GeGeGe No Kitaro Episode 11: An Exciting Cliff-Hanger; Just Don’t Watch The Next Episode Preview

I’ve never quite understood why anime feel the need to shoot their own tension in the foot with their episode previews, but hey, after setting up a curse that takes out the protagonist this week, surely the audience needs to know he’ll be fine, right?

This was actually quite a well constructed episode. We get a clear villain who is doing the typical b-grade villain move of announcing their plans and using flashy moves to intimidate the general population into compliance but they are also sufficient a threat compared to what we’ve faced previously with the heroes to actually feel a sense of danger for our heroes. The biggest downfall is probably that I can’t take Tanuki seriously because while I have seen them in villainous roles in other anime, my most commonly associated image of a Tanuki comes from Watanuki in Inu x Boku SS (and he was adorable) or the family in The Eccentric Family (and they aren’t exactly terrifying given they just want a bit of fun).

Outside of that, I don’t really have any complaints about the episode. It carries the threat over to the next week, which given the scale of the threat seemed logical, and it managed to engage most of the usual cast or at least get them moving for next week. Of course, it does paint politicians in a fairly negative and defeatist light, and also frames them as egocentrics, though it would be hard to argue that this is an unfair depiction really. I’m actually looking forward to seeing how this one concludes.

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