Time to spook up some fun at September's very end with quite the ghoulish Ura-supported double-header!
Gegege no Kitaro
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎
| Game | Genre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC 10-14 DS2 |
 |
★2 (65) |
★3 (79) |
★5 (167) |
★6 (234) |
- |
108
gegege (Gegege no Kitaro)Gegege no Kitaro TV Anime 6th Season Opening Theme Song
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎／TVアニメ 第6期 オープニング主題歌
| Game | Genre |
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|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC 0M (0Mu in GA) NS2 (MP) Plus/STH |
 |
★1 (53) |
★1 (77) |
★1 (95) |
★2 (195) |
★10 (390) |
116 gegeg2 (Gegege no Kitaro - 2nd version)Before Level5's colorful watch-based multimedia franchise, assorted Japan-only movies from the early 2000s like Kibakichi and even ZUN's ongoing bullet hell series about flying girls trying to shoot each other down, one of the earliest series going down to popularize the folklore-rooted world of yōkai creatures among the youngest in Japan was quite the long-runner, one whose roots stretch as far back as the early 60ies. You don't see every day something that lasting in pop culture... that started off as a public paper play, with storytellers telling what's going on with multiple illustrated slides!
The genealogy of the Gegege no Kitaro series starts off with a kamishibai play from 1933, written by Masami Itō (伊藤正美) and illustrated by Keiyō Tatsumi (辰巳恵洋), one that would later on be nown as Hakaba Kitarō, or 'Kitaro of the Graveyard' (墓場奇太郎). The series starred the one-eyed Hakaba Kitarō, a mischievous yokai boy and the laso one in line from the Yureizoku (幽霊族) genos who gets along with a number of other yokai creatures from several folklore stories across China, some of these being the kamishibai authors' deliberate reinterpretations of former yokai fairytales like the China-rooted Kosodate Yūrei (子育て幽霊) and the Amekai Yūrei (飴買い幽霊).
By request of the publisher Katzumaru Suzuki in 1954, mangaka Shigeru Mizuki (水木しげる) was tasked to continue the story, starting out as a manga rental serialization in the early 60ies. In order to differenciate it from the source kamishinbai play due to its slight tonal shift on the setting, the manga eventually came to assume the 'modern' Gegege no Kitaro title, based around the onomatopoeic 'ゲゲゲ' nickname assumed by the protagonist Kitaro as a funny misreading of hs own name from others. Despite the 60ies rental run being mostly shunned as a read that was 'too scary for kids' as a casual consumption, it managed to find home across several shōnen magazines up until 1970, with the manga run's popularity still lasting to this day thanks to both some early English/Japanese bilingual publications (and eventually a proper English-only worldwide localization, from Drawn & Quarterly) and multiple projects between videogames, movies and over 500 episodes' worth of animated shows across seven seasons with their own canon, plus one that was closer to Mizuki's manga in both spirit and title, 2008's Hakaba Kitarō.
For all the seasons of the Gegege no Kitaro Anime show, the same eponymous opening theme was adopted across the decades, one that was penned by the same Shigeru Mizuki! What effectively changed across the years were its performers, changing once per each of the anime's many seasons. For 2007's Season 5 and 2018's Season 7 -respectively the versions used for Taiko gaming's covers for Gen2 and Gen3-4 games-, we've got Shigeru Izumiya (泉谷しげる) for arranger Katsumi Horii (堀井勝美)'s swing-based take on the original mangaka's theme and the later-released matsuri-styled ditty from Kiyoshi Hikawa (氷川きよし), already heard of in Taiko gaming for choice licenses like Hatsukoi Train and Dragon Ball Super's Genkai Toppa×Survivor.
The 2007 GGGnK theme on Taiko arcades is a short backbeat heaven for all Oni players out there, never spacing further than a consecutive 2-hitter in its chart. From Taiko 11 onward, the song was retrofitted to have Gegege no Kitaro custom dancers with other recurring yokai characters joining the fray (Neko Musume and Sunakate Babaa on Kitaro's left, Nezumi Otoko and Konaji Jijii on his right); this also applies to the Nintendo DS port of the song but due to the 3-dancers-at-a-time limitation of the hardware employed, the extra two dancers were fit alongside the Max Gauge Fever crowd instead.
No dancers and no extra frills for the currently-standing iteration of the iconic theme, but something is still out there to at the very least make it as memorable for Donders everywhere as possible! Following up to the KFMOs easier take on 1/12 charting for the more impressionable audiences, here we have one of the biggest non-meme star rating jumps to its 10-star Ura Oni, managing to become what currently is the Oni chart with the smallest Max Combo count among the 1000+ available tunes on AC0 going forward, 58 and 111 notes less respectively from the other members of this dubious podium: Souryuu no Ran (1P Sou-Uchi; 448) and LeaF's Mopemope (501). It's also one of those charts a-la DEBSTEP! where scrolling speed adjustments are highly advised, as those hi-density clusters of varying tempo speeds are sure to take a toll on late inputs the same!
