On October 28th BCI, a sister company of FUNimation, will release the live action Kitaro movie, which was released in Japan in 2007.  The film, like no fewer than six anime series, is based on a classic manga by Shigeru Mizuki that ran in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine from 1959 to 1969.  The eponymous hero of this quintessential Japanese property is a yokai boy, who belongs to a group of spirit monsters from Japanese folklore.  With the exception of his father who died and was reconstituted as an anthropomorphized eyeball, Kitaro is the last remaining member of the Ghost Tribe, and works to establish peace between humans and the yokai.

The one-eyed Kitaro has a variety of weapons he uses to thwart the wily attempts by yokai to bedevil humans including spiny hairs that can be shot like arrows, remote-controlled sandals, an equally controllable detachable hand, a magic vest that protects its wearer from danger, and a special hair that can detect spirit activity.

 BCI is releasing the 2007 Kitaro movie in both standard DVD ($19.98) and Blu-ray ($24.98) versions.  The film stars rocker Eiji Wentz in the title role and it basically takes its storyline from the first anime series, a narrative about the residents in an apartment building who get Kitaro to combat a group of yokai that have been paid by unscrupulous real estate developers to force the tenants to vacate the building.