Oil-guzzling babies (and, suitably, ghost dogs)

Inugami from The Obakemono ProjectConsidering how much I love Pom Poko and tanuki, and I got Taiko no Tetsujin mostly because it had dancing kitsune in it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen all of this stuff sooner:

My new favorite website is The Obakemono Project, which is like a web encyclopedia of Japanese folk monsters and spirits. Each one has a description and a drawing that is dead-on ultra-cool perfect. For example, the Aburaakago is a spirit that takes the form of a baby and sucks all the oil out of household lamps.

Raccoons with giant balls and lamp oil-guzzling baby ghosts. And katsu curry rice. I, for one, welcome our new Japanese overlords.

That site leads to The Fantastic Shigeru Mizuki English Language Resource Page, which showcases the work of the Japanese cartoonist and his manga about bakemono. Pretty cool stuff — reminds me of what you’d get if Rat Fink had centuries of folk stories to back it up.

And another link from the Obakemono forums led to the news that The Great Yokai War is playing as part of the SF IndieFest next weekend. It’s a movie about a kid who has to stop a war between various goblins, demons, and evil wizards. I swore I’d never see another Takashi Miike movie after Audition, but word on the street is that it’s not quite his usual fare and even I would be able to tolerate this one.

Now there’s something to look forward to after Wondercon.

Update: The artist’s website is here at DrunkenTengu.com, and pretty much all her stuff is teh coolest.