• Title: Hakaba Kitarou (Graveyard Kitarou)
• Studio: Toei
• Genre: Horror

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥♥

Thoughts:
Hakaba Kitarou isn’t just the umpteenth adaptation of Shigeru Mizuki’s manga of the same name, it’s also the most recent attempt to actually go back to the original source material, both in style and story. The anime opens with the story of Kitarou’s birth, a tale which involves his parents– the last two remaining members of the Yuurei (Ghost) Tribe –and an insurance agent of some kind who stumbles upon the couple researching a strange case at a hospital. Long story short, the human adopts baby Kitarou, a youkai (demon) child, and then he and his mother are both confused (and, in his mom’s case, horrified) when the kid doesn’t turn out perfectly normal. *cough*

The first episode is chock-full of exposition and, as such, suffers from slightly-too-speedy pacing (as is common enough in first eps). But the visuals more than make up for it. This is what TOKYOPOP’s “imanga” would look like if they really went the whole nine yards– not that anime is TOKYOPOP’s goal, really, but if you took the basic concept of adapting manga into something that you watch in a video format, and then gave it a huge budget, plenty of time, and a team of pros, you’d get Hakaba Kitarou’s style. You can practically tell what Mizuki’s panels were in the original manga, and the art is very faithful. It can be a little disconcerting to see humans depicted in such a relatively realistic fashion and youkai in a more cartoon style, but you’ll get over it, because the show is honestly just really neat to watch.

As for the story: the characters are interesting, and Kitarou isn’t what I expected either. I’ve never read the manga, but from what I’ve seen and read I always expected him to be much more of a peacenik do-gooder type. Thus far, he’s actually quite the trouble-maker, causing a lot of trouble to his foster-father (you actually do feel pretty bad for said foster-father, even if he’s a bit of an idiot– he meant well. His mother can go choke and die though).

I definitely recommend watching at least the first episode. It’s a faithful adaptation of a true classic and a really innovative art and animation style combo. You may decide that the story and characters aren’t your cup of tea, but the visuals will definitely prevent you from feeling like it was a waste of time.

TokyoGraph reports that 16-year-old actress Kie (properly romanized “Kii”), who also played the lead in the j-dramas LIFE and roles in 14-Year-Old Mother and Junjo Kirari, and who was also the 2005 Miss Magazine Grand Prix winner, has been selected to play the heroine of the previously-announced sequel to the live-action film GeGeGe no Kitarou, who will also be the only human girl of the main cast. Her character is a shy band geek who helps Kitarou “solve a series of mysterious disappearances.” Oh, and Shochiku also mentions that there will be some human/youkai forbidden love. Bow-chicka-bow-wow! The film’s due out in summer ‘08.

By the way, I’m still waiting or someone to pick up the first of these movies. (FUNimation, you already have several of Shochiku’s films thanks to your foreign exchange program, including Vexille, Genghis Khan, and Love and Honor– and Kitarou made $25 million in Japan. What are you waiting for?!)

Okay, so. A while back, Toei established an in-house licensing division for US audiences. Recently they launched an all-you-can-watch VOD service in Japan. And today, ANN posted a poll that Toei apparently asked them to host, to see what Toei anime titles Americans would want to get on demand (including download-on-demand).

Gee, I wonder if Toei is considering expanding their new service to the U.S.? Shame there’re only like two titles on that survey I’d be interested in seeing (Gegege no Kitaro and Slam Dunk).