Episode 7

“Yūrei Densha” (幽霊電車)

THIS is probably my favourite episode so far of Gegege No Kitaro and I will tell you why right now.

Honestly this was really pretty creepy. It was a proper Ghost Train and the story behind it was sad and lead to some brilliant little moments.

So we had a President of a company who had been bullying his employees to the point of suicide, the malice left by them threw him into a passing train but it was so sudden that the President carried on as a ghost avoiding going onto the train that would take him to hell.

Que a long, well played out train journey by Kitaro and the ghosts of his victims to make him realise that not only is he wrong about everything but he’s dead and these are all people who died because of him. His final crying and screaming about not wanting to go to Hell and Kitaro just leaving him saying it was his own fault was bone chilling but in the right way.

All along this story is being used to try to stop a bully who had seen the President fall in front of the train from being a bully.

Loved everything about the episode, it was the right kind of creepy with as I said brilliant little moments in the train that just creeped you out. Honestly I hadn’t guessed that the guy with him was dead, in fact I thought off screen we just hadn’t seen Rat Man kidnap him and take his place, I also didn’t think that he was dead though I caught on just at the end before it was revealed when I was like “this started with someone’s suicide… Ooohhhh” which is not a moment I ever thought I’d have in this show.

Oh my the ghosts as well, when they went from sunken eyed humans staring at the ground and their skin shrunk back and they turned into skeletons, plus the one that had been with him the entire time who turned into a contortion of limbs. It was just so good.

Honestly wouldn’t want to show a small kid this episode whilst up until now I was like “yeah sure they’d be able to watch it” no not this one.

I mean I’m hard to scare and it didn’t scare me but I’ll have visions of those ghosts in my head whilst going to sleep tonight. It was so fantastic though.

Plus you saw a really angry and sadistic side to Kitaro. It didn’t take long for the episode to establish this guy was a piece of trash but just the way that Kitaro was with him you knew there was more then meets the eye because he does get angry but you’d never think he’d torture someone in quite the way that he did with this guy. By the end of the episode you knew he deserved it.

What more can I say? My absolute favourite episode so far.