A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School – Episode 1

What’s it about? Abe Haruaki wants to be a teacher, but fled his previous job after being frightened by high school delinquents and bullied by kindergarteners. All is not lost though, because an old (ancient) family friend has generously offered him a new gig… at a school for young youkai.

October is the season of chills and thrills, and truly, there’s nothing more Halloween-grade horrifying than a fun supernatural slice-of-life premise cursed by an obnoxious protagonist. The character designs for the class of youkai are cute and the concept of creatures from various aspects of Japanese folklore all hanging out together in a magical academy town is neat! I wish I didn’t have to experience this premise through the lens of a weedy, unpleasant human man who insists way too many times that he totally doesn’t have a school uniform fetish!

To cut a long story short: Haruaki is a pain in the ass and I don’t feel sorry for him, no matter how much the storytelling begs me to. His bad luck is used for slapstick moments, but otherwise the universe—or at least the narrative—seems to be firmly on his side. He’s inherited the bestest exorcist powers in his family. He’s handed a job despite demonstrably being a pretty bad teacher who isn’t any good at being around young people. He gains the begrudging respect of the youkai who antagonized him at the start of the episode and it feels unearned and contrived, gesturing at a character arc that didn’t happen. The episode makes a big deal about how out-of-his-depth the guy is, but also serves up everything he needs for the storyline to progress the way he wants it to.

This sucks from a writing perspective because it means there’s no real stakes (even the low, goofy stakes of a comedy). It also sucks because Haruaki’s characterization is doing that awful, insidious little dance where he’s written to do something objectively sketchy, but then he yells “No! That looked so sketchy, but I promise it wasn’t!” and that awkward in-text acknowledgment is expected to let him off the hook. Well, I’m not letting him off the hook. He’s an irritating wet cat of a protagonist who whines his way through the episode until he’s suddenly brave enough to progress the plot. 

After hiding under a desk all day, he launches himself outside to go knock on the ghoul-girls’ dormitory to retrieve a reclusive student. Not out of the goodness of his heart, mind you: she’s a youkai who supposedly brings good fortune, and he selfishly wants some luck for a change. The show henceforth farts around with awkward jokes about how shady he looks trying to enter the girls’ dorms, and I don’t even get to enjoy the potentially actually funny gag about a supernatural being getting addicted to video games.

And then she comes to school and he’s weird about the fact that she’s not wearing her sailor uniform properly (she’s wearing pants underneath, violating dress code and very sensibly blocking any panty shots in advance). But he then cries comically and yells that he doesn’t have a uniform thing, guys, I promise! as if that absolves him of his creepiness, and as if this joke is still funny after multiple repeats.

I wanted to like Ghoul School, and I want to say that there could still be some fun material here. Slice-of-life spirit world shenanigans are often a recipe for a good time. It’s a shame about the lone human absolutely haunting the place.