Dark humor can be offensive.But often it’s just silly words! Case and point: “Ghost Stories,” the anime from 2000.

This show is both the best and worst English dub I’ve ever heard. It had a bad turnout in Japan, so they handed it over to the dubbers and gave them almost complete freedom to change up the script. So they used an insane amount of dark humor and basically improvised the whole story.

It totally makes sense that this anime isn’t for everybody, because it never leaves the taboo zone. And to “play it safe” from just targeting one group, religion, or lifestyle with offensive jokes, they made it all-inclusive and just went after ALL of them.

Definitely not a show I would ever recommend to kids; but for the older teens and adults who don’t care about offensive commentary and who actually get half the jokes and references. This show will give you a hard laugh at how they got away with this back in the day and how they would never attempt this in today’s society.

Comedy aside, they took the already half-baked story, flipped it on its head, and restructured it into something so wacky and self-aware of its own flaws that it actually works in its own funny way.

Since its main selling point is its abridged-like comedy; when the jokes land, they’re hilarious, but when they don’t land, it sticks out horribly. When comparing it to other official dubs in different categories of quality, Ghost Stories falls flat on its face. That being said, I give credits to them for taking something terrible and making it better in the most offbeat way possible.
Bottom line: if their goal was just to make jokes for a mature audience, then mission accomplished.