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Kitarō Tanjō: Gegege no Nazo Anime Film Gets New Screenings in October With Retaken Cuts, R15+ Rating
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The official website for the Kitarō Tanjō: Gegege no Nazo (The Birth of Kitaro: The Mystery of GeGeGe) anime film announced on Friday that the film is getting a new screening in theaters in Japan starting on October 4. The new screening will have the title Kitarō Tanjō: Gegege no Nazo Shinsei-ban (True Birth Version). The new version will have approximately 327 retaken cuts, as well as some redubbed lines. The new version will be rated R15+.
The film's original screening had a PG12 rating.
The film opened in Japan in November 2023, and sold 111,500 tickets and earned 160,106,620 yen (about US$1.07 million) in its first three days. The film earned a cumulative total of 2,472,410,610 yen (about US$16.79 million) as of January 28.
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 died in 2015 at 93 years old. Another project is the Akuma Kun anime that premiered on Netflix in November 2023.
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.
Source: Kitarō Tanjō: Gegege no Nazo film's website via My Game News Flash
