The Ring and Ringu

So I've watched these films and found that I am way more scared by the western version than the Japanese version. I think it is because the western version is specifically made for its audiences. I find that one major difference is in the Western version they literally tell us everything. We get all the information, some ague almost too much, yet in the Japanese version much more is left to the imagination and not explained. perhaps more being left unexplained for Japanese audiences is far more scary for them but seeing more explained in the Western film makes it more scary for me.

Some major differences are:

Samaras power is to burn terrible images into the minds of other people
Sadakos power is to kill only by willing someone dead

Samara couldn't really help her ability it just happened this is explained when she is being interviewed in a mental hospital. They want to find out her intentions, how she feels about other people and if she really loves her mother. She claims she loves her mother but her dad wants her gone. This explains to the viewers that Samara doesn't mean to make her mother lose her mind.
For Sadako it is left murky and ambigious if she is truly evil for killing someone for not believing her mothers abilities or just angry at the destroyed reputation of her mother and unable to control her abilities.

Samaras father tells the protagonists that she drove her mother into madness and eventually suicide and that is the reason she had to go
Sadakos father tells the protagonists that his wife would stand by the seaside for hours driven to depression by what the press wrote about her. She claims that she would speak another language to the sea, but it isn't clear what she was speaking or why. He doesn't say much at all about sadako nor does he make it clear why he killed her, apart rom the fact it appeared a press man died because of her.

Samaras mother kills her after being driven mad by the images she burned into her mothers mind
Sadakos father killed her because of her ability to kill with one look

Aiden is much more involved in the story, he speaks to Samara on a regular basis it is like they have some sort of friendship like relationship or friendship, perhaps they both connect with a less than adequate home life. Either way Samara still had plans to kill Aiden but they seemed to share a connection, he could see her and communicate with her.
Yoshino is connected to his cousin who has died and communicates with her

The Sadakos mother is a psychic and its presumed that supernatural abilities run in their family.
Samara was adopted and her mother died at birth.

Sadako lived on an island in japan
Samar lived on a Horse farm in North West America