I don't know about you, but I'm still giddy about the news that Drawn & Quarterly will be publishing Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitaro in 2013. Kitaro has been on my licensing wish-list for ages, not least because it features yokai. With all my academic training, I'm sure I could rationalize my interest in demons as a form of amateur ethnography, but that would be intellectually dishonest: I just find them very cool. (OK ' that's not entirely true. I am interested in comparing kitsune with trickster figures from other cultures, but that's seldom at the forefront of my mind when I'm reading, say, Kiichi and the Magic Books or Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan.)
Fond as I am of manga with supernatural elements, I'm not sure that I have a clear favorite. I'm partial to Rumiko Takahashi's InuYasha and Mermaid Saga, though many of the monsters that appear in those works are as much as product of Takahashi's fertile imagination as they are of Japanese folk culture. Osamu Tezuka's Dororo, another personal favorite, is likewise a mishmash of traditional demons and creatures of Tezuka's own creation. (Though what's not to love about a sake-breathing shark demon?) And Natsume's Book of Friends has been growing on me, even if it doggedly adheres to its demon-of-the-week formula at the expense of long-range character development.
So I turn the floor over to you, readers: what yokai manga do you like best? What yokai manga would you like to see licensed for the North American market? Inquiring minds want to know!
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