So-Bad Sunday! Dororon Enma-Kun (Anime Series)

The title of Dororon Enma-Kun has been handily translated into the following Engrish equivalent--BAMF, It's Enma! Admittedly in electing to watch episode one of this series, I half knew what I was getting into...some fairly bad crap. Little did I know, Dear Reader, how deep the crap was. So deep. Such deep crap. Mind-boggling depths of crap!

Some of this depth can be seen in the trailer. Unfortunately the trailer has not been subbed into English, but I'd like to think you don't need to understand the language when the stupidity is wordlessly obvious.

The series begins in a bathhouse where shirtless elderly "Granny Gossip," sporting strange face paint and a beret that says "God" on it, begins swinging her pendulous boobs like propellers in order to warn main character Harumi that there are demons at the appropriately named Youkai Elementary school (youkai are demons). These demons, it turns out, will steal your face. Okay, the propeller boobs was a bit much, but face stealing demons are part of Japanese folklore tradition, so I start to think, maybe this is just a bit weird and spastic, and not bad at all. I am wrong. I am often wrong.

Expectedly, Harumi fails to heed the warning of geriatric tit-augerer Granny Gossip, and enters the school with a few exceptionally irritating friends. Their faces are stolen. I'm shocked. Harumi nearly drowns in the school pool while running from the now-faceless bodies of her friends and is rescued by a kappa (a kappa is a turtley, frogish, monk-haired, pervert demon and is a very traditional presence in Japanese demon stories). The kappa, named Kappa (inventive!) leads Harumi to the school basement where the nephew of the Great King Enma (also named Enma) has built the Hell House, doorway to hell. The magically naked Princess Yukiko invites them in and a talking hat named Grandpa Chappeau leads the "stray human" to Enma.

Then, things get weirdly pervy for a minute or two during a weirdly random discussion of panties that makes no sense. I am at a loss. I have no idea what is going on, and the small amount of knowledge of Japanese folklore that I have is only making it more difficult to understand. King Enma IS the king of hell, right? So, wtf is going on? I don't know. And every character in this anime is on a level of annoyingly hyper that has destroyed any reference point I have for such things. SO ANNOYING! Argh!

The group decides to round up the bad demons as part of a Demon Patrol. Hooray, a plot? They decide to use Harumi as bait, but (get this!) everyone falls asleep while waiting for the Face Stealer to attack. And our heroine almost pees herself when the demon comes for her. Really. There's a huge monologue about having to pee, during which her face is stolen. I shake my head at this.

Finally Enma wakes up and there's a battle with the monster, one involving, of all things, Dick SWORDS! Hooray, Enma breaks the monster's dick off. How do I know this happens? Well, they show it, AND the monster says, and I quote, "Oh, No! My dick broke!"

This, Dear Readers, is the moment I turned the anime off. Sometimes, as the great Kenny Rogers (another face stealing demon? Perhaps! You decide!)said, you have to know when to walk away (silently shaking your head in confusion).