Gegege no Kitarou truly is the Ingemar Stenmark* of anime.

Seriously – how does any series whipsaw back and forth as violently as Gegege no Kitarou has this past month?  After a brilliant satirical episode followed by one of the series’ most challenging and dark, we got probably it’s silliest to date last week – and this week’s episode had nary a joke.  Tonally speaking GGGnK is like that old saying about the weather in Chicago.

Unlike the “Youkai Law” episode, this one wasn’t especially bold or topical – just a straightforward but effective traditional ghost story.  In fact it could hardly have been less topical – it was already adapted in the 1971 version and originally used in a manga Mizuki wrote in 1968.  Rather fittingly the episode transports is back to that time (both of those times), and quite a long way geographically – to Cambodia in fact.  Angkor Wat to be precise, one of the most precious temples (and the largest religious monument) anywhere in the world.

You could hardly ask for a more traditional Gegege no Kitarou mystery, but that’s part of this episode’s charm.  Kitarou is invited to a play by old friend Hongo Shusaku (Noda Keiichi returning to the 2018 cast).  Mana notes how odd it seems for Kitarou to do such a thing, and he relates the story of how he and Hongo-san met in 1968.  An archaeologist named Morimoto (Kakegawa Hirohiko, veteran of 4 GGGnK versions) has asked Kitarou to help him find his wife, who’s been missing for four years.  Morimoto says she disappeared when a group of Japanese soldiers appeared on a misty night, and a young Hongo-san, honeymooning with his wife Sara (Hisakawa Aya is back), laughs at the tale – until Sara disappears too, on another misty night in Angkor Wat.

In point of fact there was a Japanese village in Cambodia founded at the same time the one in this episode was (I admit I didn’t know that before I looked it up tonight), though whether Oin (Takeuchi Ryouta – surprisingly in his first-ever GGGnK appearance) is based  on a real figure I have no idea.  As I said the tale could hardly be more traditional – love, betrayal, life and death, curses, a play.  Fittingly for a story set in Angkor Wat reincarnation is a major theme, and we also get our first look at Mana as a spirit medium (and in a sporting sweater, too) for quite some time.

I have nothing whatsoever against the comedic episodes of Gegege no Kitarou, though to be sure I do like them to be better than last week’s.  But with the clock winding down to the series’ final two months I admit I’d rather see eps like this one when it veers away from the recurring plot – this is the sort of material it’s really good at.  For this week at least, the series was in a hopeful mood – it’s going to be interesting to see what the final arc is like in that respect, especially given the current state of affairs in the world and how attuned to that Gegege no Kitarou 2018 has shown itself to be.

*greatest slalom skier of all-time.