Of Swords and Parasols

Guren Onna is a horror-comedy series about a meek teacher named Nabekuro who spends her nights pretending to be a vengeful ghost, and has become an urban legend as such. During her excursions, she ends up rescuing people (repeatedly the students in her class) as well as meeting and helping a number of real ghosts.

The Guren Onna parts were very fun, but many of the school parts prior to the last few episodes (where Nabekuro finally started to feel comfortable when dressed “normally,” as opposed to pretending to be a ghost, and when she started to bond with her students) irritated me, and ventured a bit too far into my embarrassment squick. Also, I couldn’t help but feel that it was trying to be a paranormal version of Gokusen, set in an all-girls school? I even often felt like the actress (who I liked) was trying to channel Nakama Yukie’s brand of wacky, but she didn’t really convey the dignity and self-esteem Yukie always seems to have in her roles, no matter what zaniness her characters get up to.

But the school parts did pay off in the end, and the adventures parts really were fun, especially once the students started getting involved. Unfortunately, only the first five episodes have fan subs. The rest have really bad Engrish subs ripped from the Chinese DVDs. The Engrish subs don’t translate anything and are often barely discernable. Thankfully, it’s a very visual series and, while not repetitive, the first five episodes clue you in enough to the pattern of the show so that that plus years of jdramas and anime made it pretty easy to follow with the aid of the Engrish subs. The episodes are also only 29 minutes each, so 7 episodes of Engrish isn’t as bad as it sounds.