It's a 50th anniversary show. The first GeGeGe no Kitarou anime started in 1968, although the manga's older. It's been a long journey to get here, with influences including Hakaba Kitarou (a much darker 2008 anime based on Mizuki Shigeru's original, much less cuddly Kitarou manga). That changes the tone and fixes a problem I'd had at the beginning with the story logic behind Kitarou's adventures. He and his friends are youkai in our world. They're monsters. Why do they bother helping humans? Well, in this particular adaptation...

(a) as in the 1985 series, a schoolgirl's been added as an audience identification character. Her name's Mana Inuyama and she's 13 years old. Kitarou makes a human friend!

(b) Kitarou's dispassionate and not that bothered, which makes the show stronger. It's entertaining, but with teeth. He'll stop youkai who are up to no good, but he has an outsider's view of humanity and he won't try too hard to talk you out of doing something stupid. He'll warn you once, in a disinterested tone. That might be all you get. Also, don't break a promise to him that you won't anger a homicidal youkai.

Other features of this adaptation include:

It's been modernised. Kitarou takes only a token interest in the modern world, but Neko-Musume has a smartphone and the show's often bouncing off YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (Sometimes with blood.) There are sharp opinions about mankind's exciting new ways of being nasty to each other. The first thing in this series is a YouTuber saying "let's see what happens if I ignore traffic signals", after which the bystanders just take photos on their phones.

It's also political. Much of this is Japanese politics, admittedly, e.g. exploitation of East Asian foreign workers, or Japan's reluctance to admit to wrongdoing during World War Two. It's often strong stuff, though. I was impressed.

It's intelligent. Unsympathetic characters won't just be straw men. The show goes out of its way to spell out uncomfortable truths and the viewpoints of people we don't like. An anti-yokai law towards the end of the series would mean racism and ethnic cleansing, but its supporters are ordinary people who are sincere and even sympathetic in their creepy evil hate talk. Similarly, stopping exploitation might cause economic hardship. Doing the right thing can mean choices and the show's not pretending that these will always be simple.

1. KITAROU = a one-eyed child who never ages. He's been the same small boy for decades, both in-fiction and outside it. Also, he always follows the advice of his talking eyeball father. Kitarou's a dangerous fighter, with weapons that include hair needles, finger guns, his jacket, his geta sandals and blasting you with electricity. His manner, though, is cold and unenthusiastic. He'll come to believe strongly in doing the right thing, but he's a killer. One of the show's closing title sequences shows Kitarou taking people to hell.

2. NEKO-MUSUME, a name with no satisfactory English translation. "Catgirl" is too generic, while "Catchick" is just eurgh. Anyway, this version's unlike any previous incarnation of the character... except, thinking about it, maybe Rena Tanaka's smoking hot Neko-Musume in the 2007-08 live-action films. Mizuki's original was a fanged, creepy brat. This one's prettier and older, at least late teens. She dresses well, she's elegant and she carries a smartphone. On one level, this is rubbish. She's an anime girl, so she has to be pretty, right? (Well, except when growing Wolverine claws and charging into battle with a mouth full of fangs.) Normally, I'd hate this, but the age upgrade makes sense and does something worth exploring. I love this Neko-Musume. She's my favourite character in the show. She's in tsundere love with Kitarou, which we'd never taken seriously before because she'd always looked like a eight-year-old... but here, thanks to the age upgrade, you do.

Tragically, Kitarou's as romantic as a slaughterhouse and he'll clearly be locked in a ten-year-old body forever. He and Neko-Musume have been friends for decades and they're always having adventures together, but she's never said anything. (Tsunderes can be annoying, but Neko-Musume's problem is that she has a proud shell.) Also, she's the most morally upright, dependable youkai in the cast.

The only thing I wanted was more of Neko-Musume going full Wolverine. She's strictly a close-combat fighter, unlike Kitarou, and you wouldn't want to cross her. (She gets tricked into using her claws on a human in ep.47 and it's nearly fatal. She also goes through an enemy in ep.80... literally.) She'd be a terrifying opponent, but it's Kitarou who usually does the fighting, with Neko-Musume mostly just inflicting punishment scratches on Nezumi-Otoko.

