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Gakkou No Kaidan?
Number one fan of characters that appear only once and ultimately were a recurring character either in disguise or trying a new image.
Wow that fits the bill so closely. I've been watching on Google. Unfortunately some how I don't think it is the show. I was so happy when I was reading about it online thinking this was it! But watching, the general monsters/ghosts seem a bit too.. Spooky? Scary? For what would have been on TV at the time I remember watching. Wikipedia also says that even though it was made in 2000, it didn't reach western screens until 2005 which seems way too late from when I would have watched it.
In addition to this when watching the episodes, the program I remember seemed to have a large emphasis on these monsters being placed into books or released out of books.
Thank you very much for your reply, so close to an answer of what has been bugging me for many years, I even sometimes wondered if I imagined the whole show up somehow with how hard it has been to find anything similar, especially since I can remember watching it on an analogue TV which would've only had the 5 TV channels, but your reply has at least proved there are shows almost exactly to the description that I have not found so far in my searches.
Natsume Yuujinchou (Natsume's Book of Friends)? it's about a guy trying to catch ghost inside a book.
Cardcaptor Sakura, which was aired on CITV as Cardcaptors?
sounds very close to cardcaptors
so then
Definitely sounds like Cardcaptors. Non-spooky spirits that the main character has to reseal into cards.
This has been bugging me for a number of years. I have been through lists on Wikipedia of all BBC/CITV shows to no avail. I watched a anime or cartoon, based in a Japanese high school (or just general Chinese high school etc) about monsters being trapped in books or in some book shape item. The teen protagonists in this show would release and capture demons/monsters inside these books. In an episode someone accidentally releases one of these monsters from a book hidden in a library, in another episode one is released during a marathon the pupils are taking through residential streets in what I'm assuming Japan. In another episode they capture a teacher from the school who turns out to be one of these monsters.
This show was shown in afternoons in weekdays on what I guessed was ITV or BBC 1/2 (back when there was just the five channels on TV) but I have not been able to find anything and I have searched pretty long and hard. This makes me think the show was not very popular or successful and never garnered enough attention to have made it to be properly talked about or documented online like the majority of other random cartoons on TV. I am really not sure what else to add but man this has been bugging me really bad.