Reviews

Unlike the far more popular (and now infamous) 'Ghost Stories', Gakkou no Kaidan SP is a collection of very short Japanese spooky stories - a bit like Goosebumps or Tales from the Crypt. There are usually 2 stories per episode, with cut-outs to the 'Ghosts' who host the show and serve as the main cast - they don't normally appear in the actual stories though. These cut-aways usually are comic relief or riffs on the ending of the story, but they do some running themes which are nice. From what I can tell, most of the stories are taken verbatim from the Gakkou no Kaidan manga, though they do tread some similar ground from the TV Series.

I think the animation is on the whole quite good. It's unfortunately hard to do any detailed comments since the only versions that exist have quite low image quality. But the character designs are all really well-done, and I really like the face-styles and less detailed eyes that they went with. It definitely hides things that might have been more obvious if they tried to go more traditional. The only issue really is that the OP has very, very noticeable dips in quality, though it's not too bad. The character design of the various ghosts is really good, I especially like how they restyled Kinjiro in particular and comparing to the Manga / DS games that came out it's very stylistically faithful.

The audio is pretty standard, there's not alot of background noise but it is fairly by the books for childrens horror. The VAs are all pretty good but one or two like Rabbi are super grating when they get longer parts. The ED is very very generic and barely feels like it was written for anything horror related, however as best I can tell it was only used in the last 2 episodes (which are only around 5 minutes long) However the OP is seriously punching above its weight, the song is 'すぐそばに～another world～' by Lisa Takahashi and it absolutely rocks, and feels way more suited to the tone of the show. I'm really surprised it ended up in what was a fairly standard anime.

The stories themselves are all pretty good, though alot of them are hyper-japanese to the point that they can be a bit hard to follow if you're not familiar with them - then again this never made it outside of Japan to begin with. Some are easier than others, but on the whole they're all fairly entertaining and short. (I did have to look up what alot of stuff was however, your mileage may vary.

This is definitely a strange one and very obscure compared to the TV series, but if you like short spooky stories and can understand it without subs I think you'll probably enjoy it.

And as a tangent, there is a Promo OP for a planned sequel series included in the final episode, 「ふしぎ通信　トイレの花子さん」(Mysterious Communications, Hanako-san in the Toiler), that unfortunately never got a full release. It's a shame because it looks like a very interesting take, with some really good looking character designs and a catchy OP song - it's worth a look if you haven't seen it.