#the show released then there was a manga adaptation made but im assuming that ends at the same spot as the show

[pixiecaps]

finally got around to watching sk8 the infinity (finished it in one sitting) and i didn’t expect it to be as overtly queer as it was. its never explicitly stated but theres enough subtle moments where im like maybe just maybe the writers will go through with it in season two. either way its rlly enjoyable!! reki was my favorite need more scenes of him skating nowww. im excited for the next season also devastated this is an anime original and i cant go read the manga to see what happens next ;-;

[rabbityshen]

not sure who this post is for.

i think i just needed a way to get out some of my brainworms about genazo and some of the observations i've made about it as a movie and fandom phenomenon that's big in japan but basically not at all here. it was originally gonna be a pitch post on my Main, Professional writing blog but it came out kind of too.....silly for that. which is why the grammar and capitalization are generally proper and the tone is more formal (and has images). i wrote most of it back in august/september but have edited it so it's relatively current to right now.

it's mostly a bunch of rambling and info tidbits about genazo. cant imagine who would be interested in it, except genazo fans, but then it's also written as if to be read by ppl who don't know what genazo is. again, very confusing post. my bad. if u wanna read it go ahead, but lol (lol).

but if ur like "what's genazo?" well then this the post for you. maybe.

edit: added some more fun images for myself 😊 and some (spoilery) CWs for the movie at the very end

They say honesty is a virtue so I might as well start off by saying that my curiosity about this movie was not sparked by the anniversary productions being made for Shigeru Mizuki’s 100th birthday or through keeping tabs on the latest anime films coming out, but because I saw fanart and I thought the main character, Mizuki, looked hot.

After some sleuthing, I tracked down the source material and was surprised that it was from a movie, Kitaro Tanjo: GeGeGe no Nazo (which I'll shorten to GeNazo), part of the GeGeGe no Kitaro franchise.

If you don’t know of GeGeGe no Kitaro or Shigeru Mizuki, I’ll pause here to give a little bit of background info. Shigeru Mizuki was a mangaka born in 1922, who made manga at the same time alongside other influential artists like Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Shotaro Ishinomori (Kamen Rider). Mizuki would ultimately become famous for GeGeGe no Kitaro (which I'll shorten to Kitaro from here on out), a manga series following a yokai boy named Kitaro and his adventures. Kitaro is on par with Asto Boy in terms of being a national icon. He’s credited with popularizing yokai stories for the modern masses, his imagery becoming what people would most associate with the classic folklore. Besides the 2023 movie, there was an anime adaptation that aired 2018 - 2020, which was also a 50th anniversary production based off of the first anime adaptation that first aired in 1968.

I had some passing, bare minimum familiarity with Kitaro, as much as anyone who’s liked anime and manga for decades would have, and I had never seen a character from it who looked like Mizuki. Clearly, the movie wasn't a straightforward adaptation, even if it was taking one of the manga chapter titles as its own (“The Birth of Kitaro,” which shows the origins of the eponymous character). Not only that, but the promotional material was fairly bloody and dour, obviously aimed at a more mature audience than the usual child demographic the franchise was geared towards, as with the 2018 Kitaro anime. The character design for Kitaro on the movie poster was very similar though, so I figured they likely shared the same continuity.

(i don't have enough relevant images to adequately disperse throughout this post so im just adding random screenshots of mizuki for enrichment and personal indulgence 🙂)

Since the anime series had been officially licensed and subtitled by Crunchyroll, I assumed the same had been done for the movie but that was not the case. It had been released in Japanese theaters back in November 2023 but as of April 2024 at the time, there was (and still is) nowhere official and legal to watch it with localized English subtitles. I had little interest in Kitaro otherwise so I shrugged and decided I would let my shallow interest taper off. It did not.

Instead it plagued me for months (my friends can testify to this). I can't exactly articulate why; The heart wants what the heart wants I suppose. So I finally caved in and found…other means of watching it. I'm not sure if I expected that to sate the brainworms already festering in my head, but basically the opposite of that happened. Now having context for what I was already seeking out on Twitter, new depths of investment were opened up. And that's when I discovered this movie was quite popular.

Now granted, this is still in relative terms. This was the year that other animated hit films such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Boy and the Heron came out. Even other anime franchise films such as Case Closed: Black Iron Submarine and Spy x Family Code: White were much bigger domestic and international hits from around the same time. However, while GeNazo never reached the status of being the #1 movie in Japan for the week, it was one of the top five grossing movies for four consecutive weeks (and in the top ten for a consecutive 11 weeks), making over two billion yen (~$17 million). It was also selected to be shown at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the Countrechamp category. A new version of the film called the “True Version” (真生版), which contains redone cuts and rerecorded dialogue (but no changes to the narrative), as well as bumps up the rating from PG-12 to R15, was released a few weeks ago.

