It's rude to stare.
Anime & Manga examples of Our Ghosts Are Different.
- Ai Kora had a chapter involving a Cute Ghost Girl who was being haunted by a horde of other, male ghosts who had fallen madly in lust with her and who wouldn't pass on until she did a sexy dance for them(with some encouragement from Hachibei and Shibusawa). She showed up in a later chapter having possessed Shibusawa's mentor Aburazaka, where it turned out she was actually the spirit of a girl who was still alive, but in a coma.
- Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day revolves around Memma, a Cute Ghost Girl trying to rest in peace sort of.
- In Bleach all the major characters and antagonists are fundamentally ghosts, or are humans with ghost related, derived, exterminating powers. Ghosts themselves come in three flavours: 'pluses' — your regular unquiet spirits, 'hollows' — pluses who lingered in the mortal world too long and became monsters, and shinigami, who have been granted tremendous supernatural powers to police the afterlife.
- Cardcaptor Sakura:
- Nadeshiko (the protagonist's mother) died at age 27 from an unknown illness. She was very attached to her family, so she often makes appearances to check up on them. She eventually stops doing that, particularly after Touya gives up his clairvoyant ability to save his boyfriend. She is notably very different in that she appears more like an angel than a ghost.
- From the first movie, we have "Madoushi", Clow Reed's ex-girlfriend (and former student) who has been waiting for centuries for him to free her from an interdimensional prison he made for her after she started practicing dark magic. Sakura helps her move on, even facing her fear of ghosts... and this particular one's wrath.
- Corpse Princess: Spirits and corpses are animated through regrets they had when alive, such as a mother who died giving birth and is hanging around to take care of her child, except as a giant hideous monster. A few more powerful shikabane result from people embracing their true natures and in doing so discard their humanity.
- Dear NOMAN: Nomans are the souls of people or animals that had remained in the transient world after death. They are divided into two classes considering how dangerous they potentially were. Grade B noman are the more dangerous and maintain their forms by consuming souls. Grade X noman (which is Bazu's ranking) do not recklessly steal souls and are incapable of entering Heaven. The Boundary Preservation Society handle them through special conditions hence how Mashiro became Bazu's master. However, there also exists Grade A Noman that are potentially more powerful.
- In Digimon V-Tamer 01, ghosts are the lingering data of monsters that were improperly deleted.
- In Ghost in the Shell, the "ghost" is the essential factor that can only be possessed by a truly sapient being. It can be housed in artificial hardware by replacement of organics with cybernetics (the Ship of Theseus model), though the main character worries about the certainty of her ghost's integrity. Direct copying not only produces an inferior knockoff, it kills the original.
- Honey Crush revolves around ghost of a lesbian, who later meets another (living) lesbian who can see ghosts, who she develops feelings for, who is then targeted by (another dead) lesbian. You might have guessed that series is in the Yuri Genre.
- In Hikaru no Go, a ghost (Fujiwara-no-Sai) is one of the main characters. He possessednote Hikaru, the protagonist, and became his Mentor. The story puts a great focus in his conflict of not having a body or an actual life on his own (the life is Hikaru's after all) and his fear of disappearing.
- Inuyasha: In one of the few stories to take place in the present day, Kagome encounters the spirit of a little girl who died in a fire and is angry at her mother for not rescuing her. The girl haunts her mother and little brother until Kagome manages to redeem her with The Power of Love.
- Mahoromatic: One episode features Red Haired Ando, a girl's ghost rumoured to haunt the local high school. Her hair is red because of the blood, as she died in an accident.
- Millennium Snow includes a side story about a girl who, after a suicide attempt, is possessed by the ghost of her unborn twin brother.
- My Lovely Ghost Kana: Kana is the ghost of a girl who killed herself but doesn't remember why. She is stuck, alone, in the apartment complex in which she committed suicide for years until Daikichi shows up. This happens and that happens and in the end, it doesn't really matter to either of them if she's a ghost as long as she and Daikichi can be together.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Sayo Aisaka. Tied to her seat for more than sixty years due to reasons still undisclosed. Can't leave the school grounds until Asakura got a special doll for her to possess. Is absolutely terrible at being a ghost, getting scared of the slightest noise and managing to trip on her feet despite lacking feet. Also later in the story gained a robot body with lasers and stuff, comparing herself to Chachamaru before flying off to blow up Negi. The original plan was to make a pactio. She's very different.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: In concept and execution, the ghosts are closer to The Heartless than to any of the several types of spectral beings listed in this trope. To elaborate: they are unholy abominations created by the sorrow and suffering of people (The ghost shitbeast from "Excretion Without Honor and Humanity" being the spirit of a plumber that was killed by the stench of a clogged toilet) or even objects (the Panty Thief ghost from "High School Nudical" being the grudge of discarded underwear) that perished and got lost/trapped in the limbo.
