Warau Hyouteki

Story (6/10):
Classic yandere with a bit of a paranormal twist. It was an interesting idea, but I felt that the introduction of ghosts raised a lot more questions than it answered. The ghosts were obviously introduced in order to explain Azusa's clearly psychotic behavior, but were given no explanation themselves. I would have at least liked a small back story showing how Azusa came to be posessed. Surely she wasn't always that way, or was she? We had an interesting flashback to childhood, but it isn't clear whether the posession began then, or if it did, why it begin then?
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My own crackpot theory: I ... think it would have made more sense if the ghosts were actually hallucinations caused by post traumatic stress from her troubled past. Seriously, why on Earth would ghosts make someone try to kill off their romantic rival? It's gotta be in her head. >.>;
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Other than my gripes with the ghosts, the story was basically a stock yandere plot, where the victim is the romantic rival. If you've ever seen the live action Japanese horror movie "Audition", it's a little like that (but with ghosts -_-;).

Art (7/10):
Although the art and animation seems to be roughly standard for its time, I thought that the dark tones and contrast really helped bring about the "horror" feel.

Character (6/10):
Aside from our one yandere character, none of the characters really go through much character development. That is to say that although their reactions to the situation is more or less realistic, they come off as feeling rather flat. Aside from which, the character setup is a bit stereotypical - A love triange: One yandere, one tsundere, and one mediocre male who gets two interesting girlfriends (lucky guy XD).

Enjoyment (5/10):
I have to say, I was disappointed! As Rumiko Takahashi is one of my favorite mangaka, I was expecting something rather better than this. Although I enjoyed the horror to a certain extent, willing suspension of disbelief was broken rather often. (And as you can tell from the above rant, those ghosts really bother me XD)

Overall (6/10):
Overall, it was a reasonably enjoyable tale. Can't say that I'm a big fan of the ghosts, but as a pscychological thriller, this does pretty decently.

Back in the mid '90s, I got a catalog in the mail from The Right Stuf International, which was a mail-order smorgasbord of all of the anime they had for sale. There was a ton of artwork and stills throughout the hefty book, with some amazing looking stuff, and I wanted it all! Of course, being 13 years old at the time, and also having a comic book and video game habit, I could only afford to occasionally make an order, as anyone that was into anime at the time can attest to, this stuff was expensive.

Laughing Target was one that had always caught ... my eye when I browsed through the catalog, but I never pulled the trigger on it. Now having finally seen it, it was somewhat of a letdown. Granted, this may be my own fault for having built up a massive amount of hype for it over the years in my head (the same happened when I finally saw Genocyber on DVD in the mid 2000's, yet upon a revisit not too long ago, I kinda liked it), but even so, the story here is pretty damn predictable and it doesn't do many different things to break out of its tried-and-true narrative. I can't deny however that the animation is excellent, it captures a nice atmosphere, and there are some well-done moments of suspense and mystery here and there. There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever; it's a perfectly good anime. But taking into consideration how I had yearned for seeing this way back then and imagining how awesome it must be as I stared at the artwork and screen-shots, mid-'90s me is feeling the disappointment of it being "just" good.