I don't know why I hadn't done a post about this show sooner. I'm sorry. Everybody go back in time and watch Dororon! Enma-kun Meramera when it started running. You may or may not regret it.
This is another Go Nagai revival anime, one of which we see nearly every year at this point. I went nuts over Yasuhiro Imagawa's Shin Mazinger myself. Why is it always Go Nagai being animated? There are certainly other legends out there. Matsumoto only gets one of his works re-animated every five years, you know? Why is the Dynamic Pro mine so frequently returned to?
It keeps producing, I'd say. Dynamic Productions has a huge merchandising branch (check out this baller Mazinger Z ring). Nagai was a damn workhorse at his height: he still works today every once in a while. Even though Mazinger returns to the screen every other year or so-- and according to the director himself we'll probably never see Shin Mazinger return, sigh-- that and Devilman and Cutey Honey are hardly all the man did.
So today, for the first time since the 70s, it's Dororon! Enma-kun's turn. And how: the show is being handled by Brains Base (most recently on DRRR and Princess Jellyfish) and directed by Gaogaigar maestro and karaoke singer Yoshitomo Yonetani. The animation quality is much, much higher than something that I can only presume has limited appeal even among anime fans: see Awesome Engine's appraisal of repulsed anime fan reactions to the show, for example.
It "looks old". It really does. It is old. This 2011 TV show hails from the 70s and it's proud. It takes place in that time period (in one of the more overt 70s gags that pepper the show, the characters pass through the Vietnam War). The theme song (by Masaaki Endoh, famous himself for singing the Gaogaigar theme and the greatest anime cover ever recorded) sounds totally 70s rock. There is a nostalgia in this show that is a little different from what we usually see in these remakes: it is not so much a nostalgia for a character as it is a time and a place. It is worth noting that judging by his date of birth, Mr. Yonetani was probably in elementary school in the 70s, just like the kids in this show.
Our heroine-- sort of-- is Harumi (ANN has her name listed as Harumi Fudo: is she a relative of Devilman Akira Fudo? Will this come up in the show? I hope so!), a hapless young girl who falls in with the Demon Patrol, who-- sort of-- protect Japan from the many demons who plague the populace in really weird ways for the hell of it.
It's not exactly a serious show, and it strongly recalls Nagai's equally nonsensical gag manga. Most episodes will concentrate on a single gag (like "there's a demon that makes everybody prat fall-- all the time") and just wail on it for twenty minutes until there's nothing left, often past that point. Meramera has no particular regard for the fourth wall, and a lot of episodes get distracted to the point where you might get frustrated if, you know, you actually care what happens. (C'mon!) Pacing can be a problem in this show: I'm reminded of the slightly more tasteless Panty and Stocking, which kept its episodes to 15 minutes and its jokes fresher.
One of the major additions to Meramera is the sheer amount of sex. Now don't get me wrong, Nagai made his name by being seriously raunchy in kids' manga, but this remake takes it as far out there as it can get away with on late-night television. The sidekick, Princess Yukiko, gets molested about every ten minutes, and the show lingers like a dirty old man in a locker room. It's to the point where when a character stops to ask "Wait, is this porno?" you start to wonder the same thing yourself.
Funny thing, though: even this isn't too far removed from Nagai. As the show goes along Enpi-chan, a character from a porn parody that Go Nagai himself drew, appears, wearing... a cape. She sticks around, with the stated goal of "creating a fun and sexy world". So it's a pretty dirty show, but Go Nagai's a pretty dirty dude. As usual with Go Nagai, be prepared.
As regular readers of this blog are probably already aware, I have a high level of tolerance for bad taste, so this is my gotta-watch show for this season (after Kaiji) every week. As for yourselves, why not just watch the first episode? I promise you'll know right away whether or not to keep watching.
This isn't Brains Base's first foray into Enma. They were the ones that did the Demon Prince Enma OVA that had a 20 something Enma, Yukiko and Kapaeru and had more of a horror bend.
I've been reading the original manga and biggest thing that surprised me about Meeramera is how relatively soft it is with violence. Like take the screenshot of the hip bounce with the teacher. In the manga Enma and the teacher each grab a girl and smack them together over and over trying to push the other back like a human game of American Gladiator's joust.
This might just be more of the original anime showing but I haven't checked out the episodes that have been subbed.
Posted by: Hums | May 26, 2011 at 10:05 PM
This isn't their first foray into Go Nagai stuff either. They started out with Mazinkaiser, then proceeded to Ken Ishikawa's Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo, New Getter Robo both directed by Jun Kawagoe. The original anime didn't have a lot to do with Go Nagai. It was just Toei doing what their best with his concept with some pretty good writers like Masaki Tsuji. The manga is where all of Nagai's energy went. By the way, the Kikoushi Enma anime is nothing like the manga.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 26, 2011 at 10:33 PM
"doing their best with his concept"
typo.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 26, 2011 at 10:34 PM
>>Princess Yukiko, gets molested about every ten minutes
Well you've sold ME.
Posted by: wah | May 28, 2011 at 05:22 PM
Nice review.
Those repulsed fan responses are priceless.
Posted by: Groove-A | May 29, 2011 at 03:07 PM