Six television series across six decades, none of them continuing the last, and five hundred and forty seven episodes with no correct place to start.
There is no wrong answer and no right one, because the six series do not continue each other. Every one is a full reboot with a new cast, new animation and no memory of the last, made roughly one per decade since 1968. So the question is not what order, it is which decade, and the honest answer for most people is the newest one.
Seen some of these already? Tap the circles to tick them off. The full list below fills in as you go.
Ninety seven episodes, the newest, the best looking, and by a distance the most likely to be legally streaming where you live. It also has the sharpest writing of the six, taking the yokai stories somewhere considerably darker than a children's slot suggests.
One hundred and fourteen episodes, the longest in the franchise, and the most complete tour of Mizuki's yokai. A better fit if you want a big comfortable run rather than a sharp one.
One hundred and eight episodes plus the seven episode Jigoku-hen block. This is the version most Japanese adults picture when they hear the name, and the four 1980s films all hang off it.
Sixty five episodes in black and white, and the series that turned a cult manga into a national institution. Slow by modern standards and worth it for the atmosphere.
Then what? Two traps, and both catch people. Hakaba Kitaro from 2008 looks like a franchise entry, was made by the same studio, and is officially not one: it adapts Mizuki's earlier and much bleaker Hakaba manga, and it is a fine eleven episodes but it is not GeGeGe no Kitaro. And Kitaro Tanjo: GeGeGe no Nazo from 2023 is a prequel to the 2018 series that arrived three years after that series finished, so it reads as the newest thing on the list and is the worst possible entry point. On the films, every one is tied to whichever series was on the air when it was made, and watching a thirty minute short from 1997 without the 1996 series behind it is the most common way people bounce off this franchise. The notes on each film say which series it belongs to.
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