TL;DR: Chiaki J Konaka is fantastic. This anime, unfortunately, is not.
Synposis: a few teenagers who have issues with their past explore the line between the phyiscal and spirit world.
I’m a big fan of the writer Chiaki J Konaka, who is most well-known for his work on Serial Experiments Lain and his socially undesirable political views. Personally, I appreciate his work on Texhnolyze the most, a “Nietzschean” post-apocalyptic series about an underground city where several factions compete for power which I consider to be my favourite anime.
So I figured I would try watching Ghost Hound, which was written by Konaka and produced by the guys who did Ghost in the Shell -- a dream lineup, frankly. The concept sounded fine as well.
The problem?
First, there is not enough antagonism: there are occasionally threats or fights, but there is never a consistent source of tension or conflict. The protagonist is also fairly boring: both in visuals and personality. Combined with the fact that things happen too slowly in general, this leads to a dull watching experience, despite the fact that the mysteries in the series are fairly compelling in their own right. I stopped watching at around episode 13 and I later read a summary of what happens later, and I do not regret my decision of dropping the seires.
In my notes, I wrote down that the art and sound were both great, but both failed to leave an impression on me 2 months after writing them.
I judge artists by their best works, not their overall body of work, so this ultimately does not change my perception of Konaka at all — his work on Serial Experiments Lain and Texhnolyze was respectable.