I’m not the kind of person who believes in ghosts, spirits, monsters, or even the supernatural, but I do know that Japan does have a huge fascination with them, so much that they have every kind of monster you could think of. Godzilla, Pokemon, Youkai Watch etc, you name it.
To a friend’s recommendation, I started watching GeGeGe no Kitarou (2018) , the latest iteration of the GeGeGe no Kitarou series created by Shigeru Mizuki, a famed manga artist and World War 2 veteran who also believed (He passed away a few years ago) in the existence of youkai claiming that he had seen one himself. I’m very sceptical of his claim, but I also didn’t fight in a war where I lost my arm, so who knows?
If you're an artist, and think it's unfair that you have poor drawing talent,
you're an ungrateful brat
His most prized work is notably this series about a group of youkai (Kitarou being our main guy) prevent other youkai from messing with the human world. If the show was just about that, it could have been a very dull affair, but GeGeGe no Kitarou is more than just that.
The target audience is kids, and the nostalgic, and yet, nearly every episode offer some sort of societal critique without beating you over the head with it. While viewing all 21 episodes that were released so far, life questions in my head piled up.
Such examples are :
Is plastic surgery okay if your facial features don’t conform to society’s standards?
Should people overwork themselves for that extra pay or is it better to lead a simple life without worries but with less?
Is our education system fucked? (In that case, Japan's, see picture above for reference)
How far are you willing to go to exploit people for monetary gain?
Of course, there are also those typical episodes where it’s just about friendship and childhood dreams; it is a kid’s show after all. What sets it apart from other kid’s shows in my opinion though is how nonchalant it goes about demonstrating all of these themes, without being overly preachy about its messages. But most importantly, the series is just solidly entertaining with fun characters, good animation, music and action. Its episodic nature also means we get to explore something totally brand new every put time.
If only Toei Animation poured that much effort into its other shows as this one, then maybe this classic studio wouldn’t be so derided today by a section of the anime community.
