I imagine that Ghost Hound<\/i> was born of this trial:<\/p>\n
EXTERIOR: Production I.G. Tower, a building that looms ominously against a cloudy and thunderous sky. A crow caws.
\nINTERIOR: ISHIKAWA sits at his desk, brooding. He is attended to by SHIROW and OSHII. OSHII is humming a jolly tune to himself at a separate table.<\/i>
\nISHIKAWA: It occurs to me, fellows, that it is our twentieth anniversary this year. I would like to do something to celebrate. Have you got any suggestions?
\nSHIROW: Bugs. Bugs are huge. Also dreams?
\nISHIKAWA: Yes, it sounds good. Sounds like it could be shiny. Who can we get to work on the scripts. Oshii?
\nOSHII: Sorry, Ishikawa, I’m writing an epic poem dedicated to the memory of my dearly beloved cat. I’ll see if I can think of anyone.
\nISHIKAWA: Well, does anyone know what Konaka is up to nowadays?
\nOSHII: I think he’s free; he just came away from writing a series of one off mind-fuck episodes for everyone who had a space going.
\nISHIKAWA: Yes, it’s what he does best. Well, we’ll put this one straight to him.<\/p>\n
Production commences. A few months later …<\/p>\n
INTERIOR: Production I.G. Conference Room. The first episode has just been read, and the OP presented.<\/i><\/p>\n
ISHIKAWA: What does any of this even mean?
\nKONAKA: I’m pretty sure it’s profound. Besides, it’s just the first episode. It doesn’t have to mean anything yet.
\nISHIKAWA: Very well, I will commission it on the strength of the OP.
\nKONAKA: Thank you, sir.
\nKONAKA makes to leave.<\/i>
\nISHIKAWA: And Konaka, one more thing.
\nKONAKA: Yes, sir?
\nISHIKAWA: Boogiepop Phantom<\/i> had better music than Lain<\/i>.
\nKONAKA: *inaudible*<\/p>\n
There was a time when I used to welcome and embrace the name of Chiaki J. Konaka (I never keep his name in Japanese order because I don’t know how … danged initial). I used to think that his work was always cool and compelling. Then, after a while, some shows would have episodes that were pointlessly confusing or convoluted, and totally different to every episode surrounding them. Every time one of these came on, I would think “this feels like it was written by Konaka” and, lo and behold, most of the time it had been.
\nThat’s not to say that I think Konaka is a no talent hack, because he’s done a lot of good things, but he is entirely capable of obscuring his point behind smoke and mirrors and burying it in stuff that I don’t care about. It was thanks to him that I gleaned almost no fun from Magic Users’ Club<\/i> TV after such a glorious run on the OVA.<\/p>\n
Anyway, to Ghost Hound<\/i>. I’m not being indignant in saying “what is this?”, because I’m more curious than that, but I think that it’s simply amazing that we’re in a day and age when a first episode doesn’t really have to do anything other than feature a boy who dreams about flying, and recalls his abducted sister on a bed, a punk kid whose father was somehow related to the abduction, and a transfer student who is uncomfortably touchy feely with the other students. The OP is grand, and so far that’s all I can really say about it.<\/p>\n
Also, the student psychologist is blatant in his evil looking. Does no one notice? Fortunately, because of my lack of smarts and punctuality, there’s a few episodes already available to ease myself into. The key to getting back into doing fansubs rather than relying solely on my burgeoning DVD collection is to pick good shows. I burned out last year from watching too much stuff that simply wasn’t very good, and the stuff that I did<\/i> consider very good got abandoned as a result.<\/p>\n
So, Ghost Hound<\/i>: you’re looking okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I imagine that Ghost Hound was born of this trial: EXTERIOR: Production I.G. Tower, a building that looms ominously against a cloudy and thunderous sky. A crow caws. INTERIOR: ISHIKAWA sits at his desk, brooding. He is attended to by SHIROW and OSHII. OSHII is humming a jolly tune to himself at a separate table. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ghost-hound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}