Ghost Talker’s Daydream Anime Notes
Though it’s only four episodes, I had high hopes for the Ghost Talker’s Daydream anime adaptation; it seemed like exactly the sort of series that could be bumped up a notch in animation thanks to the opportunity for creepy sound effects, atmospheric music, and appropriately suspenseful timing. I also thought that it had a lot of potential to benefit from a tighter sense of what was going on visually and in terms of story, my only real complaint about the manga.
Having watched the first episode, it’s hard to call it anything but a major disappointment. I’ll reserve judgement about the whole until I finish watching it, but it’d take a small miracle to be anything more than mediocre on the whole. I’m also a bit torn, as I kind of don’t want to ruin the story of the manga by watching the anime, which from the looks of the first episode and preview is going to try and give a highlights-only version of the whole series.
Crime #1: Terrible soundtrack. Honestly, this is one of those manga series where you can practically hear the music when you’re reading—creepy atmosphere a la Perfect Blue’s fantastic sountrack, maybe some funky, chaotic jazz mixed in. Instead, bland, grating, poorly suited to the scene, and way too loud. That alone was enough to ruin the mood in the whole thing.
Crime #2: Sacrifices most of the jaded, sarcastic edge of the humor to focus on the obvious slapstick jokes, making the whole thing seem more juvenile than it should.
General flaws: The character designs are relatively faithful, but the art is simple and not particularly good, and the animation is below average. It also fails to fix the weaknesses in the manga, and if anything makes them worse. The condensed story is also a tad on the rushed side, and the characters aren’t developed well as a result. At least so far it’s not the least bit creepy.
Oh, well. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, and at least it’s a relatively faithful, if very abbreviated, adaptation on the whole.