Kyou kara Maou!

I LOVE THIS ANIME! It was so cute and adorable and just awwwwwww! This is the anime that I cried the most in! I love the action, the adventure, the comedy, everything about this anime is hilarious! It's great for the younger children even though I'm 17 and I felt like a little kid watching scooby doo in the mornings. This absolutely my most favorite anime in the adorable genre! I loved how it explained everything, there weren't a lot of cliff-hangers, it was a magical kind of anime

If you want to marathon a long anime and you don't like shounen-ai style anime, DO NOT START HERE! Hehe. If anyone knows me at all, you know darn well how much I dislike shounen-ai, and this show has it in spades. There is even a "reverse harem" for the main character. But its not hard core boy love like most come to associate with an anime labeled with "shounen-ai" its very mild and as such, isn't really that bad to watch for anyone who enjoys a decent adventure/shounen anime. The story evolves around a teenage boy named Yuri Shibuya. He's a normal teenage boywho loves baseball and enjoys normal things fifteen year olds like. But the story starts to progress when a bunch of bullies give him a swirlie (dunking his head in the toilet). In the toilet water, a portal opens up to an alternate reality where humans and 'demons' coexist. When he got flushed down the toilet I couldnt help but think of Inuyasha and how there was two coexisting dimensions in that show as well. To make a long story short, yuri happens to be a long awaited reincarnated king that is supposed to assume the throne of the 'demons.' Of course hilarity action and adventure ensues. The story is standard fare, with Yuri progressing and learning new things and helping others. All that is good and everything but it takes about 30-40 episodes till the real story line unfolds. Very similar to Inuyasha, Yuri must prevent the opposing powers from collecting certain peices that will bring the end of the world. It's a very generic plot but the stories intertwined with the main story are wat make it fairly interesting. The "boy-love" comedy bits troubled me a bit at first but further down it became more and more funny rather than annoying and there were parts thats I actually laughed out loud. Another great part of this show is how it makes fun of itself. Knowing that they are doing an anime thats been done numerous times before, they made different rules and regulations in this alternate universe. Episode 1 will introduce you to some the hilarious laws. Theres even countless puns and gay jokes galore. For what they're worth they're all pretty funny. It also helps that main characters all sound so macho and rough most of the time but also have a flipside/softside to all of them. Their macho side shows about 80% of the time, but their softside is just pure comedy gold in my opinon (personal favorite is Gwendal). But its not all males all the time (thank god), theres also a handful of woman characters in it as well. The girls all appeal to the male audience though with all of them having rather large breasts and beautiful faces. And a lot of the girls have their own silliness that makes this show such a treat. The art and animation of the show isn't very impressive at all which is a little surprising considering that it was made in 2004 and having 78 episodes. But i guess its safe to say that the art and animation is about average for for that time frame. Background and static art are all detailed enough but has a nice amount of "haze" to keep the quality from going any higher than low. The characters are drawn pretty good, all main characters having that 'pretty boy' look and the girls looking too perfect. If there was a comparison to the character art i think it would be close to Ouran Host Club. The sound and music are also mediocre as well, typical sound effects but nothing over the top. They're are pretty generic and im sure you can spot a few sound effects from other anime. The music is also very average/below average. Nothing very memorable about the music. And im not too fond of J-punk as the opening song (and its on ALL episodes) The ending songs do switch up at least and I did find Arigatou~ by BON'z (eps 40-on) to be pretty catchy and nice. Overall this is, at best, an average shounen/comedy with nothing really memoriable or worth putting on my "favortie anime" list. Its also best if viewed in short sets instead of a 3 day marathon. If you don't mind your comedy having naked boy's, boy love, cross dressing, gay love triangles, and other homosexual tendancies worth laughing at (think Darma and Greg), watch this show. But if you dont want to waste your time watching an average show with a dash of shounen-ai then dont watch this. By the way, if you take out the fillers this show can easily be 15-20 episodes (yes thats how many fillers it feels like that are in there) For a shounen anime, the main part is the path to the end not the plot. Unfortunately path they set isnt as memoriable.

I have to say - it took me almost three months to watch the whole thing. I had the first season on DVD, and I had to watch most of the second season on youtube since I only acquired a fansub recently. It was worth the wait. What will I do now? No more Kyo Kara Maoh! for me? Let's start with the story. I think the first episode usually defines how a series will go. I was laughing my pants off the first episode alone, and it was like that for most of the series. I really liked the concept - it did remind meof Fushigi Yuugi a bit, another seemingly normal teenager shipped off into a new world, rather flushed into a new world. That was only an initial reaction though. I forgot about comparing it to Fushigi Yuugi after a few episodes. I also have to note that this anime is easy to understand. I really think that an anime should be easy to understand and still be able to entertain everyone. The only problem I have with the series is it's "fillers-galore". It made the series longer than it needed to be, and I have to say that the creators did poorly with the time management and pacing. At first the fillers were amusing, but it got to the point where there were too many of them. I was a bit worried concerning the premise of yaoi. It's not yaoi after all, but it came really close to shonen - ai (but then again, is it really shonen - ai?). I found me and my brother screaming at the sight of Wolfram wearing his pink night gown, sleeping in Yuri's bed. I had the same reaction when Wolfram offered to scrub Yuri's back in one episode. While those scenes were a bit uncomfortable, they are just foot notes after all, and are usually for comedic relief. Although for some reason, I would like to see Gisela end up with Wolfram. I don't know why exactly. There was also the problem with Yozak cross dressing. He is such a good looking and muscular guy. Why be like Dennis Rodman, Yozak? No doubt about it, I like the drawing style. Most of what I like are the well drawn bishies, of course.I love the bishonens. My favorites are Wolfram and Konrad, but towards the end I was like "Ken's handsome too". Gwendal's not that bad either, although the wrinkles bothered me a bit. everything else is also considerably well drawn. The backgrounds are nice, and I like the color palette. I didn't find colors that clash together, etc. I would like to take note that the women in this anime are also nice drawn. My favorite is Anissina. She's the one who looks the most consistent (Is Cheri really that old?), and Greta's also adorable. At first I didn't really like the music. It wasn't the kind of music I would listen to, so my initial reaction was a miss. However, after hearing it constantly and repetitively, I learned to like it. I am proud to say I have memorized all the lyrics to the opening and ending themes. The background music was also considerably well. I realized the music complemented the scenes very well, and they were discreet enough to put focus on the scenes and not overshadow them. Voice acting was so - so. I realized that the seiyus had a hard time pronouncing their characters' names - Wolfram became Wolfram-u, Konrad became Konrad-o, and so on. Similar problems occured when the characters spoke in english as well. The seiyus are Japanese after all, so A for effort. All in all, I think that this anime is really good. I can't say it's the best I've seen, but it's almost there. The only problem I had with it was the pacing - as I've mentioned the anime didn't need to be that long. It had way too many fillers, and that keeps me from saying it's good enough for everyone to watch and to like.