Notable episodes with Neko-Musume: 10 (stalkers), 72 (the love potion episode), 86 (vs. Christmas), 93 (Groundhog Day vampire apocalypse... ouch)

3. NEZUMI-OTOKO, aka. Rat-Man = not evil, probably, if you're lucky. He thinks he's Kitarou's best friend and he might be correct. They eat ramen together. Nezumi-Otoko can occasionally be heroic or an innocent victim. Usually, though, he's a money-grubbing villain who'd sell anyone for a profit. His superpower is farting. Merely talking to him can invite disaster.

Notable episode with Nezumi-Otoko: 13 (where he sets up death camps, although the episode wimps out and resurrects them in the end), 24 (he's going to get married), 34 and 56 (super-farting), 62 (digging deeper into his relationship with Kitarou), 97 (his speech)

4. MANA INUYAMA = the token human. Kitarou tries to push her away in the early episodes, but she's too determined. She's lovely. Also, she sees Kitarou only as a friend, instead having a lesbian crush on Neko-Musume. Note whom she chases in the Love Potion episode, for instance.

Notable episodes with Mana: 1-4 (vs. Kitarou), 29 (vs. the arrogant, solitary Agnes), 47 (but you won't enjoy it)

...to which your reaction might be "bloody hell, that was evil". Well, sometimes. These can be extremely strong and/or shocking, but there are so many powerful episodes that this list was quite hard to draw up. I couldn't include everything I wanted to mention, because it would have never ended.

Ep.7 = the bullying episode. Kitarou's the ticket inspector on a ghost train to Hell, which has always been one of the strongest episodes in GeGeGe adaptations. I also love his punchline to that bullying schoolgirl. Compare with ep.68, in which Kitarou again personally sends someone to hell.

Ep.15 = beauty treatments. "It's human soul tempura. Eat up." What makes many of these episodes doubly shocking is the way they won't necessarily end with a reassuring moral, but might gleefully push their darkness to its disturbing, misanthropic, logical conclusion instead. This is one of those.

Ep.20 = World War Two history.

Ep.23 = youkai apartments. I love this episode, which is strong but ultimately heartwarming.

Ep.25 = is this unsuitable for children? Suicide with nooses. Pushing a girl down the stairs. Cursing someone means digging two graves. Mana unthinkingly becomes a bully through light social pressure.

Ep.26 = a mentally ill mother, a daughter who also needs help, a knife, a cliff edge and a youkai that eats souls.

Eps.35-37 = the mid-season finale arc, with powerful declarations and GeGeGe at its most epic.

Ep.40 = "If you really cared about your family, you'd quit being a comedian." This has an evil ending. See also ep.45 and the lovelorn man-eating cactus in ep.59.

Ep.21 = the tsukumogami who thought they'd been abandoned.

Ep.47-49 = another story arc finale, with friends killing friends and then, effectively, a nuke.

Ep.66, 69 = but I won't say why. Spoilers.

Ep.70 = the boy who doesn't believe in the village curse, yielding another dark final twist. (It wouldn't be so bad in a different genre, but this is a horror series for children.)

Ep.81 = the manga-drawing youkai and his editor who only cares about the quality of the work. There's a worthwhile, interesting debate in this one and I love how it ends.

It's not always comfortable to watch, but it's also lots of fun. It has comedy episodes, e.g. ep.39 (a yuki-onna's love life), ep.55 (the tennis-mad youkai), ep.65 (the prefecture that secedes from Japan) and ep.88 (Ittan Momen in love). However, its endings can can be pure bone-dissolving acid and it's serious about horror. My only grumble is that it can feel a bit child-friendly, because this is such a long-running franchise and it was airing at 9am on Sundays. There's a limit to how much you can upset parents. People who'd surely have been killed will usually be okay again by the end of the episode. People who'd turned into vampires revert back to being human (ep.30). People who'd been eaten reappear. Hurm. That politician definitely shouldn't have survived that bomb in ep.76.

It's still superb, though. It's dark, weird and powerful enough to get me watching the entire franchise, back to the 1960s. This was my first GeGeGe no Kitarou anime (although I'd seen the Eiji Wentz live-action movies) and it's still, to date, the best by miles. I imagine they'll announce another in the late 2020s, though. "One series a decade" appears to be the rule...