Ghost Talker's Daydream was based on an extremely obscure manga that ran for 22 chapters back in the early 2000s. The manga is classified as an Ecchi/Horror that combines bad comedy and fetish pandering with edgy as FUCK content including lots of child murders and rape. Imagine a level of mood whiplash and tonal inconsistency that makes Elfen Lied look like Monster. Now you're beginning to get an idea of what this manga is like. Oh yeah, we're in for a trip!
The premise of the manga is that there's an albino girl with psychic powers. She can communicate with ghosts and her father is a police commissioner who wants to force her to use her powers to solve difficult murder cases. However, she hates using her powers and rebels against her father in the most EPIC way possible... by becoming a dominatrix at an S&M club. She's also the part time editor of a porno magazine. Despite her wishes, she is sometimes given an offer she can't refuse and is roped into a case where she has to solve a murder and usually exorcise the victim's spirit. If this plot sounds kind of insane, it's because it is.
However, the plot summary alone doesn't prepare you for the pit of madness that awaits. In chapter 3, our heroine Misaki is at the S&M club catering to a failing manga editor with a scat fetish. She's in the shower washing the shit off herself and singing a song about her clitoris. Then she returns to the room to find that the manga editor has hanged himself! This is played off as a joke! Some police arrive and interrogate Misaki, who has to channel the spirit of the dead manga editor and convince the cops she didn't kill him. That's what a normal chapter of this manga is like. Well, I forgot to mention the random pop culture jokes like when Misaki turns into Buttercup from the Power Puff Girls for 1 panel. This manga just punches you right in the brain!
In 2004, the studio behind Princess Tutu and Aria decided to adapt this shitty manga into a 4 episode OVA. I don't know how this happened. I don't know why this happened, but it somehow happened. Guess who was forced to direct it? Only the fairly legendary Osamu Sekita. This is the guy who directed Cross Game and was co-director of the original Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta Gundam. I don't know how they dragged him into this project, but I'm glad they did. He made a damn masterpiece!
In the first episode, Misaki must solve the murder/suicide of a young mother and daughter whose spirits are haunting an apartment. Easily the highlight of this episode is when the villain throws the little girl forward, which somehow causes her to rapidly accelerate upwards at an odd angle and splat against the ceiling. If the ceiling wasn't there, she would have achieved orbit. I think Sekita forgot he wasn't working on a Gundam anime and that this wasn't a zero gravity environment.
Then Episodes 3 and 4 happen and they are glorious!
Detective: "One dozen children were abducted, raped, and murdered! To solve this case we need the world's greatest psychic! Where could she be?
(cut to hot spring promising hair rejuvenation)
Our Heroine: (Sings) "La La La-La Lee Lee Lee Gotta grow more hair on my pussy!"
As the anime will remind you many times, our heroine is mostly bald down there because she's an albino. This is the ONLY aspect of her albinism that the anime remembers. She never wears sunglasses to block out UV light. She walks around in the middle of the day wearing basically nothing. The fact she hasn't died of cancer is her real superpower, not the psychic stuff!
While the tonal whiplash from the manga is back with a vengeance in the anime, this adaptation has a few flaws. Several plot elements from the manga are simply never explained in the anime. There's a guy who keeps stalking Misaki and taking photos of her, but it's never explained who he is! In the manga, he's a masochist who wants to enter the club but keeps getting turned down because he's only 17. Remember at the beginning of the review where I mentioned Misaki's father is a police commissioner? Well the anime NEVER explains that! She just keeps getting jobs from some mysterious voice on the phone and all we see is her yelling at whoever is giving the orders. It's never even insinuated this is her father. Another plot point from the manga is that she can also summon demons and bind them to her will. She mostly uses a demon made of hair, very similar to Bayonetta. The anime once again doesn't explain this! She's fighting some thug in a warehouse and suddenly drops trou and fires this hair/rope demon from her panties. There's no callback to it and it's never explained!
Despite all the flaws this anime has, Misaki is genuinely enjoyable. She is a confident, sexy, bad bitch! However, she ultimately does have a soft side and helps out when she needs to. Her English voice actress mostly worked on 4kids dubs and is best known for playing Mai Valentine in Yugioh. So if you ever wanted to hear Mai swear up a storm, say lewd things and sing about her pubic hair, you've come to the right place!
Ghost Talker is the kind of random, apeshit insanity you can only find in cheap, old OVAs. I call these O.B.A s for "Old. Bad. Anime." Ghost Talker is right at home alongside Mad Bull 34, Angel Cop, and all the classics of this genre! It's shocking, distasteful, absurd, and you'll probably love every minute of it!
