Author: Shigeru Mizuki
Drawn & Quarterly
432 pages
Meet Kitaro. He’s just like any other boy, except for a few small differences: he only has one eye, his hair is an antenna that senses paranormal activity, his geta sandals are jet-powered, and he can blend into his surroundings like a chameleon. Oh, and he’s a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old yokai (spirit monster). With all the offbeat humor of an Addams Family story, Kitaro is a lighthearted romp in which the bad guys always get what’s coming to them. (Source: D&Q)
Reviewing a yokai book, especially a Shigeru Mizuki book, is a daunting task. Mizuki is considered Japan's resident expert on yokai tales in manga; according to the book's foreward, there's an entire segment of the Japanese population who owes their knowledge of the yokai world to GeGeGe no Kitaro. It makes sense: every chapter is a field study on a different variety of ayakashi as they wreck mischief on the human world.
And at the center of the story is the mysterious boy Kitaro, the human-looking yokai with one eye whose powers with the supernatural are a thing of legend. If something goes wrong, the world calls upon Kitaro for guidance, and he works his magic to the 'ge ge ge' chorus of the beasts all around him. He dutifully serves the realm of humans but his life is fully entrenched in the yokai world, and his ability to slide between these two spheres is a major reason why both sides look up to him.
