Gonta

Gonta Takagamori is an antagonist / anti-hero in Pom Poko. He is hotheaded and pugnacious. His wife is Otama, a docile, doting tanuki who worries about him constantly but is strong enough to fend off his attempts to woo her.

His name in full means "Steadfast leader of the Hawk Woods", fitting his belligerent and warlike personality.

Story
The militaristic Gonta, who dons a kamikaze-inspired hachimaki and pointlessly dies in an attempt to block traffic before facing the inevitability of change, symbolizes Japan's old fatalistic attitude against western influences. He would rather die than change his ways, thus resulting in the deaths of his peers that he swayed into action. He came to this conclusion after feeling betrayed by Kinchō Daimyōjin VI, the last of the revered Transformation Masters, who suggested, with Ryotaro's convincing, that the tanuki who can transform should go and live among the humans. This old fatalistic attitude was Gonta's growing frustration with failure after failure to find a good solution reaching a fever pitch.

Therefore, he dies as a Tanuki, rather than Seizaemon who went on living as a human and forgot his origins. His actions are driven by the destruction of Taka, his birthplace.

He leads the Red Tanukis to eliminate all humans, but all mentions of humans' food cause him to soften his approach a little. He really hates lazy tanukis. However, he, hypocritically, gets bored easily and would sometimes get distracted by a hamburger or doze off during important meetings. He even uses violence with weapons on tanukis who oppose his actions. In contrast, Shoukichi respects the opinions of other tanukis, and he and Ponkichi would shoot down Gonta's belligerent ideas by reminding him of his own need to survive. Both sides of their argument have valid points. While Shoukichi is right in that hurting humans is excessive, Gonta is right in pointing out that the developers are relentless and will become desensitized to hauntings if it means making a profit.

Though he is proud and selfish, he respects Oroku and the Transformation Masters, and joins in on the celebration of Master Hage's birthday.

At the end of the film, his wife Otama can be seen laying a hamburger and a couple of beer cans at his grave.

Appearance
Gonta is a particularly stocky tanuki, distinguished by heavy black eyebrows, pockmarks on his face and tufts of scruffy fur on the top of his head. His default clothing is a red vest with a single orange stripe across it. In his human form, which he only takes on a handful of times, he appears as a fat young man with short black hair, stubble on his chin, a red T-shirt similar to the waistcoat of his tanuki form and pale blue jeans. When he leads an attack against the humans and takes a human form, he wears a red raincoat with a stripe a different shade of red across it, red trousers the same colour as his raincoat, and black boots.



Gonta 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