It’s not all season premieres and first impressions posts this week.  A couple of series are carrying over, and one of them  is of course Gegege no Kitarou 2019, which has already run for four seasons and and I suspect will be with us for another full year.  It’s a real success story both on and off-screen, a mantlepiece work for Toei (no studio has a larger gap between perception by Western fans and reality) to be proud of.  But given that the one real stumble of the first year was when it launched an extended story arc, the start of what seems to be a new one is met with at least a bit of trepidation.

To deal with the elephant in the room up front, yes – she’s still like that.  Neko-musume-chan is cute and all, but Catchicklet gets very annoying for the characters on-screen very quickly.  And guess what, they’re not alone – a little goes a long way for me, too.  I much prefer tsundere Musume-san to screechy loli Musume-chan, and the implication of the episode is that she’ll revert back to her old self as soon as she recovers her youkai power.  But there’s stuff going here Medama-oyaji and Kitarou aren’t revealing – Sunakake Baba and Konaki Jiji certainly suspect something is up.

Whatever those two did to get Neko-musume back (I assume we’re going to get a proper explanation at some point) seems to have directly resulted in the events of this episode, which sees the Nue (Tsuji Shinpachi, of the 2007 series) out of the underworld and wreaking havoc in the human realm.  Among its victims is the grandfather (Tanaka Ryouichi – ’71, ’85, ’96, ’07 and movie, which has to be close to a record) of a boy named Kanji (Soyama Momoko, who’s had 16 appearances in this version already) – he’s quite the character – who lives in a dying ex-mining town.  His grandfather – like all those who hear the terrible cry of the Nue – has fallen ill, and Kanji sends a letter asking Kitarou for help.

Kanji asks Kitarou why he helps humans when it’s so dangerous he sends Kanji (and Chicklet) away for safety’s sake, and Kitarou only says “To repay a debt”.  But he also admits there are other reasons why he’s concerned by the Nue’s appearance (more incriminating circumstantial evidence he and Daddy did something they shouldn’t have).  As it turns out the Nue is actually a lesser youkai called Mujina (Nemoto Kouta, ’07) the Nue has threatened into pretending to be him to create a distraction while he does nasty things in Tokyo.

The big shoe to drop, though, is the arrival of Isurugi Rei (Kamiya Hiroshi, who ironically has never been in GGGnK before).  He shows up and disposes of the Mujina, despite the fact that the latter had surrendered, and then absorbs his life force.  Rei seems human but he’s clearly got some non-human abilities, and a considerable chip on his shoulder where youkai are concerned.  He’s going to be an important recurring character at the very least, the next big bad quite possibly, so I hope Isurugi winds up being a good addition.  Frankly my first impressions aren’t all that great – this is not the sort of Kamiya performance I tend to love, and there’s a whiff of “Western Youkai” to the character.

The other thing that has me a bit on-edge is the change in dynamic caused by Neko-musume’s transformation.  As a toddler her character is, frankly, a one-trick kitten and having her be a burden to Kitarou (and Mana, and Kanji) over and over gets old pretty fast – I hope she’s restored sooner rather than later.  There’s so much more possibility in her earlier persona, which is in itself a huge redesign from earlier incarnations of the franchise (and for the better, I’d argue).  Besides, I look forward to her being embarrassed about all the things she said to Kitarou while in chibi form…

ED5: #5: “RONDO” by BUCK-TICK