Hakaba Kitarou – 10

Quite an interesting set-up for the finale. Mostly because I have no idea what’s going to happen. This episode was basically another story on its own, yet it did leave various threads open (for example what happened to Kitarou his father, a newly introduced girl named Caroline and her father?). On one hand these threads will most likely be resolved in the next episode, but on the other hand that these threads alone are by far not enough to fill one episode, so the creators still must have some trump cards left.

In any case, this episode was definitely a Hakaba Kitarou-style build-up episode, simply because like the other two, it wasn’t as exciting as the other episodes. It basically tells the tale of a powerful Youkai who has settled into the house of a manga-artist so that he and his henchmen can take the first steps to conquer the world or something similar. He also has a daughter, whom Kitarou has fallen in love with. The entire thing eventually gets solved when Kitarou’s father gets eaten by this Youkai, and Kitarou’s father in his turn wrecks the brains of the guy like he did with many before. It was really too straightforward to be a regular Kitarou-episode.

The great thing about this episode was that I had no idea what it was building up to. One great point about this series is its unpredictability. You will have no idea what’s going to happen next, apart from Kitarou surviving and the “bad guys” losing. Everything in between, you’ll be completely in the dark. Because of this, I’m really glad that Noitamina has continued its tradition of staying away from the very overused high-school girls, and focused on creative series instead. Not to say that all series with high-school girls are bad (there are quite a few very good series that feature high-school girls), but I’d much rather see series experiment and try out new things than to stay with the “tried and true”-formula.