Cats Reblogging Kitaro

Well, I said I’d blog things that didn’t quite belong in a portfolio and this is definitely one of those things because there’s way too much context needed here to just plop it in my gallery.

So I have a fan tumblr dedicated to the Gegege no Kitaro franchise and the works of Shigeru Mizuki called Gegege-no-Blog…

…I should probably explain what Kitaro is too, shouldn’t I? Alright, I’ll try to keep it short.

Gegege no Kitaro (also simply known as Kitaro) is a long running children anime franchise based on the manga by Shigeru Mizuki about a yokai boy with supernatural powers who fights evil to keep the peace between humans and yokai. The manga was first published in19__ and has since received a new anime adaption every decade. While the franchise is a cultural touchstone in Japan, it remains obscure in America. Even fan translations are difficult to find in english.

Recently a new series for the 2010’s was announced and the new character designs released. So I made a post on my Kitaro tumblr asking my followers what they thought of the new designs. The consensus basically boiled down to “They’re all fine but what did they do to Neko Musume?? Oh god! They aged her up to make her sexy and more moe didn’t they?! AUGH! Gross! She’s supposed to be a little kid! And why are her legs so friggin long?” Some also expressed hope that this new series will get more people into Kitaro and help introduce fans into the fandom. One such fan made this comment

"well as everyone says that Neko can go fuck herself. The rest are from OK to Meehhhh… But hopefully this series interest more people into Kitaro so we can finally be a normal fandom and not just 3 cats rebloguing each other’s posts."

I was so greatly amused by this comment that I had to draw it.

The person later explained that this is actually a Spanish idiom for when there’s almost nobody.

I also encouraged people to draw themselves as cats reblogging Kitaro to see if we could make a little meme. You can see them with the “Cats Reblogging Kitaro” tag on my blog.