Category: Finished Series: Horror

Hakaba Kitarou Review – 88/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Hakaba Kitarou


The original Hakaba Kitarou (later renamed to Gegege no Kitarou) was one of the original pioneers in anime and manga, even before the legacy of Osamu Tezuka. Ever since it was serialized in 1959, it’s spawned five lengthy television-series, eight movies and one live-action movie. The problem is that all of these reduced the Kitarou-franchise to a kiddie-series. Enter Hakaba Kitarou, in its Noitamina time-slot as it attempts to remove all of the “kiddie”-roots from the franchise. And believe it or not, but it succeeds pretty well.

The result is a very rare combination between horror and comedy. But this series mostly stands out because it’s so refreshingly different from usual anime. The art really tries to go its own way, with character-designs in an original style, and a continuous filter, reminiscent of Mononoke. There are lots of interesting camera-angles and monster-designs, which make sure that this series turns into a visual feast that doesn’t rely on moe whatsoever.

This is also one series that completely shatters the boundaries between good and evil. It may seem like that Kitarou is the main character, and therefore the good guy, and yet he likes to play cat-and-mouse games with his victims, and he doesn’t even seem to care whether these victims end up dead or not. Nezumi Otoko, on the other hand, may be the series’ villain (he acts mostly out of greed and for money), and yet he stands so far away from the stereotypical anime villain. This guy is often rational and he doesn’t try to look as cool or evil as possible. He’s also often friendly, although he’s ready to betray any friend in favour of his well-being.

The same goes for all other side-characters that appear in one the different stories that have been put into the eleven episodes that this series consists of. Everyone is somewhere in the grey spectrum between good and evil. And all of the major side-characters have multiple sides and hardly have any chance to get boring. I’d also like to mention the ease at which this series seems to be able to kill off its characters. Seriously, some deaths really come from nowhere.

And that brings me to another good point of this series. Not every episode may have one, but the plot-twists will leave you guessing, and some will come as a huge shock, exactly what a horror-series should be. You can see that the writers have a lot of fun while writing this series, and building it up. Hakaba Kitarou has a delightful air of unpredictability that you hardly ever see in anime.

Overall, if you’re looking for something different, then Hakaba Kitarou is the way to go. Don’t get fooled into thinking that this is a series for kids. Simplistic character-designs don’t automatically make a series a kiddie-one. At eleven episodes, there’s hardly any chance to get bored. This is one reason why I like winter-seasons. Because not many popular series air, it’s the perfect chance for the less popular and under-looked anime that try to be different to get a chance. 2007 had Master of Epic, and 2008 continues this tradition with Hakaba Kitarou.

Hakaba Kitarou – 11

by psgels, posted in Hakaba Kitarou


Like expected, this episode feels nothing like a standard final episode. There’s no aftermath, or anything that hints at a closure of the series (heck, Caroline and her father are completely gone now), and instead this episode brings us back to the essence of this series: Kitarou and Nezumi Otoko trying to make money, other people dying because of it, and Kitarou’s father cleaning up the mess a bit.

It wasn’t the best episode of the series, but most definitely not the worst. Nezumi Otoko makes some kind of youth-serum out of his whiskers, while Kitarou sells the manga-artist of last week and others some kind of special holidays to the underworld (of course, with one-way tickets). I’m still surprised at the ease at which this series is able to kill off its characters, with as little melodrama as possible. In the first case, an old mafia-boss gets rescued by the medicine, and grows younger again (with whiskers added). He then gets greedy and starts searching after Nezumi Otoko. When he tries to capture him (in a locked safe, of all things), Nezumi Otoko releases his usual gasses and takes back his whiskers, killing off the guy.

In the case of the manga-artist, he gets brought to the underworld, where he sees the remaining scenes that were in the OP. As he tries to get back, he realizes that another guy has taken his place, and he’s turned into a ghost. What I really liked about this episode is that things aren’t as they seemed. The guy or ghost who took over the mangaka’s place suddenly finds out what kind of a busy life his counterpart was leading, and he wasn’t used to the pressure at all. His wife then drags him and orders him to work until his death. Nice wife, isn’t it? Meanwhile, in the underworld, the real mangaka is quietly enjoying the local wonders, along with all a bunch of other people who were tricked by Kitarou. In the meantime, Kitarou as usua notes how hard it is to work and gain money in the human world.

