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REVIEW: GeGeGe no Kitarō Episodes 76-86 Streaming




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dm
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 1346
PostPosted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 1:18 pm Reply with quote
Another problem Chin-San has is his name is apparently slang that no one thinks is appropriate for a child like Mana to hear. The show's "censorship" of that fact is itself an increasingly escalating joke. One can only wonder what a parent in another room is thinking as they hear those bits of dialog.

I thought the Chin-san episode was an excellent one for young people to see --- especially illegal immigration from the immigrant's point of view, and how it makes clear that employers are able to exploit workers because the workers fear going to the authorities.

The Instagram-tree episode is especially poignant in the context of the news of neighbors opposing a memorial park at the site of the Kyoto Animation studio that was burned because of the disruption it would bring.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 2:39 pm Reply with quote
What an excellent review, Rebecca. Thank you!

I am constantly amazed at the content of GeGeGe no Kitarou (2018). It's a remarkably disturbing and complex show to air on Sunday mornings at 9 am. As the series has progressed, more and more of the episodes have unresolved or ambiguous endings, surprising and welcome in a "kids' show."

The role of immigrants has been a persistent issue in this show back to the early episodes. Yokai make an excellent representation for "the other," and the conflict over whether humans and yokai can co-exist illustrates the conflicts over immigration in traditionally closed Japan. Kitarou has traditionally advocated segregation, but he seems to think that's not possible any longer, especially as Nurahiyon has targeted the human race. His growing inner conflicts over his role and the direction his society is taking reinforce the general sense of unease that permeates the world of GeGeGe no Kitarou (2018).

I thought the episode about the boy and his spoiler[deceased] mother was perhaps the single most-tragic episode of anime I watched all year. The boy's fate being so uncertain at the end just amplified those feelings.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 2:53 pm Reply with quote
Rebecca Silverman wrote:
That story, about a tree that becomes Instagram Famous, leading to it being cut down and a town burning in an attempt to get revenge on the humans, doesn't appear to have any clear message or purpose. Not every story in an anthology like GeGeGe no Kitarō needs to have one, of course – the Evil Santa one certainly doesn't, unless you count it as “stranger danger” – but the unrelenting darkness and senselessness of the plot feels out of place.

I think the message of that episode was similar to the old proverb that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. He had good intentions when making the tree famous by posting a picture of it online because he thought it was beautiful but the act of making it famous caused it to get cut down. In Japan where privacy is considered to be far more important I think that was the intention for why he was responsible though for a story about a tree yokai that was a surprisingly grimdark episode.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2658
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 5:43 pm Reply with quote
It intrigues me how Kitaro will defeat Nurarihyon, since brute force will not do the trick. Unlike your average gang boss, he was rather flippant about losing his giant yokai, so either that was what he wanted all along or he has some many plans going on in parallel that Kitaro thwarting one or two makes no real difference at the end of the day.
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ErikaD.D



Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 658
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:31 pm Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:
I thought the episode about the boy and his spoiler[deceased] mother was perhaps the single most-tragic episode of anime I watched all year. The boy's fate being so uncertain at the end just amplified those feelings.

In mangas and anime, spoiler[ whenever mother dies, father alive but some dads abandoned his own child(ren).] How cliché.
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