After a shaky start, Ghost Hunt improves considerably into ghostly drama that probably won't scare the pants off of anyone, but has a good time trying.  Unlikable characters and a slow opening mystery make Ghost Hunt a tough sell at first.  However, as the characters become a bit more fleshed out and the ghost stories get a little more streamlined, the series shows a marked improvement.  While it's certainly not horror at its best, Ghost Hunt is entertaining enough, and if the supernatural element doesn't appeal, then the potential romance might.   

Based on the shojo manga series of the same name, Ghost Hunt follows high school student Mai Taniyama as she adjusts to her unique new job and her enigmatic boss, Kazuya Shibuya.  Mai loves ghost stories and anything having to do with the supernatural.  When curiosity overcomes her common sense, and she accidentally disrupts a paranormal investigation in an abandoned school, Mai must pay for the damages by assisting with the rest of the investigation.  Kazuya, whom Mai dubs "Naru the Narcissist," is the teenage leader of the Shibuya Psychic Research team.  Mai proves to be a helpful asset, and Naru takes her on as a permanent member of the team.  Together with his partner, Lin, and spiritually-inclined freelancers Ayako, a self-styled Shinto priestess, Takigawa, a somewhat wayward Buddhist monk, Masako, a celebrity medium, and John, a Catholic priest, the team investigates hauntings and makes sense of all those things that go bump in the night.

Ghost Hunt really is a tough sell.  The first few episodes, dealing with a supposed haunting at an abandoned school, seem to drag on forever, and the story is not improved by a few too many red herrings.  An opening mystery needs to be complicated enough to hook the viewer, but in the meantime it helps to have engaging characters.  The characters really are a problem at first.  None of them are particularly appealing.  Naru is rather cold and arrogant, Lin hardly says a thing, and the freelance spiritualists, with the exception of the Catholic priest, are so overconfident and flat that it's painful to watch.  Even our heroine, Mai, is a bit too perky-high-school-girl to be but so appealing.  Perhaps the mystery would have been more fun to watch if more had been done to pull in the viewer.  Maybe it wasn't necessary to introduce all the major players at once; the series has a rather large ensemble of characters.  Regardless, as time passes plotwise, they do get fleshed out a bit.

While the beginning is rough on the viewer, Ghost Hunt gets into gear pretty quickly after Mai's first case with Naru's psychic research firm.  As if by magic--or perhaps a good old fashioned possession--the characters become more three-dimensional and show more personality than just a ridiculous confidence in their abilities.  Running jokes start to appear, and relationships develop as the characters spend more time interacting with one another.  Soon it becomes apparent that some characters go way back, for better or for worse.  An interesting thing to note is that the story is mostly from Mai's point of view.  While her commentary was a bit annoying at first, it becomes entertaining to see what she thinks of her permanent and freelance coworkers, and how she views their investigations.

For horror buffs and fans of ghost stories, the series is not hardcore scariness.  For someone like me, who doesn't do a lot of horror, it was fun to watch, but pretty tame.  It most likely depends on what one finds scary.  Most of the team's investigations were interesting, and had a nice sense of mystery, even if some events were a little too convenient.  Only one case really gave me the willies.  Dolls and puppets are the stuff of nightmares, and this viewer watched the case involving a little girl and her doll with the all the lights on and a blanket clutched tightly to her chest.  Other folks might find the same story silly.  It all depends on the viewer.  After the first case, though, the other investigations held my attention with their mystery, spookiness, or sense of humor.     

Visually, this series is standard anime fare.  The boys are pretty, and the colors are nice.  Nothing particularly stands out, except, of course, the ghosts.  The effects look good and the hauntings are carried off well.  What is most striking, in a not so good way, are the corners that were cut in production.  It's not uncommon in anime to see a scene or two with a covered mouth while the character speaks or to wait through a few seconds of inactivity.  Animation is expensive, and budgets exist for a reason.  However.  There are several instances where the lack of any motion at all goes on for a few seconds too long, to the point of becoming very noticeable, and breaking the natural flow of the plot.  It's distracting to say the least, especially during moments of building suspense.

The opening theme is worth taking a listen.  When one thinks of ghosts and stories and the supernatural, it's hard not to think of a fun, heart-racingly good scare.  The theme embodies, in a somewhat Danny Elfman-esque manner, all the playful, spooky aspects covered in this series. 

Ghost Hunt is good for folks who like a bit of drama with their spooky mystery.  The series focuses heavily on the relationships between the characters.  This is not the emotional disconnect of our beloved X-Files.  The relationships in Ghost Hunt make the investigations of the hauntings personal, and give the characters more than just paranormal demons to fight.  Ghost Hunt grows on the viewer, and while it's something I'd be far more likely to rent or borrow from a friend, rather than buy, it certainly offers up a few ghost stories perfect for a dark and stormy night.   

Details: Runtime 310 minutes, includes episodes 1-13 on two dvds.  Extras include Ghost Hunt manga pages from Del Rey, character case files, a gallery of the series' ghosts, textless opening, and trailers.