So it’s finally over. This series really has served its purpose in making me appreciate Noitamina even more. That timeslot is really perfect for showcasing all kinds of short series with original ideas and premises. And the fact that it’s been the most popular late-night timeslot for years only makes this better. There’s going to be a good chance that I’ll be blogging the upcoming Library wars, that’ll be taking over this timeslot, but I’ll leave that final decision to when the series actually airs.

Ghost Hound – 19

by psgels, posted in Ghost Hound


What an awesome episode!! Seriously, now that the finale is nearing, this series is more and more coming together. If you thought that the first half of this series was already impressive, you haven’t seen anything yet. This episode was all about the characters and their development, and especially about Makoto.

So basically, this series has taken four children with a trauma or similar mental disorder, but all of them from very different causes and cases. Masayuki has managed to recover. Tarou has been struggling with his feelings, but basically turned out fine. Miyako, however, ends up possessed and Makoto nearly killed off the rest of his entire family indirectly. A big key is the people around them. I think the reason why Masayuki managed to recover was because of the trust he placed in both Makoto and Tarou, and how he ended up saving Michio from his bullies. That’s why he was the only one who didn’t turn into a Ghost Hound. Tarou got better because he could talk to someone who resembled his sister.

Unfortunately, he took this too far, and called Miyako the reincarnation of his sister. This caused the spirits that have been possessing Miyako to grab their chance and posses her for real. Makoto, in the meantime, only had Tarou and Masayuki, and Tarou basically abandoned him when he ran away from his mother. After that, he didn’t have anybody to trust, which is why his mental state turned out so horrible. It’s an interesting message, which basically a mental illness can be cured through careful nurture, but it can very easily escalate into something much worse.

So in this episode, this all comes together. In the end, even though her partner seems to have died, Makoto’s mother doesn’t die. Instead, she loses part of her memory, and returns to her 17-year old version. To make things even better, she now seems to mistake Makoto for his father when he was seventeen!!! Imagine the shock this must be to Makoto, to see the woman he loathed so much talk to him, energetically like nothing ever happened!!

And that’s just the first part of this episode. In the second half, Tarou finds out that Miyako has a very strange smirk on her face after visiting her father, Makoto finds out that Mei used to have a crush on Makoto’s mother’s partner (explaining why she ended up so worried during the last episode), Tarou ends up trailing Miyako, Masayuki finds Makoto and then leaves, Makoto returns to the hospital, only to find Makoto and finally gets put at ease a bit. When he wakes up in his mother’s hospital-room the next day, he finds out that she regained her memory. I ask you, can a Ghost Hound-episode get any more awesome? Well, it’s up to the final three episodes!

Hakaba Kitarou – 10

by psgels, posted in Hakaba Kitarou


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.

Ghost Hound – 18

by psgels, posted in Ghost Hound


Oh my god… the building-up is finally starting to pay off now, and yet this series still continues to build up with just four episodes left. I also must say that this is going to be one very interesting climax. I can’t imagine ANY cliché or stereotype that would fit as an ending for this series. There’s no clichéd antagonist, there’s no real goal where this series centres around. Instead, there are just characters, all with their own issues. The final episodes will probably focus the most around Tarou and Miyako, but how it’ll end… I still have no idea.

Still, I do wonder: who was it that knocked Miyako’s father off the stairs? The only possible candidate would be his former friend, the guy running for mayor. Something happened in the past between him and Makoto’s father, so perhaps this involved Miyako’s father as well.

And dear god… I never imagined that Makoto’s mother would be so depressed to actually set her own house on fire! Did she survive the thing, or was it a suicide? According to Makoto’s reaction, I’m edging to think that that indeed is the case, even though this goes against one of the big laws of anime (a character is only dead if he or she is confirmed dead).

It’s also interesting how Masayuki and Tarou finally realize that something’s wrong with Makoto, but what was that thing that Masayuki mentioned, that it might be related to Tarou’s kidnappers? In any case, it’s also interesting how the first car they ran into was the one of the female scientist. I think that she knows fully well that it was Masayuki who spied on her last episode, so now the two or them too get a chance to settle their differences.

Also, I wonder… why haven’t we seen Masayuki’s sister for the past few episodes?

