Air Date: November 17, 2023

Genres: Mystery, Horror, Supernatural

Type: Movie

Studio: Toei Animation

Age Rating: Pg-13

Rating: 7/10

/Summary

The movie covers the backstory of Kitarou's father and how everything came to be. There's this business man named Mizuki that travels to a remote village on a business trip. The head of the clan has died and he goes there to make sure the person that becomes the new head is a certain person and to find how a product called 'M' is made. The story follows him along with Kitaro's father uncovering the villages fucked up secrets with the supernatural.

/Review

I want to preface this by saying I have never watched or read any material from the series. I know the basics of the original manga's plot but that's it. I'm sure this movie would've had a greater impact if I did. I can say that this movie stands on it's own very well.

There's a clear theme that the story wanted to push, familial bonds and sacrifice. Everything in the story is tied to that. Sayo wanting to run away from her families expectations, Gegero searching for his wife and eventually giving himself to save the world for his son, Mizuki sacrificing everything to the country and getting nothing in return. I think the story could've explored more aspects of it deeper and more within certain characters. Like Lady controlling everything, she was somewhat interesting to me. Or the villagers themselves, you don't really see much from them at all until the end, which is just their deaths. I guess they kinda lend to the theme of sacrifices, their's extremely meaningless but I'm not sure.

Most of the characters that where central to the story did get satisfactory endings. Gegero did let go of his hatred of humans gave himself for them and his son. Mizuki did end up having that fateful encounter that Gegero said he would, it was with Gegero's son. The visual of his about to kill the baby then remembering what Gegero told him was one of my favorite moments in the entire movie.

The looks of the movie are are amazing, everything has amazing detail put into it. The action scenes, the yokai designs, the red cherry blossoms are some standouts to me. The use of cg is well done and blended well with the traditional animation. The facial expressions on the characters are great too! Like the old guy that was the head of the family, the way they animated that kinda reminded me of Takahata's work a bit.

Actually the whole movie kinda did have a Ghibili feel to now that I think about it. If you are a fan of Takahata's work, Japanese folk lore, mystery horror, or Ge Ge Ge then I recommend it. I wish I could dive into the folk lore aspect of it but I'm not that familiar with it.