"I'm surprised that a novel with so many plot holes was made into an anime" - series editor GEG It's just your typical isekai where MC gets flushed down a toilet and ends up in an isekai resembling medieval Europe and turns out that he's overpowered and everyone he meets just falls in love with him. The plot with the boxes had potential but the BL aspects that focus on and romanticize a toxic relationship between Yuuri and Wolfram ruins it all. Art and Animation: Even considering that the anime is made in 2004 both art and animation are abysmal. Looks like they wasted their entire budgeton drawing Wolfram's pretty face. The characters look terrible when the camera doesn't focus on their faces, art style keeps on changing from episode to episode, sometimes they have these huge eyes other times there's just too much shading, sometimes they look like sticks other times they might have some volume. Similarly animation doesn't have any consistency and keeps on changing throughout. The action scenes are very poorly animated, background looks like it was animated in power point. Setting and Story: The setting in itself is quite absurd, why would any sane person want to put a 15 year old who knows absolutely nothing about the kingdom or politics on the throne!? The first episode mentions that Yuuri's soul had to be sent to Earth since there was impending danger to his life in their world but then nothing of that sort ever happens, looks like they entirely forgot about it. At first it's shown that the demons are equally responsible for the conflicts occurring in their world and that is the reason Yuuri agreed to become the king but later it turns out that it's only the humans that are evil and you have the king of the main opposing kingdom who is a one-dimensional character that is evil simply for the sake of being evil. More than half of the series is just filler episodes and the pacing is quite bad. You'll most likely be questioning if this even has a story or is just episodic since the main underlying story doesn't start until the end of each season. Most of the episodes follow the same formula where the cast gets into trouble and in the end Yuuri unleashes his powers and solves the issue. Junji Nishimura did try to put in a lot of anime original explanations to fill in the plot holes from the LN but it still wasn't enough. For example the scene where Wolfram catches Yuuri from falling, it was physically and logically impossible for him to reach Yuuri given his only clue for searching Yuuri was the name of a continent and it happened in the middle of an earthquake. Characters and Relationships: Healthy relationships are built on respect, communication, and consent, this is something this series simply doesn't seem to understand. The author did mention that she's very bad at writing relationships and it clearly shows. The MC Shibuya Yuuri is your run-of-the-mill goody-two-shoes, he's cringy and practically useless as the king and leaves all the political stuff up to Gwendal and Gunter while preaching about the superiority of peaceful Japan. Then we have Wolfram who is the most insufferable character in the series, he has too much pride, starts off as being racist and is overly obnoxious. Wolfram gets engaged to Yuuri due to a mishap, he hated Yuuri at first but then magically fell in love with him for no reason what-so-ever. He's overly controlling, extremely jealous and both physically and verbally abusive towards Yuuri and Yuuri being a spineless wimp just tolerates all of Wolfram's abuses and doesn't put an end to the mistaken engagement simply because he doesn't want to hurt the feelings of his abuser despite claiming to be straight throughout the series. Conrad is honestly one of the best characters and the sole reason I don't drop the series, he's kind, caring and very loyal to Yuuri to the point he'd sacrifice himself for Yuuri's sake, his sad and dark past simply adds to his character. He's one of the most fleshed out characters if I say so myself. Then we have Gwendal and Anissina which is yet another toxic relationship with Anissina being an obnoxious feminist who constantly complains about all men being useless even though she herself isn't any useful. Gwendal is one of those characters that I actually like, he's tough on the outside but soft on the inside and likes everything cute. Unfortunately, just like Yuuri Gwendal doesn't have the guts to tell Anissina off. Speaking of bad relationships how can we forget Hube and Nicola, Hube is a middle aged dude who impregnated 15 year old Nicola and then abandoned her, thanks to Yuuri's intervention they do get together in the end but I can't see their relationship as flowery as the series make it out to be. All the female side characters are just fujoshis, including the Wolfram and Yuuri's mothers who try to constantly get these two together. And speaking of Wolfram's mother, Celi, she was the queen before Yuuri but only ever cared about sleeping around with multiple men instead of ruling the country which lead to a tragedy. She never even intervened when her third son was treating her second son like an untouchable for years together. The series falls pretty low and even uses a 10 year old to try and get Yuuri and Wolfram together because who can say no to a 10 year old cute girl, right? Conclusion: This series has too many fillers, lots of pacing issues, inconsistent and bad art and animation, flat characters. It truly deserves to be flushed down the toilet!