I first became aware of the Paranormal Master Tape series when I learned that Shigeo Ôsako and Chika Kuboyama from Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! appear in the second season, seemingly as their Kowasugi characters. I tracked down and watched the first season and was pleasantly surprised that despite being unsubbed, it was super easy to follow due to the abundance of on-screen text. I just watched it with my phone's camera translation going and felt like I got 80% of the detail or more. Naturally I went ahead and did the second season as well, and was thrilled with Ôsako and Kuboyama's roles and also just really had a good time with the miniseries.
I wanted to make these more accessible to fellow Kowasugi maniacs, but my Japanese level could best described as "early beginner." So, I went ahead and made English subs just for the on-screen text. This is maybe a little goofy, but honestly if you're a fan of Kudo and Ichikawa, I pretty much guarantee you'll like this; their roles are substantial and extremely funny, playing heightened versions of their Kowasugi characters. They first show up at the end of episode 1. The show is not heavy on spooks by any means, but it's pretty entertaining for found footage fans I think!
The conceit of the first season was "let's get a bunch of directors of 'psychic documentary' films together to investigate the mysterious first-ever Japanese psychic documentary, which has been lost to time." Psychic documentaries seem to encompass the field of mockumentary/found footage films of the "this shows real proof of ghosts existing! we caught these mysterious events on camera!" variety and judging by the staggering number of them, seem to be pretty popular in Japan. While I'm not familiar with the directors they got together aside from Kotaro Terauchi (one of the people who does the excellent Fake Documentary Q on YouTube), it was all very inside-baseball and fun.
The second season starts by immediately going "oh yep, that was all fiction! But whoa look at this weird tape we got sent, should we investigate it for real, just like the fake series we just did...?" which is an amazing conceit. You honestly don't need to know much more than that going into the second season; the characters all are directors or crew that make paranormal documentaries, they just made a fake one, and now they're on to a new thing. Anyway, I'll add episodes as I sub them. Until full subs of the spoken dialog get done someday, these will have to (and should!) suffice.