Search - Ghost Stories, Vol. 3: Junior Jitters on DVD

The Sophomore...er... Junior Slump

L. J Lewis | Collierville, TN United States | 06/21/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Whenever something really good comes along, expectations for the follow-up are extremely high. Whenever these expectations aren't met, the term used to describe it is "sophomore slump." Seeing as the second volume of Ghost Stories was about as funny as you can get, it was inevitable that a dip in quality show up at some part of the series. In Ghost Stories vol 3: Junior Jitters, the dip is here and boy is it steep. While most of the episodes have their moments of laugh-out-loud humor, the humor to non-humor ratio is seriously unbalanced. The problem seems to be that in this batch of episodes, the original intent was more or less to pull on the heart strings so the all the jokes just don't mesh well with two of the episodes. The episodes about the ghost of the dead cab-driver and the death of Satsuki's mother have some funny jokes, but most of the humor just falls flat. The episodes that aren't trying to get the viewers bawl like a pregnant woman watching lifetime, are a little better but never reach the humor factor of previous volumes. One of these episodes involves a animal obsessed girl reviving a dead rabbit ala Pet Cemetary and the other finds Satsuki being harassed by an evil doll.
As Ghost Stories is an episodic series, I think that if you are on a tight budget you could definitely skip this volume. On the whole it's meh."