GeGeGe no Kitarō Wiki
Advertisement
Kitaro00 This article is a stub. You can help the GeGeGe no Kitarō Wiki by expanding it.

The first GeGeGe no Kitarō anime was aired from January 3, 1968 to March 30, 1969. It ran for 65 episodes and is the only anime to be produced in black & white. Like all of the subsequent Kitarō anime, it was produced by Toei Animation and aired on Fuji Television.

About

Aside from toning down darker elements and some social commentary, every episode is a quite faithful adaptation of the original manga. Most episode focused on stories about Kitarō aiding humans in need of his skills or thwarting the plans of evil Yōkai who threaten to torment humanity. Kitarō's personality was also made more friendly and likable. The anime was so popular that Kitarō became a popular children's hero and it created the Yōkai boom of the 1970s.

The music was written and composed by Taku Izumi, who would go on to major songwriter in the world of Japanese music. He also wrote the music to the opening and ending theme songs, which were often used as background music in the show (as well as the following 1971 anime). Furthermore, voice actors Kazuo Kumakura and Midori Katō were brought in to perform the theme songs thanks to Izumi, Kumakura due to their personal friendship and Katō because she performed many of the commercial jingles he wrote at the time. The theme song record sold over 300,000 copies.[1]

The role of Kitarō was performed by Masako Nozawa. It was her first starring role, and she would go on to become one of the biggest names in Japanese voice acting. Each episode featured a different preview narrator and displayed the episode titles in a different font style, a trait shared only with the 1971 anime.

This anime also started the idea of Kitarō's allies coming to GeGeGe Forest to meet with him as well as the idea of the Kitarō Family.

Because the series was black and white it has rarely been rebroadcasted despite it's popularity, although it did get a rebroadcast in the 1980s.

Theme Songs

Opening
  1. GeGeGe no Kitarō - Kazuo Kumakura
Endings
  1. Karan Koron no Uta - Midori Katō
  2. Kitarō Nai Nai Ondo - Kazuo Kumakura (Ep. 27, 28, 31, 32)
  3. Kitarō Olympic - Kazuo Kumakura (Ep. 41~42)

Cast

Main Cast
Masako Nozawa Isamu Tanonaka Chikao Ohtsuka
Masako Nozawa
as
Kitarō
Isamu Tanonaka
as
Medama-Oyaji
Chikao Ōtsuka
as
Nezumi-Otoko
Recurring Cast
NoPicAvailable Ichirou Nagai
Yōko Ogushi
as
Sunakake-Babaa
Ichirō Nagai
as
Konaki-Jijii

Main Cast Notes

Guest Cast

Episodes

# Title Original airdate Written by Directed by Animation director Yōkai

Staff

  • Plannig - Iwao Sasaya, Yū Saitō
  • Original Work - Shigeru Mizuki (serialized in Shonen Magazine)
  • Music - Taku Izumi
  • Producers - Yoshiyuki Shindō, Sadamitsu Matsumoto
  • Cinematography - Masao Shimizu, Shigeyoshi Ikeda, Hirokata Takahashi, Masa'aki Sugaya, Hiroshi Meguro, Masayuki Hattori, Jirō Yoshimura, Takayoshi Fuwa, Nobuhiro Yamada, Kazu Moriyama
  • Art Direction - Saburō Yokoi, Hideo Chiba, Shigeyoshi Endō, Makoto Yamazaki, Hidenobu Misore, Tadami Shitagawa, Masahiro Ioka
  • Editing - Hitoshi Komura, Masa'aki Hanai, Hiroshi Suzuki
  • Sound Editing: Fumio Arakawa, Isao Hatano, Yukio Ishii, Susumu Konishi
  • Sound Effects - Noriyoshi Ohira
  • Recording - Yasuko Sekiguchi, Fumie Tanoda, Kinuyo Sekine, Tsunako Hatano, Shizue Ninomiya, Hisako Takano, Kiyo Futamiya, Kiyoko Ikeda, Hisako Takebe, Setsuyo Sekine, Toshiko Kawashima
  • Music Selection - Haruo Kagawa, Shigeru Miyashita
  • Animation - Yoshihiro Kanako, Hidenori Yamaguchi, Tsunekiyo Ōtani, Akio Ueshima, Toshitsugu Mukaitsubo, Yoshikatsu Kasai, Katsutoshi Sasaki, Shinji Nakamura, Ikuo Ōami, Tokishi Kabuki, Osamu Kasai, Takeshi Okunishi, Yōichi Kominato, Takenori Kawada, Masa'aki Adachi, Kōichi Kamiya, Yasuo Yamayoshi, Tsunekiyo Ōtani, Terufusa Ishikuro, Kamasa Adachi, Minoru Okazaki, Tadao Wakabayashi, Kazuaki Shigeno
  • Production Supervision - Shōzō Takemura, Saeko Akiyama, Tetsuo Misawa, Tetsuo Satō, Kazumi Fukushima, Yōjirō Kuma, Yoshiji Dōyama, Haruo Ibaraki, Heihachirō Ōtsuji, Hirō Kubota, Masahisa Saeki, Yoshirō Sugawara, Kazuo Hattori, Kōji Tachi, Katsuhiko Akiba, Kōichi Kudō, Yoshinori Takeda
  • Processing - Toei Labo Tech
  • Produced in collaboration with Fuji TV

Movies


References

  1. 長田暁二『昭和の童謡アラカルト―戦後編』ぎょうせい、1985年、187頁。ISBN 4324001243
Advertisement