Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera

Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera is a mostly nonsensical and perverted romp involving Enma-kun and the Youkai Patrol dealing with random demons dealing silly and sometimes perverted hijinks on humanity. The plot is pretty bare-bones where throughout much of the first half, Enma and his group deal with a random demon each episode and the second half explores the group discovering who is behind the string of demons being let loose from hell. If you are expecting consistent plot and character development throughout this series, then you will be quite disappointed as Dororon Enma-kun is more focused on its crazy and perverse comedy than giving you a ... serious plot to stick with.

However if you are looking for a comedy title, Enma-kun does more than enough to deliver on its laughs for the most part. The show is quite manic in its pacing with the over-the-top behavior delivered from main character Enma-kun and various other characters that the demon kid encounters. Enma doesn't come off as your typical hero as he is impulsive, dense, perverted to the point where he attempts to molest fellow Youkai Patrol member Yukiko any chance he gets and has no qualms at inflicting overkill on his foes. And rather than inflict fear and pain upon the human populace, the demons encountered by the Youkai Patrol in most instances are more focused on having the populace be in various embarrassing predicaments such as making them brainless or fat. The show was also not afraid to make nods to aspects of popular culture and breaking the fourth wall as there are parodies of creator Go Nagai's earlier works like Cutey Honey and Mazinger Z. However, the comedy does miss its mark on some occasions as some episodes have the annoying habit of focusing on a running gag throughout in response to whichever threat the Youkai Patrol faces in an episode.

The major aspect of the series that will make or break your enjoyment for it if you dig comedy would be the heavy emphasis on perverted humor. From what I understand, a number of Go Nagai's works are quite infamous for pushing the envelope when it comes to violent and sexual content. In the case of Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera, it has a great amount of the former. The perversion of the series appears to be a blatant "take that" in response to Tokyo Prefecture's recent passing of its controversial Bill 156. Examples of what you can expect out of the show's perversion include Yukiko regularly being just about nude as her clothes are shredded apart from demon attacks, Enma-kun trying to sneak in opportunities to molest Yukiko and a demon in the first episode who attacks the Youkai Patrol literally with um... a certain body part that will remain nameless. If you can't dig rampant sexual humor in your anime, then this isn't a show you will be willing to see.

In terms of presentation, Dororon Enma-kun does come across as rather average. The show's animation style takes on an older look as a number of character designs look simple and have ridiculously-proportioned body parts (Enma's father being of great example) seeming to be a clear homage to older Go Nagai works. It appears the animation budget to this series wasn't too big judging from the number of reused animation frames and shortcuts used within action scenes, a low point compared to better-looking titles of the Spring 2011 anime season like Hanasaku Iroha and C. In terms of the show's soundtrack, only the show's intense rock OP stuck out for me with other musical tracks serving their part in accompanying the show's manic and perverse humor yet not being too memorable.

Overall, Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera's manic and perverse humor was surprisingly effective at most points of getting laughs out of me thanks to the antics of its characters, parodies of Go Nagai early works and other crazy elements. The perverse humor won't be for everyone and it does have its moments of its humor losing effect thanks to relying on running gags. But this did well as my comedy title of choice for the Spring 2011 anime season despite its shortcomings.

'Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera' is a gag anime based on '70s manga with a LOT of ecchi elements. As a result, the humor is mostly driven by classic manga or anime references, ecchi jokes like girls getting stripped naked in most implausible ways, guys getting poked in the ass, or dirty jokes. The comedy style is very Japanese, with persistent running jokes and oyaji-gag (pun-heavy, old fashioned jokes).

The art in the show has a nostalgic style, with retro character designs. For the most part, this show seems like it could've been made in the '70s, but the battle scenes are ridiculously detailed and serious that you ... know it was done on purpose for laughs, and find it funny.

OP/ED are also designed to be funny, with OP having obviously outdated tune that was popular in the '70s anime songs, with matching voice that was far too serious for the series. The ED has an absurdly inappropriate lyric that keeps repeating "someday we'll all drop dead" in a song sang in lullaby style.
The voice acting was excellent, with all the character sounding very unique, yet fits perfectly for each role. The biggest surprise was the guest appearance of Nozawa Masako (who also went on to voice Gokuu in 'DBZ' and Doraemon) and Sakai Sumie, the seiyuu for Enma and Yukiko in the original series in final episode.

'Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera' is one of the few anime series that successfully pulled off "so bad it's actually good" because it pokes fun at the '70s in every single aspect of the anime, which is essentially making fun of itself.

Final episode was truly epic, with plenty of seizure-inducing visual troll going on. But on the other hand, brings closure to the story while solving all the unexplained plot devices, and makes good use of opening narration for every single episode "I will never forget the heroes who came from Hell."

The story also makes reference to many '70s events such as the Osaka Expo and the Vietnam War. This makes it a very difficult series for most viewers, since it is based on a kids show, but kids today won't possibly get the references. The art style has the retro feel, but older viewers may be turned off by excessive ecchi and 'Crayon Shin-chan' level jokes. 'Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera' is a very very niche anime that 90% of you will not enjoy, but it's a gem for those who actually "get it". In terms of retro gag anime, this is as good as it gets.

Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera is an anime adapted from the same namesake manga from the 70's. And most of the content and structure stems from that period.

As a gag/ecchi anime/manga DEM certainly displays the mediums juvenile tendencies in its fullest, the good and the bad.
The best thing about this anime is probably the structure and artwork. For most of the time the art is stylized in a constant quality, if necessary. But most of the time it has a decent animation over the whole run.
The structure is similar. It starts with a monster-of-the-week approach, but as more characters are introduced, the higher the stakes become ... and the mystery about the attacks of the weekly monsters become more apparent.

However, this is where the good things end. By far the weakest link of the series is its comedy. It is 70's. In that era vulgar displays of nudity and genital humor were considered funny. But, 40 years later for the anime release and 50 years by time of writing this, it no longer is considered funny in that region as more nuanced humor was established culturally. The internet changed a lot in that regard and while I don't blame it for this downside, it certainly changed the perception of what is acceptable and what not. Still, these differences are still within different countries as their culture is still a part of what is and is not funny or engaging.
And while some might think that having a penis sword in the first episode might be considered as rude by some, I merely considered it as something weird but ultimately a skill the demon has, even when it isn't practical in any sense.

And this carries through the whole series. As someone who wants to enjoy stories on a more nuanced I certainly am not part of the target demographic of this series and thus not really qualified to talk about subjective experiences of comedy.
However, and this is a big one, certain aspects and sexual comedy has universally changed through most of the modern countries. In this anime, there were multiple jokes involving rape and zoophilia/bestiality. And these points made it clear for me that this anime shouldn't have been produced in the modern time, or at least changed for these points.
Other than that most jokes border on the lines between fine, boring by repetition or boring by duration. For me there were no outbursts of laughter in none of the episodes.

In regards to the characters, there isn't much to talk about. All of them fall into certain stereotypes to facilitate the comedy. Pervert protagonist, love interest by being opposite, slapstick character, wisecrack and fish-out-of-water. They all have their contrivances and while they bring different aspects and viewpoints to different scenes, they still all fall in the predictable section.

In total Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera falls flat through outdated humor whose comedy has fallen out of favor of the modern times and would mostly be regarded as something that exists. Most of the jokes are predictable through the stereotypes the characters portray, but some jokes are, while not offensive, have simply aged very, very badly. Comedy certainly is subjective in many regards and one has to be in the mood for the comedy to be allowed to make an impression. As someone who isn't the target audience, and doesn't even want to be, it didn't resonate with me at all.