Kitaro’s Strange Adventures by Shigeru Mizuki, translated from the Japanese by Zack Davisson
Drawn & Quarterly

In Kitaro’s Strange Adventures, we follow a community of supernatural but benign entities known as yokai through a selection of adventures from the larger GeGeGe no Kitaro narrative. These stories portray something like a commensalism between humans and yokai, with rat spirits, anthropomorphized eyeballs, flying cloth creatures, and many other elements of Japanese folklore fighting malicious demons on behalf of mankind—though mankind is not always thankful for (or even aware of) these efforts.

Kitaro’s Strange Adventures easily juxtaposes dry (and at times irreverent) humor with grim elements of horror and myth: on one page, the nebulously “good” Nezumi Otoko knocks himself out with the fumes from his own vengeful flatulence; a few pages later, Kitaro squares off with the joy-devouring Iyami in his eerie forest home, a porous mushroom stilted on tall, gnarled roots. Mizuki’s art enacts this juxtaposition, too, through the parallel of his jovial characters and dark landscapes, as seen in the seemingly-innocuous Kitaro traversing dark, thickly shaded mountain ranges to the rhythmic “clip-clop” of his iconic sandals.

Each story tells a tale of community effort rather than individual heroism. Though Kitaro is referred to as the “protector of the innocent,” he is rarely able to overcome evil on his own. Only by fighting alongside his yokai friends and family can he take down the many threats that come his way—a practice, possibly, that proximal human societies would do well to emulate.

(review previously hosted on arkint.org)