Scary in Japanese

Before I begin, I have say that I don't have a strong opinion or predefined idea of what a ghost has to be. Ghosts never had rules and they never appeared the same way twice. To me, this makes any ghost story fair game as to how they treat ghosts. The Japanese idea of a ghost is an interesting one. So I won't spend any time complaining that the ghost wasn't handled right.

I enjoyed the story of A Wild Sheep Chase. 

First weird thing I noticed was that none of the character's really had a name. They were all labeled by nicknames. I found this to be extremely interesting. The women in the story were interesting as well. They all seemed so wise, as though they knew more than they should have. Like women were some mystical creature that could predict the future, like when his ex girlfriend predicts when she's going to die, or just know things without any real reason for knowing them. The ending felt a little anticlimactic. I understand this is a style choice and it wasn't meant to be for the character to accomplish something, but I think that is coupled with the idea of no one having a name.

Another thing I found interesting was that the way the ghost was portrayed was different than I imagined it would be, but I'm really only used to the Americanized ghosts that go to extreme lengths to kill you and that's it. In our ghost movies, most of which are Japanese stories “translated” into American ones, there's usually little to no purpose to the ghost. It's almost like they randomly pick the dumb teenagers of the story to harass and pick off one by one. I do like that the Japanese ghosts aren't hellbent on your absolute destruction. It makes them more realistic. Not to say that there weren't casualties along with the ghost's possessions.