Ghost Talker's Daydream (2004)

 

Director: Osamu Sekita

Screenplay: Katsumasa Kanazawa and Kenichi Kanemaki

Based on the manga by Saki Okuse and illustrated by Sankichi Meguro

(Voice) Cast: Masumi Asano as Misaki Saiki; Tomokazu Sugita as Souichiro Kadotake; Yukari Tamura as Ai Kunugi; Daisuke Kishio as Mitsuru Fujiwara

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

"This anime adaptation had always been one of interest for me because I was a fan of the source manga. Found discounted in a British bookstore, the source manga by Saki Okuse and illustrated by Sankichi Meguro, whose work was adapted into Twilight of the Dark Master (1997), an obscure Akiyuki Shinbo helmed horror OVA. It is also lurid, about an albino dominatrix named Saiki Misaki who, in-between her sex worker career which also includes writing for a porno magazine, is using her ability to see and communicate with ghosts to help a branch of the local government exorcise buildings and environments. The source manga is violent, sexually explicit and sleazy, and tackles subjects like sexual violence. It was also however a work which looked exceptional, with the illustrations by Meguro, and had managed to be the right side of lurid by being smarter, building a world whose images could be ghoulish as much as it played to sex comedy. Sadly, published by Dark Horse, they only got to volume six before the series was cancelled for English language release, never continued up past through the remaining four volumes, and managing to end on the worse cliff-hanger as well to emphasis this fact involving a haunted apartment complex..."

The anime, as the review gets into, does not sell the manga well. It is lurid, very lurid, and suffers from the fact it scrapes the surface of the material, not the most interesting content, and struggles from its clear lower budget next to the source material's art. It is also, however, an adaptation I had always been curious of, and as a fan of what little of the source material got an English translation, I have to admit there was enough here to appreciate. It is absolutely a manga, not only one I wish had its entire run available, which needed a better adaptation if you could snap your fingers and unleash it.

For the full review, follow the link HERE.