The Trial of Kitaro

The Trial of Kitaro

The final showdown for the legendary yokai! In the seventh volume of Shigeru Mizuki’s defining series, our beloved hero Kitaro stands accused of exposing the secret yokai world on television. He is put on trial for crimes against yokai. Witnesses are called from both sides, but when Nezumi Otoko takes the stand, all bets are off. Will Nezumi Otoko be for Kitaro or against him? Only the biggest bribe will tell! The Trial of Kitaro features five bizarre and amusing adventures. In every story, Kitaro has his hands full. He faces off against Kasha, a vicious demon cat; tries to quell a magical cooking pot; battes a sea monster; and solves the mystery of a three-eyed bird. This volume features comics from the late 1960s, which was the golden age of GeGeGe no Kitaro. These stories appear in English for the first time in a kid-friendly edition, with translations by the Mizuki scholar and series translator Zack Davisson. The Trial of Kitaro also concludes Davisson’s “History of Kitaro” essay and offers another round of “Yokai Files,” which introduce the folklore of Japan’s monsters and supernatural beings. This final volume of Mizuki’s renowned Kitaro series is not to be missed! "Mizuki [shifts] from the eminently realistic to the cartoonish, presenting a world beneath the surface of our own in a stunningly believable fashion.”― Publishers Weekly “Mizuki’s Kitaro stories remain some of the most influential works of horror and folkloric dark fantasy…a wonderful piece of manga history.”― Anime News Network Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015) was one of Japan’s most respected artists. A creative prodigy, he lost an arm in World War II. After the war, Mizuki became one of the founders of Japan’s latest craze―manga. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro, his most famous character, who has been adapted for the screen several times, as anime, live action, and video games. In fact, a new anime series has been made every decade since 1968, capturing the imaginations of generations of Japanese children. A researcher of yokai and a real-life ghost hunter, Mizuki traveled to over sixty countries to engage in fieldwork based on spirit folklore. In his hometown of Sakaiminato, one can find Shigeru Mizuki Road, a street decorated with bronze statues of his Kitaro characters.