I am hesitant to describe Ghost Hound in any real detail, because it treats its audience the same way as its characters, as travelers in strange, undiscovered lands. If I had to sum it up, I'd say it's a lot like Stephen King's moodier, teenager-focused books like It, the Talisman, or early Dark Tower, crossed with the paranormal surrealism of Serial Experiments Lain... no surprise, since Konaka wrote that too, and GH reunites him with its director Ryutaro Nakamura (who actually did another show about "travelers in strange lands", Kino's Journey). Masamune "Ghost in the Shell" Shirow has a vague "original creator" credit, but based on most of his other anime work, I'll be shocked if he did anything more than a rough outline and maybe a character sketch or two.
I'm not actually sure who this show is aimed at. The main characters are angsty teens (albeit much more realistically sullen ones than typical anime histrionics), but I can't imagine the people who eat up, say, Nana, eagerly sitting through long expository scenes about neurochemistry. I mean, this is a show that expects you to be on-the-ball enough to recognize a passing reference to the Mothman. And unlike Magical Index, another super-expository occult show I've been watching, there is rarely any particularly explosive payoff for all the chit-chat, although the overall atmosphere is amazing, consistently tense and dreamlike, with some fantastic sound work. Calling something "trippy" is usually a lazy cop-out, but this time it's just stating a fact.
Ghost Hound is an interesting show, and one that goes out of its way to avoid mainstream anime cliches, but I'm not sure if something this far out on the fringes can find an audience. It'd probably most appeal to people who aren't actually anime fans, by which I don't mean "people who only like Ninja Scroll", but "people who watch Darren Aronofsky films". I like it, but my tastes are, uh, idiosyncratic, and I've actually spent a lot of time immersed in the kind of conspiranoia natter Konaka revels in. Anyone who ever liked Lain definitely owes it to themselves to check it out. Like Tokyo Majin, this is another review at the halfway mark; we'll have to see whether the conclusion raises or lowers my opinion.