Hakaba Kitarou – 09

by psgels, posted in Hakaba Kitarou


This episode was about the smiling guy that we saw in the OP. He turned out to be a vampire who can hypnotize his victims by playing the guitar. He has put a local politician on his possible-victims-list, and he recruits Nezumi Otoko for this, while the politician hires Kitarou to get rid of said vampire. Yet again it’s an episode where Kitarou hardly does anything, as quite quickly the Vampire injects him with a strange drug that liquefies the guy’s flesh and separates it from his bones.

It was another very solid episode for this show, with lots of twists, as Kitarou’s father tried to get his son back together. It’s especially interesting when we say him hiding in Kitarou’s skull, being an eye on legs and all. For the first time, Nezumi Otoko also plays the role of good guy, as he too gets scared of the things that the vampire can do. The best thing about this episode, though, was the same refreshing scriptwriting of this series. It’s hard to explain what’s different, but I think it’s how the creators manage to keep a semi-serious tone throughout the entire episode.

It’s a shame that there are only two episodes left, and I’m quite curious as to how the creators were planning to end this series. Kitarou is still in liquid-form at the end of this episode, so his father will probably spend the next episode to try and get him back on his bones. According to the OP, we still miss the scenes with the three-eyed priest, the scene with the armed generals that shows up very briefly in the OP, the scene with the strange guy in the middle of a field of rocks, and the strange flashlight creature. It’s not really the things you’d expect for a big climax, but then again this series has never really listened to the general guidelines of anime. 😛

Hakaba Kitarou – 08

by psgels, posted in Hakaba Kitarou


Now this is what I call a good horror-story! Twisted, full of plot twists, and most of all: creative. This definitely was one of the best episodes of this series along with episode one. You just have to think of Kitarou’s hand getting cut off and taking on a mind of its own. 😛

Basically, two men set out to check out the rumours on a haunted building where an acquaintance of them is about to live. Obviously, any ghosts or people pretending to be ghosts have to be removed from this house, but unfortunately this “ghost” turned out to be Kitarou. What follows is a really interesting battle, where both parties try to get each other out of the house. You’ve got to love how Kitarou likes to play with his victims.

One thing I also liked about this episode is how the first half perfectly builds up the mood for the second half, by already hinting at how strange the house is that the two guys have settled in. Especially with the creature with four legs, no head and five arms who suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. Actually, Kitarou works best as a character when he doesn’t play the role of the main character, and only appears once in a while in his usual, mysterious form. But I can understand the need for episode four and six, as they’ve really served their purpose in fleshing out his character, and giving it a bit of development.

Ghost Hound – 17

by psgels, posted in Ghost Hound


Another terrific episode. I’m still surprised at how each episode starts pretty quietly, with usually a bunch of flashbacks, only for a few intense-plot-twists to happen in the second half. There’s nothing wrong with series that alternate between building-up and climax-episodes, but after Kaze no Shoujo Emily, Shion no Ou and Ghost Hound, I have found that I like series that can combine both building-up and climaxes in the same episode, making every single episode worthwhile much more than that, as it really takes skills to make everything come together. You also have every week something to look forward to, as you just know that a series will deliver in this way.

In any case, the major vent in this episode was how Tarou finally got the courage to tell Miyako how he believes that she’s the reincarnation of his sister. Miyako, who had met with her mother, whom she obviously didn’t like, having abandoned her and her father after all, was already in a rather bad mood, so Tarou’s rather blunt statement must have upset her even more. And really, Tarou looked so realistic when he tried to speak his mind to Miyako. I could really feel ho much trouble he had to get his words all together, and how speaking into complete sentences must have been the most difficult task in the world back then.

Surprisingly, there’s hardly anything about Hirata, apart from the fact that his dreams and Tarou’s dreams are starting to merge with each other… Because of this, Tarou now has nightmares where his sister talks her final worlds to the councillor, instead of him, and suddenly she turns into Miyako. I’m finally beginning to see one of the major themes of this series: the influence that your psychological state has on others. Tarou, Masayuki and Makoto are of course extreme examples, but the way they can interact with their environment within their own minds has some great symbolic values.

Oh, and I had to laugh when Ootori caught Masayuki in the act. She’s smarter than she looks, and can form an interesting villain (which I assume she’s going to be, after the previous episode and all).

