The whiplash continues, as Gegege no Kitarou is back in full-on comedy mode with an episode that was, if anything, even sillier than the “bachelor house” romp two weeks ago.  I don’t think there’s been another anime where the length of write-ups the episodes demand varies so widely as it does here.  It keeps things interesting, that’s for sure.

This week was more more or less an idol satire, but it certainly wasn’t hard-hitting in any way, shape or form.  A new idol named “G-Kitarou” (Tamura Nao makes her series debut) has turned up, and he’s a dead-ringer for Kitarou.  So much so that the latter gets followed by adoring fans and even Nezumi-otoko and Neko-musume are fooled.  This imposter turns out to be Sazae-oni (Iwata Mitsuo, also in the 2007 version), a kind of giant turban snail who’s come up with the ingenious idea of eating Kitarou so his absorbed umami will make him delicious enough to be a popular sushi.  Also, he’s kidnapped a mermaid baby (I never did quite figure out why) after taking over the idol agency the mermaids worked from (they formed an idol group when human medicine made them less popular).

As I was watching all this play out, what struck me is that it didn’t really make sense – even by GGGnK comic relief episode standards.  Why wasn’t Konaki-jiji saying anything?  Why was Kitarou so obsessed with what “G” stood for when it was so obvious? Why did the mer-baby have a cell phone (funniest bit of the ep for me)?  Why was Isurugi Rei of all people at the concert?  Then you have the obvious peculiarity that everyone is going to all this trouble to try and get people to want to eat them.  And the mermaid patriarch was played by Sayami Haori of all people.

As it turned out there was a good reason for all that – Kitarou was dreaming the whole thing, having fallen victim to food poisoning from some bad sushi Ratman brought home.  And thus ends arguably the weirdest of all this series’ weird comedy episodes – now we wait and see if we have another shotgun change of direction next week.