Gegege no Kitarou 2018 goes off-plot for the first time since the Nurarihyon arc began, but it doesn’t miss a beat in doing so.  The series has been on a hell of a run these past several weeks, though interestingly this does mark three episodes in a row without either Nezumi-otoko or Mana.  That’s the longest stretch I can remember – certainly for Ratman, who Mizuki Shigeru famously said was the most important character in terms of plot advancement.  He at least will be back next week (for another Halloween episode); with Mana, we’ll have to wait and see.

It’s been a dark stretch of episodes for GGGnK, and this was among the darkest.  As is so often the case the darkest shadings come from the human cast, and that’s saying something when the youkai of the week is a monster who animates and controls corpses.  This ep is in fact a direct sequel to a story which first appeared (both in print on on television) in 1968 (though variations on it were done in the ’85 and ’96 series), which explains Kitarou’s “50 years ago” comment.  The two principals of the piece are the aforementioned youkai, the Mouryou (Hirota Kousei, surprisingly in his first Kitarou appearance) and a human photographer named Kuno Kyouhei (Nojima Hirofumi, likewise) – though which one is the real monster is subject to debate.

The setting – as in ’68 – is Mukuro Village, a pretty lakeside hamlet where something very bad has obviously gone down.  Kuno is being haunted by the ghost of a young woman and hires Kitarou to protect him.  He claims not to know the reason but it’s clear he does, though Kitarou takes the case anyway.  He and Medama-oyaji suspect the Mouryou’s involvement as soon as Mukuro’s name is dropped, and a little digging by Neko-musume reveals some disturbing oddities about the suddenly death-obsessed photographer (also of note – Kitarou gets asked for an autograph for the first time, by a gallery owner. For his son?  Yeah, right…).

A few things are clear right away.  Kuno-san is seriously messed up, the ghost is in fact a corpse possessed by Mouryou, and it’s connected with the village priest (who appeared as a young monk in the 1968 version).  The ghost, it turns out, is his daughter Mizuha (Terui Haruka, yet another franchise newbie).  The most likely scenario seems to be that Kuno murdered her for some reason, but in fact the truth turns out to be even more disturbing than that.

That Kuno chooses at this of all times to stage a night shoot in an abandoned hospital suggests that his fascination with death extends to actually having a death wish.  Indeed, he says that the reason he came to the village the first time was that he was “looking for a place to die”.  Artists can be self-obsessed, certainly, and it would be easy to project an implied commentary about that in the writing here.  The tragedy in all this is that even beyond the grave Mizuha loved Kuno and forgave him for what he did – indeed, that love is powerful enough to allow her to defy death and save him from the Mouryou.  Did he do the right thing in the end by turning himself in, even if it meant breaking his final promise to the girl to whom he knows everything?  Ironically, she’d have been happier if he’d never confessed to his sins – but the weight of those sins clearly became too much for Kuno to bear any longer, promise or no.