The director of the series was Noriyuki Abe, who is now working hard on the very successful anime Bleach, which has topped 100 episodes and just spawned an animated feature film. Bleach is also about schoolkids fighting unseen demons — but this time it's teenagers, and they use samurai swords and magic powers to save lost souls. It's action-packed, but again has well-designed characters and plenty of humour. Coincidentally, the central family is also missing its mother.
Ghost Stories is one of the few anime productions I've enjoyed that has an uncut subtitled release — all 20 episodes are on DVD, released over five volumes, with optional Japanese audio and English subtitles.
There's been controversy over the English language track on the DVDs, due to the dialogue being pepped up with inappropriate sexual references and American in-jokes. This is, of course, at odds with the young ages of the characters and the obviously Japanese setting.
If that's not a problem, or you can cope with reading subtitles, I'd recommend this to anime fans and students of Japanese yokai spirits.
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