GeGeGe no Kitarō

Episode 6

Like many other schoolchildren, I was utterly traumatized by the book Where the Red Fern Grows. I like to blame that for why episodes like this one hit me so hard, because as tear-jerkers go, this story isn't particularly spectacular. At the same time, it is much sadder than 95% of tales about the sunekosuri, the yokai who features in it. According to legend, the sunekosuri is simply a mysterious creature who appears either in the rain, at night, or in the rain at night and rubs up against people's legs, causing them to trip. In most cases, it's said to look like a cat, although there's the odd dog-like one reported as well. That's probably the idea behind the character design for Shiro, the sunekosuri living with an old woman named Masae as her pet – it actually looks like a creature that's part calico cat and part pug.

The plot of the episode is fairly standard for tales of yokai trying to coexist with humans, at least in the old-fashioned sense. Shiro has no idea she's a yokai feeding off human energy, and she has no intention of leaving Masae, who she loves as her mother. Masae is equally attached to Shiro, and both of them simply assume that the old woman has a cold when in reality Shiro is unconsciously draining her energy. When Kitaro tells her what's really going on, Shiro voluntarily leaves Masae, disappearing into the mountains with her collar in her mouth, crying in the rain. It's heart-wrenching despite the familiar visuals, because we're witnessing two people (for lack of a better word) who love each other being forced apart by circumstance, with the added sadness that we know Shiro can't ever live among humans again now that she knows her true nature. Masae still has her frequently absent son Sho, but Shiro basically just lost the only family she had.

This is what Kitaro has been warning Mana about since episode one. Shiro and Masae can't be together because they're a yokai and a human; they're fundamentally different beings who cannot coexist in the same space. Folktales like “The Crane Wife” and other animal bride stories have this same basic message, albeit differently told – even Scotland's “Thomas the Rhymer” learns that he can't stay in Fairyland without major consequences. Shiro could have stayed with Masae, and Masae might even agree to it, but they'd have to do so knowing that Shiro was slowly killing her.

So it's interesting that Mana is not involved in this story, because she's the one that Kitaro was trying to impart this lesson to. In fact, next week looks like it will be a third Mana-free week for the show, which makes me wonder if we've finished up with her as a character entirely. It would be too bad, because she forms a good contrast to Kitaro's strictness and provides a nice point of entry for viewers. But now that the show has established itself for those new to the franchise, perhaps she's not strictly necessary anymore. It would be truer to the manga if the series took a turn for the more episodic, but I'm not sure that that would be to the show's benefit.

Of course, leaving Mana out of this also makes sense for the stories they're telling at present. Last week was about Rat Man's business venture, which would have little-to-no impact on a young teen girl, and next week's episode looks to focus on a ghost train carrying a potentially corrupt businessman. And as for this week? What worse lesson to teach a kid than that her pet might be a soul-sucking monster who will have to leave no matter how much she loves her? (I understand the importance of teaching children about the inevitable death of a pet, but I don't think that's what this episode was going for.) So hopefully she will come back when the subject matter is more appropriate, if only because she seems to be the only person who can fluster Kitaro.

And in the meantime, let's hope that Shiro found a lovely yokai home to live in.

Rating: B+

GeGeGe no Kitarō is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.