But then, so was Hunter X Hunter.

One thing Gegege no Kitarou has never been afraid to do is stare straight into the heart of darkness (even occasionally its own).  So in that sense an episode like this one is certainly no surprise.  I wish, however, that I was versed enough in the franchise’s history to know whether what we saw this week was a first for the series.  We’ve seen the youkai it featured before, certainly, but this is a case where context is everything.

It was clear from the opening beats of this episode (from the pre-open, in fact) that we were going for a dark ride, but there was a misdirection as to what route it would take.  We immediately meet a young girl, Mikoto (Shimoji Shino, a rare GGGnK virgin), staring at disturbing messages on her phone as a train slowly – agonizingly slowly – approaches.  This is an incredibly tense moment, with the peal of the crossing gates incessantly bombarding as as the train gets closer, closer…  And finally Mikoto takes a step forward.

Fortunately Mana arrives just in the nick of time to avert disaster – turns out they’re classmates – and invites Mikoto to go shopping (seriously, shopping on the way home is banned?  Lighten up, Japan).  While I’m beginning to wonder if Mana isn’t drawing all this youkai activity to herself, that’s not the main issue for the moment.  And neither is teen suicide, which is where I initially thought we were headed but might just have been too grim a topic even for this series to tackle head-on.   Rather, this is a modern day take on “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” using a youkai that’s a mainstay of the Gegege no Kitarou lexicon.

The doctor in question here is Onozaki Shogo (Masutani Yasunori, a veteran of the 1996 and 2007 series and two GGGnK movies).  In addition to being Mikoto’s father he’s also a researcher who discovered an “immortal cell”, only to have his research discredited after no one could replicate his results.  Furious, he sets out to prove their validity by testing the cell on his own body.  The results are disastrous – not only do they cause Ozozaki to become a bloodthirsty youkai called the Odoro-Odoro (who’s getting parched with increasing frequency), they prevent him from killing himself to stop the damage he’s causing.

Again, this is roughly the Jekyll and Hyde plot here with some tweaks.  But what really makes it fascinating is Shogo-san sending a letter to the youkai mailbox, asking Kitarou to kill him.  This is obviously a third rail of sorts – which is why I wish I knew whether the series had ever gone down this road before.  It puts Kitarou-kun in a terrible position to be sure, but one can certainly understand where Onozaki is coming from here.  He’s no father to Mikoto any longer anyway – she hasn’t seen him in months as he’s too afraid of what might happen – and he’s fully aware of the deeds he’s committing while in the Odoro-Odoro state.  For him, death seems like the only plausible end to his agony.

This is a tragedy for all concerned of course.  Shogo is not a bad man, just a reckless one, and it took courage for him to send Kitarou that request.  Mikoto just wants to do whatever she can (including some seriously messed up shit, as it turns out) to save her father.  But it’s Kitarou who’s really caught in the vice here.  Medama-oyaji frames the situation with ruthless honesty – whatever he does as the Odoro-Odoro, Onozaki is still a human.  And Daddy Eyeball understands Mikoto’s pain all too well, as he wrestled with the reality that he might have to kill his own son when he turned into the Gyuki.

It’s only when the Odoro-Odoro attacks Mikoto herself that Kitarou finally relents and performs the necessary deed, but that doesn’t soften Mikoto’s opinion towards him in the slightest.  I suspect we haven’t heard the last of all this – with Mikoto as a new enemy something might happen on that front, or there may be consequences for Kitarou having killed a human no matter the extenuating circumstances.  At the very least it’s something Kitarou is going to have to live with, and it underscores the difficult position he’s chosen (or had chosen for him) to occupy, a lonely watchman in the lonely gulf between youkai and humans.