After one of its best and most serious episodes (rather sad that it got no comments), Gegege no Kitarou 2019 does what it often has – go completely in the opposite direction. This series does have an impressive tonal range, from horror to tragedy to Japanese folktale to satire, but this week was its unabashed farce mode. Not that it was completely without social commentary (and as often the case with this show, it’s hard to say just what it’s advocating) but this was almost entirely a lark.
At the enter of that lark is Hihi (a hilarious – as usual – Onosaka Masaya, in his sixth incarnation of the franchise). He’s an old pal of Medama-oyaji, it seems, a sort of gorilla youkai with a tennis obsession. He was taught the game by a young girl once (that origin story must have been a fascinating one), and later ended up coaching a clear takeoff on Kimiko Date, and now has decided he’s ready to take on another protege just in time for the 2020 Olympics. That ends up being Okakura Yumi (Oozora Naomi), a young girl with a bit of an attitude (which is what draws Hihi’s attention in the first place).
Believe me, the series takes none of this too seriously, rather hop-scotching from one absurdity to the next. There are a couple of dodgy moments, most principally when Hihi loses patience with Yumi after a loss and whacks her across the face (which, let’s be clear, is very very bad). My favorite part of the whole episode is the aftermath of this, when Hihi is being scolded by Kitarou and Neko-musume (standing off his left shoulder) and Mana (standing off his right shoulder) and, for no apparent reasons whatsoever, they randomly switch places several times while tut-tutting.
From there things get really silly. The press gets involved, accusing coach “Hihimura” of all kinds of “hara” offenses, the vast majority of which are totally bogus. And Yumi decides to hire Kawausou as her new coach after seeing his “swing” while fishing. And while he’s certainly a lot less demanding than Hihi, Kawasou has absolutely no interest in tennis whatsoever (the only sport he likes is baseball). Eventually Nezumi-otoko tips off the press that Hihi is a youkai (yeah, they were really on the ball, being unable to figure that out on their own), and Yumi finds new success after landing with coach Nurikabe, whose “wall-like defense” seems especially well-suited for the red clay of Paris.
If there’s anything halfway serious about all this agreeable nonsense, it’s tied in to Daddy Eyeball’s soliloquy at the end. Yeah, the world has definitely changed and gotten more complicated. But is it really a bad thing that teachers aren’t encouraged to hit their students or constantly demean and humiliate them (on second thought, that still happens all the time in both Japan and tennis)? Kids today surely aren’t perfect (who is), but if they’ve reached the point where they no longer consider it acceptable to be physically or emotionally terrorized in the name of “mentorship”, good for them I say. But what Gegege no Kitarou is saying on that front I’m not 100% sure…
