Cute Creeps From Pop Culture: Cackling Kitaro of the Graveyard

Monday, November 07, 2005

Cackling Kitaro of the Graveyard

Definately one of the all-time greatest 'monster' comics series is Shigeru Mizuki's macabre Ge Ge Ge No Kitaro. My DRAWN! post serves as a decent enough introduction to the great Manga-Ka who reintroduced the ancient Yokai into Japanese Pop culture. Up until now, the only English translations available have been three volumes from the 1996 Kodansha 'Bilingual Comics' imprint which contained a mere 13 tales... GHOST TRAIN, THE LEVIATHANG, THE H2OGRE, GOBLIN CASTLE, NIGHT GAME WITH MONSTERS, THE BEACH WITCH, CATCHICK AND RATMAN, THE YASHA, BROTHER LOOKUP, LI'L DISKHEAD, THE GOBLIN AT THE PASS, THE GOD OF DROUGHT, and STRAW HATS FOR JIZO. (Here's a peek at a bit of the BEACH WITCH...

remember to read left to right) Kitaro grew into a big hit in Japan, and it's a cryin' shame that there aren't more english dubs available of the anime or manga. Drunken Tengu is doing his best to change that over at the Mizuki community boards, where you can now download the likes of THE GREAT GOBLIN TRAIL, THE DEMON BELIAL, and THE GOBLIN OF OBEBE SWAMP for free! Dig in, you ghouls.

update 11/11/05

Hiro wrote in a great (Japanese) link to some stills of the live action Kitaro show... super-campy stuff, and definately worth a peek!

"Horror and humor have been on intimate terms at least since the time of Elisabethan and Jacobean drama. Shakespeare's darkest tragedies were leavened with a gallows wit..."

-David J. Skal The Monster Show

"Even as we deny that our flesh must decay, however, we surround ourselves with fictional images of the very fate we strive to hear nothing about. They are everywhere: in books, films, and TV, in advertising, in toys and games for all ages, in children's breakfast food. No American child (even one lucky enough to escape Count Chocula) can grow up without learning what a vampire is..."

-Walter Kendrick The Thrill Of Fear

"... through expressions such as the comical Hyakkiyagyõ emaki, an inversion occurs, and that which should not be gazed upon is rendered visible-- and gazed upon with pleasure. The unseen (unseeable) is transformed into spectacle; the mysterious spirits of untamed nature are transmuted into familiar everyday objects; terror turns into humor; pandemonium becomes parade."

- Michael Dylan Foster Pandemonium and Parade

"The horror movie asks you if you want to take a good close look at the dead cat (or the shape under the sheet, to use a metaphor from the introduction to my short story collection)... but not as an adult would look at it. Never mind the philosophical implications of death or the religious possibilities inherent in the idea of survival; the horror film suggests we just have a good close look at the physical artifact of death. Let us be children masquerading as pathologists."

-Stephen King Danse Macabre

"No one will ever love a story the way a kid loves a story, whether told in a novel or as a ghost tale furtively whispered around a campfire. That's because no adult has an imagination quite like that of a child, where monsters might be real and lurking just under the bed."

-Monica S. Kuebler Rue Morgue