- Paranoia Agent: One episode revolves around three people trying to kill themselves. At its conclusion, they realize that they succeeded early on and didn't notice. The implication is that ghosts in the Paranoia Agent universe don't know they're dead. The only visual sign of their death is that ghosts don't have shadows (as made clear when a man tries to kill himself by jumping in front of a subway train; he staggers away, bitching about his failure, but he has no shadow - and really, you can't survive that). There's an odd moment after The Reveal when the ghosts, happy to have died, stop in the background of a schoolgirl's picture-taking; when the girls look at their photo, they scream in terror. We don't see the picture, so it's not clear what happened (though it's possible only we see the ghosts as they were in life, and the girls saw their corpses).
- Patlabor: The TV Series: Episode 27 features a pretty standard group of ghosts and poltergeists with unfinished business, the only thing being that they're made up of former inhabitants of every era all the way back to Sengoku.
- Phantom Quest Corp.: Narita was a college student, who was part of the archeological team that was sent on an expedition, deep in the desert, to find the ruins of an Egyptian kingdom that was thought to be a myth. But the rest of the team eventually gave up; leaving him to continue the search on his own. He finally succeeded mere moments before he died, but his spirit lingered. So he stayed near his girlfriend, Natsuki, since they'd been researching the lost kingdom as their joint projectnote . He helps her set up the exhibit while keeping her safe from Mr. Nagasuki's advances. After the exhibit opens to the public, and he'd made certain Natsuki was no longer in danger, Narita's spirit departs.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: A few variants, usually bought to light by Tomato Surprise, appear.
- In the series proper is Souji Mikage, who in reality was Professor Nemuro. He died years and years ago from a fire that he set off after seeing the woman he loved cheat on him and her younger brother, who he held affection for, die. Akio finds his "ghost", so to speak, and gives him False Memories in order to manipulate him to fight Utena, and his sister Anthy disguises herself as Mamiya in order to prod him forward. This sets off the Black Rose Arc. By the end, Mikage realizes that he was manipulated and passes on, and is eventually forgotten. Needless to say, the poor guy could've used some therapy...
- In Adolescence of Utena, Touga is actually dead, but appears normally until about two-thirds through. It turns out that in this version, he died from drowning. He also loved Utena in the past (and was a more sympathetic character in general in that version). Why he's there beforehand is never explained. In the television series and the original manga, he's alive.
- In addition, there is the Sega Saturn game's antagonist, Chigusa. She was the spurned lover of the player character's father because he found her to be cruel, and he settled for the more demure woman who would become the player's mother instead. She loses it and grows a rather interesting philosophy about women, in that there are only two types: Snow White, the princess, and the evil queen. One of the endings reveals that Souji and Mamiya, under Akio's influence, had created her (the game is set between the first and second arcs, so it serves as something of a preview to the latter). Destroying a tablet exorcises her.
- School-Live! has some implications that Megu-nee is a ghost rather than a hallucination. Megu-nee became a zombie prior to the series. She seems like a hallucination of Yuki's yet gives advice and helps the girls a few times.
- Sgt. Frog: Despite being wrongfully imprisoned when she was alive, the Cute Ghost Girl is not out for revenge or anything like that, she just wants to be noticed. She does have some poltergeist-like powers, like stealing and eating slices of cake right in front of a person. The crumbs somehow stick to her ghostly face. Unfortunately, due to everyone being sidetracked by the Keronians, the ghost girl was quickly forgotten until in one episode she decides she's had enough of being ignored and spirits Natsumi and Keroro away. And it turns out she didn't even die in prison; she stuck around after her death because she wanted to see the "kappa" (hinted to be a previous visiting Keronian) she'd befriended when she was alive.
- Sunday Without God: Dee is a Cute Ghost Girl, and she takes advantage of her ghostly form to "whisper" suggestions to people. However, she's not actually dead. Within the sealed city Ostia, she has a physical body, and because she was one of the students wishing to reset time, she can't physically leave the seal, and thus she's a ghost in the outside world. When the seal is broken, she regains her physical body for good.
- To Love Ru: Oshizu is haunting an abandoned school building for some reason. At least until she gets an artificial body to move around it. When stressed, she'll often leave her artificial body by accident...and cause some chaos with her telekinesis.
- In Undertaker Riddle, ghosts are mostly harmless, can be seeing by certain persons and stay because of lingering attachments but also they can turn into evil spirits who hunt down other people's souls to eat.
- Venus Versus Virus: Nahashi and Lilith's ghosts in episode 12 get summoned by Laura, and restrain Lucif from attacking the girls. See types 2 & 7.
- When Marnie Was There: Marnie is revealed to be a spirit in the final act. She is Anna's grandmother in the form of a child. Anna doesn't recognize Marnie because she was very young when she died. She doesn't seem to understand that she is dead. She's shown clearly interacting with Anna but whether it's actually occurring or not is vague, as she seems to be going through the motions she did with her eventual husband. One scene has Marnie crying for help but she acts as if Anna isn't there and instead only reacted to her future husband's character.
