The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Let's go KAIKIGUMI

One fateful day, the cowardly (unnamed) protagonist meets Mechako, the leader of the "Kaikigumi" organization. The Kaikigumi is in charge of the ghosts and supernatural creatures scaring humans. The protagonist somehow takes part in the revival of the Kaikigumi, after which one bizarre (yet not scary) phenomenon after another crops up around him.

Let's go KAIKIGUMI is based on the manga series by Byū. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

This is the very definition of a “your mileage may vary” show. A gag comedy hyper focused on two characters, one of whom spends most of his time yelling, Let's Go, Kaikigumi deals in jokes of varying stripes with most of them coming at the expense of the unnamed protagonist. There were a few moments when I chuckled, but mostly I just wanted it to be over.

The premise (I hesitate to say there's a plot) is that the protagonist is afraid of pretty much anything involving ghosts. He has been since he was little, but even he's noticed that the ghost stories circulating now that he's in high school (?) aren't as freaky as those when he was little. That, it turns out, is because the old head of the Kaikigumi, a group devoted to scaring people, has died, and his daughter isn't quite sure what counts as “scary” to humans. Mechako (pronounced with a soft “ch,” so not like the giant robots), upon meeting the protagonist, realizes that he could probably help her restart the Kaikigumi. He doesn't want to, but he's stuck now.

There are some decent jokes in here. I enjoyed Mechako and Nameless trying to figure out what's scary about a staircase suddenly gaining a step, and the myriad phantom thieves were good for a mild laugh. Other gags relied a bit much on gross-out humor (or potty humor) for my taste, like the whole urinal bottle bit at the end or the pants-crapping joke that opens the episode. Meanwhile, I thought the loincloth guy section dragged on too long; it just doesn't have quite enough going on to merit the minutes it gets, though I did like that, as with the stair story, the show ultimately showed that the scariest thing is acting like a weirdo in public and having people either stare at you or call attention to your predicament. If Mechako could market that, she'd have the most successful scare organization in Japan.

With most of Nameless' lines delivered in a yell (something Mechako notes) and visuals whose best gag is that loincloth guy looks like he escaped from Baki The Grappler, this just didn't work for me. But humor is remarkably subjective, so I'd base your decision on whether or not to watch this on how funny the situations described sound to you rather than on my number score.

You will almost certainly have a perfect understanding of how much you will enjoy Let's go KAIKIGUMI based on your reaction to the incredibly dumb joke of its cold open. Our cowardly Protagonist begins the episode by grimly expositing all about his overwhelming fear of ghosts—and no, that capitalized “P” is not a typo, the guy literally has no other name for us to go on. When Protagonist Guy's buddy decides to scare him with a tale about the local ghost who makes you so scared that you shit your pants, Protagonist Guy instinctually decides to drop his trousers and pop a squat right in the middle of the street. No ghost is going to get our hero to soil his Underoos, by God, since he's going to take the initiative and dump ass right there of his own accord. Naturally, the spooky white-haired girl from all the show's advertisements shows up and scares the…well, you can tell by Protagonist's screams that there won't be anything sticking to that large intestine for a good long while.

I chuckled, myself, so it seems like Let's go KAIKIGUMI is my kind of dumb comedy. Admittedly, I am very partial to the throwback aesthetics that this show is running with, and I don't know if I would be so inclined to give its juvenile sense of humor as much grace if it wasn't actively lighting up all the neurons in my brain that scream “These damned kids don't appreciate the big chins and fluffy hairstyles that real anime showed off back in The Good Old Days!” The goodwill isn't fueled entirely by nostalgia, either. Let's go KAIKIGUMI flexes its old-school vibes in a way that really benefits the spooky vibes of the story. It's not exactly creepy in its own right, but it's enough to put you in the mindset of Protagonist Dude and understand the way he looks at the world and ends up completely terrified, which needs to happen for the comedy to land.

As with any comedy, your mileage will vary when it comes to how many of the jokes land, and to the amount of air your forcefully exhale from your nose when you end up feeling that spark of amusement. Even if every silly bit isn't laugh-out-loud funny, I think the show manages to get a decent amount of entertainment just from having our scaredy-cat Main Homie and the deadpan boss of the Kaikigumi banter back and forth. Protagonist's shrill idiot screeching is just tolerable enough to balance out with Spooky Girl's amusingly monotone delivery. It obviously won't be the case for everyone, but my brain was poisoned by the cartoon antics of Jim Carrey's peak comedy output back in the early nineties, so this exact degree of unbearably stupid nonsense is actually pretty cozy viewing for me. It's basically the anime equivalent of Ernest Scared Stupid, except if Ernest was twenty years younger and had a cute anime girl sidekick that got most of the best jokes. If that sounds like a good time to you, then you may just end up having a spooktacular old time with Let's go KAIKIGUMI.