GeGeGe no Kitarō

Episode 14

Even without the fabulous character design of the makura-gaeshi, a type of zashiki warashi who flips pillows, this is an interesting episode of GeGeGe no Kitarō. In part this is because of the specific themes about paternal love it explores, but even beyond that, it's an opportunity for the show to remind readers of Kitaro's own roots, something which heretofore has not been explored in the TV series. If you've never experienced the franchise before, the fact that Kitaro's dad is a tiny body supporting a single giant eyeball might just have struck you as part of the general weirdness of the tale, but this week we're explicitly told that Daddy Eyeball is all that's left of his original body…and if you've been paying attention, you'll see him dropping from his desiccating skull in the opening theme. It's never seemed to bother Kitaro himself all that much, but now we learn that it does bother his dad – because by the time Kitaro, born and left in a graveyard, was conscious, his dad was already in his current form, and thus unable to do things like hold his son or help him in conventional fatherly ways. That means that even though he wasn't alone and did have a parental figure, he also didn't get to do traditionally childlike things, because when your dad's the size of a Borrower, there's not much he can do about your meals.

This helps to form one of the three examples of fathers that informs the villain of this week's episode. Despite the title, the makura-gaeshi actually isn't our bad guy – it's instead the evil ghost of what was once a little girl sacrificed by her village to stop a flood. She was wearing the makura-gaeshi's dream-controlling bell when she died, a gesture kindly meant that had some very bad repercussions further down the line. More important, however, is the emotion that the girl died feeling: fear fueled with anger. As she's being sacrificed in flashback, we see the camera linger on the center man in a group of villagers; presumably this is her father. He does nothing (that she can see) as she is shoved off the cliff to die in the river, thus failing in what she would have seen has his job as her father: to protect her. Later in the episode, when she reveals her true nature, she tries to drown Kitaro and Masashi, the boy who came to him for help after his father slipped into an endless dream. As he's screaming for his dad, Masashi's father wakes from his dream state and dives in to save his son; Daddy Eyeball does the same and is even able to recover his original form temporarily in order to act like the father he wishes he always could have been.

That the evil ghost lets everyone go after this can be read a couple of different ways. On the one hand, we can see it as her having awoken the sort of instincts she wishes her father had had (or at least demonstrated), and having done so, her work is finished. Alternatively, she could see herself as having failed, because now it's more clear that it was only her father who would let his child die, so she'll have to continue her search for justification for her own death. Whichever way you look at it, her evil grin at the end indicates that she's far from finished in whatever she has planned.

Once again this episode does a good job of touching on very real children's fears and offering a good explanation for them, while still not skimping on the scary. The opening scenes are definitely alarming as Masashi's dread palpably grows, and the end of the story basically says that two out of three dads love their children very much…and number three would sacrifice her to a river god. That the little girl may not have been aware of the whole story is largely overlooked, so it will be interesting to see if she does come back later on in the series. She's not in the new ending theme, which isn't feeling as catchy as the previous one, with other regulars (and a reassuring Shiro), so we'll just have to wait and see.

Rating: B+

GeGeGe no Kitarō is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.