For the first half of the show, Ghost Hound have got everything right, from the creepy soundtrack that formed its designated atmosphere to the countryside setting that we're so fond of in horror anime. The series gave off the same kind of atmosphere that Higurashi and Shiki gave me, which shows how great it was directed. The unique camera angle amplifying the creepy tone of the series to a level where "horror" would be one of the appropriate genre for the series while the colorful and unique representation of the "hidden world" surely did its job to allow the viewers to see the story in a more frightening way, making them more prone to the dark assumptions that viewers can't help but to make in a series like this.
The pacing was perfect in almost every way, just enough room to maintain a balanced space, captivating the viewers with various thrilling experiences and allowing them to make assumption about what will happen next, whether its the horrifying secrets that the three main characters would find out about their past or the problems that forms around their morbid town. The show does maintain a large cast near the end of the series but all of them were thoroughly developed, what also support this is the three main characters as they were interesting to a certain point where seeing their interaction as they help each other uncover the secret to their past is one of the main focus, for both the series and its viewers.
While the series does maintain a great sense of atmosphere and characters development, its ending fall short to what most viewer would have assumed for it to played out. Near the end of the series, the original plot (Solve Taro's past trauma, who did what and the various morbid discoveries that each character would discover as they delve deeper into the past and the "hidden world"), was left behind to be replaced with two new ones, which unfortunately ruin the ending for me, as these two new plot line have almost nothing to be relevant with the original purpose of the story, sure there were some connection here and there but it was far too fragile to be in truthful relation with the original story, it just felt like the show tried to expand its storytelling limit and failed pretty bad, resulting in the undesirable answer to the whole affair about Taro's kidnapping incident as the viewers only received a happy and simple resolution to the the scary kidnapping that was so well presented that it should have made most viewers expecting something a little bit more shudder worthy.
Overall Ghost Hound was a very well played out series from beginning... to the middle, for the way that the ending was told results in a total lost of the original plot. But don't get me wrong, if you're really into thrillers and the like, this series must be on your "plan to watch" or "completed" list because, ending aside, the series did a great job of presenting itself as a psychological thriller in many ways.
