Episode 1
A comedy set in Hell. Oh yes that sounds just the ticket! I haven't read much about this other then Hoozuuki (the main character) hobbies include fawning over cute animals and raising Golfish Flowers.
Sounds different I'll give it that!
***SPOILERS***
Enma is the name of the great Lord of Hell. Hoozuki (or Hozuki) is his second in command... Or at least the guy that gets left with all the jobs Enma doesn't want to deal with.
There is a lot I loved about this show. It was split into two mini-stories it seems, Making or Breaking Hell was the first half of the story which told of Hozuki coming in contact with a gentlemen and his three animal friends, he defeats all four and then employs them in hell. The three animals to be animal torturers in the animal torture part of hell and the gentleman as a gardener in Shangri-La. The second part, The Discovery of Hell's Mystery, was much more a character driven piece outlining some of Hozuki's likes and dislikes.
It very much is a comedy and the biggest joke as it where is the contrast to Hozuki as a person and his interests. At one point he was trying to convince Enma that he was a cheerful person whilst we had the gloomiest face ever in front of us. He loves Koala's and knows a lot of interesting facts (and even facts about the Platypus!)
There was a lot to keep you interested in both stories plus the style of each were so vastly different but at the same time the tone and artistic style were so blended together it never felt like two completely different stories. It could very much have just been two halves of one day.
I think the one thing I loved the most about the episode was how it was drawn. It had a very authentic old style Japanese drawing style. The landscape of hell is like a painting/drawing then a anime background. There is a very bland papery feel to the background a lot of the time, and sometimes not much detail, which isn't a bad thing because you kind of see the effect its going for and get the detail yourself in your mind.
Inside (in the second episode) it was much more anime textured but still very much drawing-esque.
I liked it, it gave a unique feeling to the series.
As for the stories themselves and the characters?
Well the stories were real good fun, it is heavy on comedy but it doesn't drown in obvious nudge, nudge this is the joke humour. It was very clever but also very funny.
The characters aren't larger then life which helped, sometimes they make the characters TOO out of this world and without getting a feel on them you can lose interest. Makai Ouji did it well with their demons and so far there is no problem with these, they feel real and you can laugh at the differences and the world around them but they aren't so out of this world that you can't take to them.
Hozuki looks like an interesting character, his hobbies are completely at odds with his demeanour and that is probably where a lot of the humour will come from.
A very interesting series.
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