And when you zoom in closer from a fandom subculture perspective, its popularity is undeniable. The doujinshi made for the GeNazo fandom and sold through the retailer Comic Toranoana is not only numerous, but has dominated the female-targeted section rankings for months (both “All Ages” and “Adults Only”), alongside doujinshi for much more internationally popular series like Jujutsu Kaisen and Slam Dunk. (Another way to compare this, Kitaro has a total of 2500+ listed and Delicious in Dungeon has a little over 40 items listed.) In the 2023 poll for yumejoshi (similar to the concept of “self-shipping” fandom) to pick their favorite characters for the year, the two main characters made it to the top twenty (Gegero at #15 and Mizuki at #9), even though the movie was released quite late into the year. Then in Animage’s annual Anime Grand Prix, GeNazo was voted as the top favorite anime for 2023, with Mizuki and Gegero also voted as the top favorite characters. At COMIC CITY SPARK 19, a popular Tokyo doujinshi event held last week, GeNazo is the third most popular fandom represented (above other fandoms including Haikyu!! and Honkai: Star Rail). Several months ago, a film concert event was held and it must've done more than well enough if they're holding the event again for two days in November.

So obviously, I was very much not the only one infested with brainworms! But in comparison, no one over in English-speaking anime fandom circles knows anything. On Archive of Our Own, there’s a tag for “GeGeGe no Kitaro (Anime)”* that only has under 50 works in English when accounted for the movie’s release. (In comparison, there are over 2,500 works in the tag for “ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon” in English when accounted for the anime’s release. For possibly a more equivalent comparison, there are a little under 200 works in the tag for “Bang Brave Bang Braven (Anime)” a show that did receive an official English translation and was ranked second in the Anime Grand Prix.) Every time I peek into Japanese fandom, I feel like I’m stepping into a parallel universe. The gap is striking.

Anime has never been more accessible to foreigners, specifically Americans. Piracy still reigns supreme in terms of frugal personal finances, but it's less convenient and full of pitfalls, requiring some sophistication in navigating platforms and torrents. As a thirty year old with a full-time job, the low-risk convenience on its own is worth the money of subscription. It’s also easy to think in the age of streaming and simulcast—with plenty of titles getting licensed but then instantly buried under the oversaturation of Content and lackluster efforts at marketing—that we have legal access to everything, or at least everything notable. But similar to this year's cult hit Girls Band Cry (until the official English language translation available through Hoopla and, soon on November 6th, Crunchyroll as well), GeNazo fell through the license cracks. 

I shouldn't be too surprised though. While Kitaro is an iconic series with a deep cultural legacy in Japan, its popularity in the USA is much milder. In my experience, people who do know about Kitaro tend to regard it as a piece of classic manga history rather than engaging art or storytelling in its own right. As an older, episodic children’s series fundamentally focused on traditional Japanese folklore, its potential appeal to international audiences is less universal and it's less likely to be taken seriously by manga fans invested in more serialized storytelling. So it is a shame that this movie isn't licensed and officially localized. Tomohiro Harafuchi, the director of Mizuki Productions, said in an interview at the Annecy Festival that he hoped that screening GeNazo there would “inspire the international audience to discover these universes” since Kitaro is less well known outside of Japan. Especially since it stands out as fairly unique work among the other Kitaro movies, series, and other related media.

At this point, you might be wondering what GeNazo is actually about and what my pitch is for watching it besides Hot Anime Guy.

The version that's short and to the point: A nice horror mystery with some decent fujobait and anti-nationalist themes.

The version with a premise like you're reading the back of a DVD case: Mizuki, a salaryman working for a blood bank during Japan’s postwar era, is tasked with visiting a remote village. He hopes to curry favor with a powerful family whose patriarch has just died, causing a power struggle, as well as find out the secret of the miracle drug that they manufacture. Along the way, he meets a mysterious man searching for his missing wife. Violent, strange deaths begin occurring however, and Mizuki soon finds himself wrapped up in a disturbing conspiracy he never anticipated. Find out the twisted origins of one of Japan’s most beloved characters…

My actual, extremely condensed opinion: A fun 3/5 stars movie that I'm kind of ambivalent about.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” you may be wondering, “You wrote all of this about a movie you rated 3/5 on Letterboxd?” The answer is “yes” and I wish I had a better one.

That'll be for another post though, since I can't discuss it without really getting into spoilers.

Note [possible spoilers]: Content warnings for GeNazo include gore, war trauma flashbacks, non-graphic and referenced incestuous CSA, alcoholism, child death.