My apologies for the tardiness of this post.  As you may remember I was traveling last weekend, and given that this was really the only episode of the weekend that wasn’t a finale or epic climax of an arc, it slipped down the priority list.  As the days passed and I never quite caught up my plan became to do a double-post on Gegege no Kitarou this week.  Of course there ended up being no episode because of the New Year break, so that plan went kaput.  And here we are – I can’t remember the last time I was a week late on any series.

Naturally the one time I do end up in this situation it’s with the most topical show on the schedule.  GGGnK almost never misses a holiday, but surprisingly the 2018 hadn’t done a Christmas episode before this “Bloody Christmas”.  As Neko-musume noted, Japan can be rather nebulous when it comes to religious observation – “born Shinto, married Christian and died Buddhist” is a self-referential saying the Japanese are fond of (the self-aware ones, anyway).  But make no mistake – Christmas is celebrated here, and in a huge way – but it’s not observed.  It’s even less a religious holiday than it’s become in the West – here, it’s all about KFC, shortcake and (especially) hooking up.  Especially for the first time.

And illuminations of course – those incredibly popular light-ups that pepper every major city.  Tone-deaf as usual Kitarou misses the cues and declines Catchick’s invite to attend one, but soon enough a distress call from Mana moots all that.  Her sibling pals Shota and Hiroto end up running afoul of an evil Santa (no, not a Krampus in sight) who’s roving the town luring kids in with his Santa disguise and sucking the life force out of them.  This turns out to be the Yasha (Akimoto Yousuke, no less than the ninth seiyuu to play the role in GGGnK history), and once he sets his sights on Mana he’s not leaving her alone until he adds her to his list of victims.

This is a fairly straightforward Kitarou action episode, without a whole lot of subtext of canon significance, but there are some nice moments.  I quite liked the fact that Mana showed real cleverness by fooling the Yasha with the scarf trick, and that it was Neko-musume who ended up taking him down.  I also don’t remember Kitarou flashing that particular electric ability before, though it’s certainly possible he has and I’ve forgotten.  If this series had wanted to do a real social satire on the Japanese obsession with Christmas it definitely has the chops to have pulled it off, so I’m mildly disappointed it didn’t go that route – but at least someone besides Kitarou ended up saving the day.