I guess it’s not that big a surprise that Gegege no Kitarou is a really good series, given how influential and revered Mizuki Shigeru’s manga is (though I do fancy this may be the best adaptation it’s had yet). But I confess to being a bit taken aback time and time again by how terrific the production itself is. I’ve been a Toei defender because I know what they’re capable of, and I think they take way too much criticism. But I’m not blind to the fact that they can quite obviously do stuff on the cheap sometimes, and visibly not seem to care too much how the product looks. With an old standard like Gegege no Kitarou especially, one wouldn’t have been out of line in keeping their expectations in check.
Boy, though – this series defies that expectation at every turn. Starting from the character designs (most dramatically the refresh of Neko Musume but not remotely ending there), this is a first-rate production. It’s not just a matter of budget, but inspiration. I absolutely adore the direction and cinematography – seemingly every week we get shot compositions that rank among the best of the year. The broken mirror sequence stands out for me this time, but there are too many examples to list (the train to Hell episode was virtually wire-to-wire). Who would thought a Gegege no Kitarou update from Toei would be in the running for best visuals of 2018?
That wouldn’t be enough if the writing wasn’t there too, but it is. Like the show’s look, the stories have been updated just enough to give them relevance without losing their connection to the source material. Zunbera (Hisakawa Aya) makers her 2018 debut this week. She’s the youkai who used to be a human but hated her face so much she drank mercury and became a demon, and now swaps the faces of unhappy women (and I guess a few men too, based on her inventory) out for those of the dead. And she finds a willing client in high schooler Fusano Kirara (Yukana), who’s not exactly beautiful (her classmates call her “Boo-sano”), but constantly dreams of being “cute”.
As for Nezumi-otoko, he’s right in his comfort zone here – making a little ramen money by “helping” humans out, but maintaining a certain (im)plausible deniability. When Zunbera says she’s not interested in money, she means it – but it’s not like she’s eating souls or anything, either. She simply loves to wallow in the self-loathing of young women desperate for superficial beauty. That certainly applies to Kirara, and to a fellow-fan of ikemen actor (I assume) Yuusuke-kun (Akanabe Kenji), who both swap out their faces in a “Spiritplasty”. But as always, there’s more to the deal than they think.
It’s interesting that Zunbera agrees to give the girls’ faces back when Kitarou confronts her, but she’s gotten what she wanted from the transaction already – entertainment. And she knows there will always be customers. I more or less anticipated the twist ending here, because things with Kirara seemed way too neat and tidy – she may have been a victim of deception, but she was also pretty broken and went into this deal with her eyes open. In the end she chose the superficial over the real, because for her, whatever the complications, the cost of going back to her old life was a price she wasn’t willing to pay. And in the end, there’s not a thing Kitarou can do about that, because he can’t stop humans from being humans. Nor, I suspect, would he even want to try.
Aera
July 8, 2018 at 8:10 amKirara’s voice was familiar, but I didn’t expect her to be voiced by Yukana of all people. Also, I don’t think Yuusuke is also a victim of spiritplasty (I hope I typed that right), it’s the leader of his fan club who met Nezumi Otoko and fell for his tricks. As seen in the end of the episode when Nezumi Otoko ended up being enslaved by Yuusuke’s fan club.
I also sort of expected that Kirara, even after knowing there’s someone who accepts her regardless of appearance, chooses to keep using dead person’s face. After all, just by consolation of one person does not erase the awful things she had to go through because of her appearance. Kind of interesting that we get to see another human character involved themselves with youkai issues but not as the victim. Zunbera’s actions also make sense too. She’s just doing her job after all, and indeed people will definitely come and seek for her.
Another entertaining episode! Still wonder who will be the one that replace Miyuki Sawashiro temporarily until she returns. And thanks for writing the review as always!
Guardian Enzo
July 9, 2018 at 6:43 amMaybe Romi Paku?
Aera
July 8, 2018 at 8:13 amOh, sorry. I kind of missed the part that you indeed write the fellow fan of Yuusuke who were into spiritplasty, not Yuusuke.
Alaxis
July 9, 2018 at 6:36 amGlad to see you’re continuing to cover this series, and in full post form too. It’ll be good to have this to look forward to every week in what looks to be a much leaner season 🙂
Guardian Enzo
July 9, 2018 at 6:42 amYep, that leanness is one reason it’s getting full posts at least for now. I wouldn’t rule anything in or out but I’m certainly not going to drop it.
J_the_Man
July 9, 2018 at 1:06 pmThis show gets pretty real for what’s supposed to be a show aimed at a younger audience. You could feel it with the pretty impossible choice Kirara was left with at the end the show. Still, I’m finding the end pretty hard to digest. Seeing Yusuke-kun run through the motions of being surrounded by his fans again after giving what seemed to be a heart-felt declaration of love to Kirara felt off-putting, and then seeing Kirara stick her toungue out to Yusuke after he flagged her down and realized she went back for another mask. It seemed… Off? It’s probably all just a bad ending and I’m just fighting the truth of it, I guess. Yusuke was fake and Kirara was insecure and wanted her dream face and couldn’t go back. I thought her rant before the emotional “payoff” was the “Fake rant that makes me look bad to put distance between people that care about me” type, but I guess it was all real.
Guardian Enzo
July 9, 2018 at 2:26 pmI don’t really get “Yuusuke was fake” out of all that.
Rita
July 11, 2018 at 2:59 pmI sorta get it, in that despite Yuusuke taking an interest in her, it was really only after she got her cute face. I kind of get the impression that, sure he ended up liking her after getting to know her but he only got to know her because of her new face.
Rita
July 11, 2018 at 3:13 pmTo be specific, even if he didn’t care about her face, he never seemed to make an attempt to get close to her (like in the beginning when she gets knocked over) beforehand. Or more pessimistically, the rest of the world wouldn’t have let her close to him when she was ugly and he didn’t really have the motivation to go against that.