(I saw the dubbed VHS version.) Only four episodes? It feels like it was meant to be a full series...the ending doesn't have any particular finality to it.

Ayaka Kisuragi is the leader of Phantom Quest Corp, an organization that combats ghosts and monsters. She's brash, hard-drinking, hates to get out of bed, and loves to sing karaoke, loudly and badly. If you took Miss Yukari out of Azumanga Daioh and made her a hard-bitten, buxom broad of a detective, you'd pretty much have Ayaka. She's backed up by several secondary characters who don't get much character development time, and her weapon is...a lipstick dispenser that turns into a lightsaber. Unh hunh. Bet they got almost as much merchandising out of that as Jubei-Chan's 'lovely eyepatch' with the mirror and secret compartment inside. Ayaka is always broke again at the end of the episode.

Phantom Quest Corp is...okay. Actually, the episodes vary widely in quality. In Episode One, it seems that during Japan's economic boom, someone purchased Dracula's casket as a status symbol, and vampires have been infiltrating Japan since. A cool premise, but the show has all the spookiness of a Scooby Doo cartoon, and about the same humor level. The next episode at least had soem genuinely funny material in it, but again has a cackling, non-scary villain.

The series seemed to hit its stride in Episode Three, where the horror was actually well handled, the humor was funny, and I quite liked the storyline. Episode Four wasn't quite up to it, but not bad, and I had gotten to like the characters by now.

Maybe watching in the original language it was funnier. Or maybe it just hasn't aged well, and I've seen this stuff done better already. (Or maybe it's just my sense of humor--I don't find Trigun nearly as funny as people tell me it is, but die laughing at Excel Saga, which several other people have told me sucks.)

If all four episodes were up to the quality of #3, I'd probably give the series a solid 3 stars. As it is, I wouldn't go out of my way to see this, but if it's available, you could do far worse.