Ghost Hound – 16

by psgels, posted in Ghost Hound


God, that was intense. I really love how this series has progressed so far, and this is another major episode. Makoto and Tarou finally meet Makoto’s mother, after her new husband introduces them to her. Makoto really was planning to stab her, though it seems that he didn’t realize what kind of mental efforts it would cost to pull off such a stunt, so he runs away. After that, Tarou spends the night at Makoto’s mother’s house, while Makoto himself still didn’t return.

I like how this episode turned Makoto’s mother and her new husband into real characters, and we finally get to know them a bit. Makoto’s mother seems really nice at first sight, and she seems to feel genuinely sorry for abandoning her son right after her original husband committed suicide, but later that night, Tarou sees a whole different side of her, and she seems to be suffering from huge mental problems. Something tells me that they too need to pay the councillor a visit.

Meanwhile, things get just as interesting with Michio and Masayuki. It seems that their attempts to find out the password of Masayuki’s father’s computer failed, and while Michio attempts a few more things, Masayuki falls asleep, and finds out that he too has left the monkey-stage in his out-of-body experiences. He’s also ended up at the research laboratory where his father and the female scientist work.

The next part was a tad hard to understand, but it seems like the female scientist has manipulated Makoto’s father so that he’ll do whatever she wants. He seemed like a little lap dog at times. For some reason, there also seem to be ghosts floating around certain areas of the research centre, ad they start to attack Masayuki at one point, showing him strange signs I didn’t understand. In the end, none other than Michio saves him. I still don’t quite understand what triggered Michio to have out-of-body experiences as well, though if I had to guess then hanging out with Masayuki was probably the reason.

Hakaba Kitarou – 07

by psgels, posted in Hakaba Kitarou


I must say, this series is a master of surprises and twists. It really feels refreshing from the usual anime. If you’re looking for something different then Hakaba Kitarou is definitely recommended, because there are very few series that combine mystery and horror with comedy. 😛

I originally believed that this entire episode would be devoted to getting rid of the water-spirit. Well, turns out it didn’t. The only thing that was really needed for the story of this episode is that Nezumi Otoko captured Kitarou’s father and put him in a jar. The water-spirit story gets wrapped up nicely after only five minutes, it first swallows up Kiterou’s clone, after which a newly introduced character drenches it in gasoline and ignites it.

I think this also means that two recurring characters have now been killed off for good, because we don’t see any signs of bad Kitarou and Mizuki returning. In fact, Kitarou doesn’t even seem to remember that the one who took care of him for years is gone now. All he seems to care about is his father, apparently.

In any case, this newly introduced character turns out to live two doors next to Nezumi Otoko. In between, there lives a “beautiful”(*ahem*) woman who both of them fall in love with. Ever since last episode Nezumi Otoko has been blackmailing Kitarou with his father. Because of this, he ends up delivering a love-letter for both Nezumi Otoko and this character (who turns out to be a werewolf, by the way). Then it turns out that the woman is going to be moving out, and Kitarou throws away the love-letters while Nezumi Otoko and the werewolf know nothing about this.

When they find out, they decide to take revenge for this by putting Kitarou in a coffin and dumping this coffin into sea. At least, that was their plan. Instead, Kitarou’s father escapes and enters Nezumi Otoko’s body to confuse him, while Kitarou escapes. The empty coffin then gets dumped into the sea, and then it’s time for Kitarou to play a prank on them. He uses his connection from the underworld to deliver the coffin back to Nezumi Otoko and the werewolf. When they decide to take a trip to the underworld, to check out what went wrong, they instead are taken into a hallucination into an old train that went out of service decades ago.

This part actually drew an interesting parallel to Mononoke, or the Bake Neko arc, to be exact. There we see the mayor jump out of the train and get devoured by the Mononoke. So when the werewolf jumped out of the train as well, I thought he was gone as well, especially when a loud bump followed. Instead, he just landed on a very unfortunate rock outside and got knocked unconscious.

I really must say that the dialogue for Hakaba Kitarou feels refreshing. The bad guys all have a personality and don’t feel stereotyped, and in the meantime the good guys can be considered the bad guys as well, depending on how you look at it. This is one of the reason why I like experimental anime so much. It just feels delightfully different from usual. One of the others is Mahou Shoujotai, of course. 😛