but other than that it's nothing too special.

Voice acting wise, it was okay as well. I am basing this off the Japanese dub, so keep that in mind. With the voice actors for Kazuya, and side characters, Takigawa Houshou and Ayako Matsuzaki being the ones to standout amongst the rest. All the other voices seemed bland and uninteresting, or too over the top and awkward to listen to. It's like the voice actors and actresses were either falling asleep, or trying to make do with an extremely lackluster script.

Final Verdict:

Ghost Hunt is a show plagued by many problems. Ranging from it's poorly written story arcs and characters. But the thing is fear is very subjective. What one person finds terrifying might be something someone else might not have a problem with. With that in mind the individual experience a person might have with this show is going to vastly differ from that of another persons.

However despite it's major flaws, I enjoyed this show. Even though I'm convinced that the writers were purposefully writing Mai to be a contender for “Worst Character of The Year” back in 2006, I can't deny that I had fun with this show. The fact that this show is episodic to a certain extent it makes it possible to pick and choose what stories you want to watch, and I highly suggest going about watching this show that way. The fact that they aren't just dealing with “ghosts” also broke up the monotony of the repetitive storyline in the specific arcs. In these different moments I hope that if you choose to watch this show, that it offers enough to satisfy your need for horror.

Are there better horror anime out there? Oh hell yeah. Still, this is a show that was extremely overlooked and is considered to be a hidden gem by many in the anime community. If you can get past the major problems of this show and simply watch it to experience some decent horror in anime, I'd say give it a go.

This isn't a show that you need to go out of your way to watch, and you may never get it to it. You might even completely ignore the fact that this show exists.
Therefore my final rating for the show is: “Backlog It”

SUPER SHORT REVIEW
Story: Meh
Characters: OH GOD NO!
Art: Aye, that's pretty good.
Sound: I like that Sh*t
Voice Acting: Meh
Overall: “BACKLOG IT”

Hi anime lovers.

Ghosthunt is a horror, mystery and shoujo anime. The say it's also a "comedy" but the humor is really vague, below mild and, simply, not funny.
For the other clasifications, I would say that the "mystery" part is ok, the cases they solve are pretty well told through the storyline and they really are interesting. The "horror" part is growing as the eposodes go on, but it is not a full fledged horror. As for "shoujo", yeah, it is.

The anime consists of cases and they are all interesting and closed in a good way. Everything is explaind. But, the main objection to ... the anime is a really poor character development... really poor. Basically nothing is told about the characters and when something is acctually explained, it is really brief, considered not important and it is never mentioned again. Like someone told that fact only to fill air time. Like that is not impotant at all. Something big and important is told about some character but the anime doesn't stick by that topic and it just continues with the current case, the current action in the anime. Like the anime is done only for the cases, only for the actions, only for the "doing" part and not for "connecting", "developing", "explaining why the characters are like they are".

In conclusion, I believe there are a lot of people who can enjoy in this anime, there are even deaths, the cases are interesting, sound is good (eventhough the 1st opening theme's video is the worst I have ever seen xD), the art is OK, but the characters are pretty shallow.
If you are looking for some deeper anime that will captivate you, I don't think this will be the one.

This is my first review and I try keeping it short.

I think anime has great story, art and sounds. I liked most of the story with some minor details.

But then you reach half of the series main character girl become so annoying that I just can't stand. At first it's funny and you just keep up. but in second half of episodes it makes you sick how pathetic and dumb character can be.

It's like I say don't go in front of the train and after couple of seconds you just waiting for the train.

My verdict: anime with potential but was ruined by shitty character design.
Score: ... 5.0

Ghost Hunt is a decent anime, but it does struggle with pacing, the anime is laid out as arcs containing 3-4 episodes. There are times where you just feel like giving up because it starts to get boring, and although with the expection of a few comedic moments, the overall character developement is poor and the female MC is really annoying. I will give it some credit though, it does have a few moments where it will make you shed a tear, or send a chill down your spine but these are far and few between. The later arcs do get darker especially the 2nd ... to last arc and the last arc, in which we see the characters get tested both physically and mentally.

There is two ways to look at Ghost Hunt, you can watch it and judge it by what it is, a rather average comedy anime about ghost hunting with little to no suspense, or watch the whole thing expecting to find "horror" just to get dissapointed by finding out scooby doo features more horror than this.

This anime also features the most boring opening I have seen in my life, characters that lack any sort of charm, development or emotion, predictable cases, and best of all, it it ends with a cliffhanger.

If you were looking for comedy and some suspense, feel free to watch it, if ... you expected horror, save yourself the time and go watch something else.