One thing that can be said for certain about the 2018 version of Gegege no Kitarou is that it’s pretty much fearless.  There doesn’t seem to be much that’s taboo or out of bounds, despite the fact that it airs on Sunday mornings (just as a certain WSJ adaptation did, before the “Chimera Ant” arc).  In fact I’d go so far as to say I can remember few anime which have so relentlessly – and ruthlessly – picked at the raw scabs of modern Japanese society.

An episode like this one, while certainly very much in the spirit of Mizuki Shigeru’s writing, shows how far this anime has evolved from the confines of the original scripts.  Where last week’s episode was entirely youkai-themed (nary a human made more than a cameo) this one was very much centered on the human world.  That means Mana is involved, and probably in trouble.  I feel for her, as she seems to be a receptacle for whatever threat this updating of the “Kitarou” mythology wants to unleash on the human world – and it’s Nanashi, of course, that’s at the heart of that.

Having already tackled taboo subjects like workplace bullying (leading to suicide) and school-enforced conformity, Gegege no Kitarou now tackles one of the biggest third rails in Japan head-on – school bullying and teen suicide.  If you’re unaware, suicide is an epidemic in this country, especially among the young.  And while the MacGuffin here was a “curse app” that allows the youkai Kubire-oni – the evil spirit of a human that committed suicide and a carryover from two earlier GGnK incarnations – to infect the minds of smartphone users, that’s just the cover.  The real operating hand is Nanashi’s, and the real target is slavish devotion to sumaho and the use of social media in school bullying.

The moment when Mana’s friend Souma – obviously under the influence of the curse app – is about to hang himself, only to be saved at the last moment by Kitarou, is one of the darkest things I’ve seen in anime in a long time.  It’s hard to overstate just how dangerous this imagery is for anime – frankly I’m stunned this made it on the air in the timeslot it did.  The idea of the curse app is as straightforward Buddhist as it can get – this is the exemplification of karma, plain and simple.  When Medama-oyaji says “When you curse someone you dig two graves”, the idea could hardly be more clear-cut.

The driver behind all this is Nanashi, again, and his ties to Mana remain mysterious.  Nanashi, communicating only in macabre singsong from Banjou Ginga, is one of the creepiest and outright scariest anime characters we’ve seen in a long time.  Mana, clearly, is his “hollow vessel” – but what does he mean when he chants:

This makes two

Two eyes in a hollow vessel

When will the day come

When five are gathered?  

Poor, sweet Mana (bless her heart, after her initial slip-up she types her own name into the curse app rather than curse someone else) – she’s one of the most appealing and believable child characters in anime this year, but she just can’t buy a break.  She’s at the heart of some dark and terrible business, and Team Kitarou has yet has no idea just how deeply evil’s talons have dug into her soul.