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Kitarō Tanjō: Gegege no Nazo Anime Film Opens in Taiwan on February 7
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
The film opened in Japan last November 17 and sold 111,500 tickets and earned 160,106,620 yen (about US$1.07 million) in its first three days. The film has sold a total of 1.14 million tickets, and has earned a cumulative total of 1,635,896,850 yen (about US$11.50 million) as of December 24.
Gō Koga (Gegege no Kitarō: Nippon Bakuretsu!!, One Piece Episode of Sabo) directed the film at Toei Animation, and Hiroyuki Yoshino (Macross Frontier, World Trigger, 13 episodes in 2018 GeGeGe no Kitarō) wrote the screenplay. Tōko Yatabe (2018 GeGeGe no Kitarō's third ending sequence unit director, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time assistant director) designed the characters.
The film is part of four "big projects" commemorating the 100-year anniversary of Shigeru Mizuki's birth. Mizuki passed away in 2015 at 93 years old. Another project is a new Akuma Kun anime that premiered on Netflix on November 9 last year.
The latest GeGeGe no Kitarō anime — the sixth television anime incarnation — premiered in April 2018 and replaced Dragon Ball Super in the same timeslot. The show ended its run in March 2020 after 97 episodes.
The 2018 anime starred Miyuki Sawashiro as Kitaro and Masako Nozawa as Medama Oyaji. Both reprised their roles for the film, although Nozawa is credited as "Kitaro's Father" instead of Medama Oyaji.
Mizuki's manga, which began in 1959 under the name Hakaba Kitarō, has spawned seven television series (including one Hakaba Kitarō anime), several animated movies, and two live-action films. The stories center on an inhuman boy who straddles the line between the human and supernatural worlds.
