Ok I feel like everyone needs to know the story behind this dub.
This is Ghost Stories, and in the original Japanese it was a highly respected anime about traditional spirits, intense drama, and a mother’s love extending past death to aid her children lol who am I kidding it was about the depth of a kiddy pool and as dramatic as your average Scooby-doo spinoff.
It didn’t do too well in Japan, so the company wanted to get it dubbed to expand the audience and the profits for the show. America was in the middle of its early 2000′s anime boom, so shows that got dubbed were getting insanely popular left and right.
The problem was, nobody wanted poor little Ghost Stories. So the company started getting desperate in its pitches. At one point, they were basically saying “We’ll let you do anything you want with it if you’ll just take it”
And ADV films responded to that, OKAY.
They ended up with only three rules. They had to keep the characters’ names the same, for licensing. They had to keep the ghosts’ names the same, because they were traditional Japanese spirits. And they had to maintain a semblance of a plot. The rest was 100% improvised by the actors. The show ended up basically all like this video.
They originally wanted to redo the dub every few years, to keep up with current events and reference newer stuff, but budget never allowed for it.
(Source: somehow Greg Ayres shows up at every convention I go to, and he always ends up telling this story)