Gregory Horror Show

Did You Know?

• The first series, 'The Nightmare Begins', consists of exactly 25 stories, while the third series, 'The Last Train', has 26 stories.
• Neko Zombie ends up turning to ash when Gregory House is burned down, and is never seen again.

Synopsis

The first series, The Nightmare Begins, comprises 25 stories about a businessman who arrives at the hotel after taking a train home from work. The old mouse Gregory suggests he stay in Room 205, and with the help of other guests, gradually erodes his individuality, denouncing him as a small part of himself and confronting his workaholism. The man becomes drawn into bizarre events as he tries to escape this purgatory; though he returns to his wife and son, he finds reality too boring and voluntarily goes back, heavily implied to become an empty shell, Haniwa Salaryman. The second series, The Second Guest, also has 25 stories, this time about a woman who has just taken a taxi home from a wedding. She has endured many failed relationships and careers, and it is implied her old flame was the first guest. Driven insane by degrading events, she starts a fire that burns down the house, but the Gregory family survive and welcome her in. The third series, The Last Train, has 26 stories set on a train ride Gregory embarks upon, with no guest and no hotel setting; Gregory tries to escape his role as innkeeper but fails, the train returning him to Gregory House. The fourth series, The Bloody Karte, has 12 stories about Catherine working in a mysterious hospital.

Characters

Gregory, voiced by Chafurin in Japanese and Dave Pettitt in English, is the innkeeper and narrator, a slightly creepy old anthropomorphic rat obsessed with keeping guests at his hotel. He loves to mess with one's mind and appears out of nowhere. It is strongly implied that Gregory is a manifestation of hidden dreams and desires people suppress, and his hotel the same; however, how several people manifest the same apparition is unknown, and he may be a spirit of dreams and desires rather than a single person's manifestation. His aims seem unclear, but he appears subservient to his mother, who is thoroughly wicked, consuming wayward souls to remain young. Gregory himself is morally ambiguous, never overtly harming guests but not preventing harm, possibly because everyone in the hotel is effectively immortal. He is polite and sincere, referring to the first guest as 'My friend' and the second as 'My dear'. Gregory is indestructible and inescapable; even if guests flee or try to destroy him, they return. In the third series, he is more sympathetic, trying to escape his role but ultimately failing, suggesting he too is a prisoner. In the game, he can be overheard saying guests would not be in danger if they accepted the purgatory, but he is often an antagonistic force.

Release

The original Japanese run of Gregory Horror Show unfolded across four distinct arcs. The first season, titled The First Guest in Japan and The Nightmare Begins in English, consisted of 25 episodes broadcast on select TV Asahi stations from October 1999 to March 2000. A second season, The Second Guest (or The Guest from Hell), followed with another 25 episodes from April to September 2000. The third season, The Last Train (The Nightmare Train), stretched to 26 episodes from October 2000 to March 2001. A 12-episode spinoff, The Bloody Karte, aired from April to June 2001. In Japan, NEC Interchannel handled the initial home video release, putting the first two seasons on DVD and VHS across six volumes from March to November 2000. The first three of these included exclusive animated shorts called Gregory Gallery Tour. Later, VAP re-released all four series (without the Gallery Tour segments) on three DVDs from July to September 2004. At Anime Boston 2004, Geneon Entertainment announced it had licensed the series for North America. They hired Ocean Productions to create an English dub, recorded at Blue Water Studios. The complete series (again excluding Gregory Gallery Tour) came out on three DVDs from September 2004 to January 2005.

Other medias

In October 2000, Naomi Iwata launched a Gregory Horror Show comic serialized in Kodansha's Young Magazine Uppers. A manga spin-off by Suzuki Sanami, titled Gregory Horror Show: Another World, was serialized in Weekly Morning magazine from the 46th issue of 2007 (released October 18, 2007) to the sixth issue of 2008 (released January 10, 2008); Kodansha published the series in a single volume on September 22, 2008. It follows Tooru Takenozuka, a 22-year-old freeter who comes to the city to follow his dreams but cannot find an apartment until a seedy real estate agent introduces him to Gregory House. He ends up in Room 404 and endures nightmarish surroundings; it is revealed that his form and spirit are in constant flux, and he is actually a 94-year-old man in 2078 who never accepted that he grew beyond his twenties without accomplishing anything. Gregory takes a liking to him as a collector of the rare and unusual. The man battles between dreams and reality but eventually wanders back, becoming a permanent guest. G-Mode debuted an eponymous DoJa adventure game for mobile phones in Japan, launching on Vodafone on August 18, 2004, on EZweb on October 1, 2004, and on i-mode on December 1, 2004; it was re-released for Nintendo Switch and Steam as part of the G-Mode Archives series on October 26, 2023. G-Mode also produced Gregory Bakyun, a themed fortunetelling shooter game, debuting alongside the other game on Vodafone and EZweb, with an i-mode release on September 1, 2004, and a BREW version on May 26, 2005 for EZweb. The anime was adapted into a PlayStation 2 game by Capcom Production Studio 3 and published by Capcom on August 7, 2003 in Japan and December 15, 2003 in Europe; the player tries to escape Gregory House by stealing bottled souls from twelve guests and returning them to Death before sleeping in Room 101.