I confess the last part of this week’s Gegege no Kitarou – the preview – was what had me most excited.  This is the most seasonal anime on the air, but it didn’t do a Christmas episode last year – one of the few major holidays it skipped in fact.  I’m interested to see what this show’s take on a horror Christmas special is – that’s the sort of thing that’s normally right in its wheelhouse.  Let’s see some blood on Santa’s hands…

As for the episode itself, it was thankfully back on much safer ground.  I feel like its heart was in the right place, but immigration is the one cultural topic I’d rather GGGnK avoid – it just never ends well.  This time we’re solidly entrenched in youkai mythology and the human-youkai “distance” question, and Nurarihyon makes his presence felt as well.  Those are all core themes for this series, and in contrast to last week’s “cover your eyes” spectacle it was all very sure-footed.

The youkai in question this time is the Daidarabotchi (Egawa Hisako back for the third time just this incarnation).  That’s a famous name in Japanese folklore, though traditionally I’ve always seen it referred to as a youkai species rather than a single entity as it was here.  A group of sinister hooded figures called the Shichinin (there are 7 of them) Dogyo are reawakening him piece by piece, and Nezumi-otoko stumbles upon one of their rituals and is brainwashed into following them.  The Shichinin are real folkloric youkai too, from Kagawa – it’s said only those who can wiggle their ears can see them, otherwise you have to look between the legs of a cow (!).  That’s probably just as well, because supposedly no one has ever survived an encounter (always at a crossroads) with them.

The other major player here is Kadokura-san, a disgraced professor who’s a serious youkai otaku.  He knows all the Gegege Forest denizens by name and the Daidarabotchi is his special favorite, which is why he’s here.  Kadokura is played by the legendary Ueda Yuuji, who’s been in pretty much everything but has somehow managed not to appear in any Gegege no Kitarou before now.  He and Kitarou have some interesting conversations here, largely along familiar lines, but after they became trapped deep in one of the giant’s footprints it was quite nervy waiting for Kitarou to finally say something to fucking help him cheer up.  Damn, he can be a cold bastard…

Nurarihyon is behind all this – ostensibly (which I think can safely be appended to any action he takes) to use the giant youkai to destroy humans in Japan but really, I think, to lure Kitarou to him.  But Kitarou outsmarts the ancient one this time, using himself as a diversionary tactic while Kadokura sets about doing the last thing he wants to do but one thing he knows he must – destroy the Daidarabotchi.  It’s rather cruel of Toei to make poor Kadokura of all people be the one who destroys the giant – who, it must be said, was not acting maliciously of his own volition in the first place.  The usual cautionary notes tinged with a chaser of hope apply to human-youkai relations and distance, and the next battle between Kitarou and Nurarihyon is deferred to another day.