Kiitarou Shounen no Youkai Enikki

*Spoiler Free
*Enjoyment Rating: 7

Kiitarou Shounen no Youkai Enikki, or Kiitaro's Yokai Picture Diary, is a short and straightforward anime. If you're into watching short time duration anime and increasing your anime list entries, then here is an anime for you. As one can expect from the title alone, the anime is about meeting and interacting with yokai (supernatural monsters, spirits, and demons from Japanese folklore). Don't be fooled by the first episode or first half of the series, this anime is laid back and somewhat dull but there is some good story by the end.

*Story Rating: 7

As anyone can expect from a four minute episode ... duration anime series, there isn't much that this series is able to expand on since the main goal of the anime is to bring up a new yokai each episode. Personally, I found the first half of the anime to be very dry and dull even though the anime attempts to introduce new and different stories each episode. Still, by the end of this anime I found it to be satisfying to watch. The second half of the anime contained more plot and development as it concluded on an end that most people would expect from a human-yokai relationship anime.

*Art and Sound Ratings: 6.5

There was not much to this anime that I personally found unique. Sound did not stand out very much for me. In terms of art, I found the female characters (when in their human forms) to be the eye catchers of this anime. My favorite character art design was for Yukimusume.

*Character Rating: 6

For a very short anime, it's to be expected to see countless static characters that get little development. Still, I think this anime chose the more unique types of characters from the cliche character tropes found in most anime. Although screen time distribution was short, I feel like this anime focused a good amount on characters that the creators knew would be most popular with audiences.

*Overall Rating: 7

I personally give this anime an overall rating of 7. The shift during the second half of this anime was the main factor that influenced my decision to give this anime not a 6 but a 7. It's a good anime to binge watch if you want something short and to put as an entry on your anime list. Enjoy the comedic moments shared by the more prominent yokai and the protagonist near the end.

The title of this series of anime shorts speaks for itself – it’s a show about a boy named Kiitaro, and the memories that he makes meeting lots of different Youkai. The first episode of the show has a slightly different feel, but the other episodes all involve Kiitaro meeting some Youkai and having interactions with them which reveal something about their nature.

The show is light-hearted and comic in tone, with Kiitaro ending up in some silly situations either from misunderstanding the youkai, from the actions of the youkai themselves, or his main companion the Zashiki Warashi Suzu.

I will say that there’s a surprising amount ... of somewhat sexual humour in the series, with repeated upskirt jokes and things of a similar nature. To me it didn’t feel like it added anything to the story or my understanding of the youkai. It felt rather out of place in what was otherwise a very light and cute series.

The episodes have a short section at the end actually talking about the youkai and what they’re like in folklore. This was interesting to me as a short primer, as while I’m aware of youkai as a general concept, I’m not familiar with many specific kinds of youkai, so finding out a little about them was interesting! Obviously a 10-15 second segment can’t give you a lot of information, but it does give me enough so that I can find out a bit more.

The visuals are of a high quality for a short series (it’s certainly not a show which looks like it was animated in Flash), with detailed backgrounds and colourful character designs. There’s no dynamic action sequences and the characters movements are kept pretty simple, but I was surprised with how good it looked in comparison to other shorts, even if it would be pretty standard for a full-length series. The ED is animated in a style which is reminiscent of traditional Japanese painting, which seemed apposite for a show about what could be called traditional Japanese spirits.

There’s numerous different ending themes played throughout the series. None of them really stood out to me strongly enough to form an attachment to them, but it was interesting hearing different tunes to the same visuals each episode. The soundtrack mostly features some traditional Japanese music which suited the theme of the show.

Overall, I found this series to be charming and generally funny. I’m definitely glad I checked it out! You may like watching it if you’re interested in knowing a little about youkai.

The show is twelve episodes composed of a five minute sketch each.


Outside of the first episode that is... random silliness. Each episode Kiitarou runs into a yokai or two, we get a snippet of info about that specific yokai with some slapstick thrown in. Episode ends.


In a void this show is ok... But if you know what it is this will downgrade it to abysmal.


What it really is can be seen in the name and character design. This is a knockoff of a Japanese classic manga and anime (Gegege No Kitaro) down to the MC having the same clothes, hair cut, yokai radar ... strand of hair.


Up until the last anime adaptation of the show in 2018 - 2020 (this was the 6th adaptation, the show has been going on since the 60s!) Kitaro was known to be creepy and kindda ugly or malformed so the show makes a point of saying "oh no, I'm the handsome Kitarou."


If it had something to say that would have still been ok but it's really creatively bankrupted to were it just distills things from the old show into five minute vignettes without context or reason to cash in on characters recognition.