Cinnamon Ass

OP - Justice of Darkness ~Theme of Youkai Ningen Bemu~ (Hiroshi Kitadani) - I love old-school anime OPs, they tell you the plot AND make you laugh from the cheesiness; we even get Bemu saying “hayaku, ningen ni naritai!” in a portentous voice.

ED - Hachigatsu no Eien (Minako Yoshida) - a rather dreary, forgettable song, and an animation I’ve totally forgotten it was that good. Ah well, the OP makes up for it.

Bemu (big bloke with cane), Bera (feisty female with whip) and Bero (mildy irritating red jump=suited child) are humanoid monsters who came from the sea and want to become human (as the opening helpfully tells us). Together they fight evil demons! This episode, there’s an evil old man implanting some kind of evil slug demon in people; it swallows some punks and a train before Bemu, Bera and Bero take care of it.

Oh,and Bera goes house-hunting,, and Bero makes a friend who looks beyond appearances and loves all creatures! Well, except she faints with shock when she sees Bero transform into his full monster form (they can’t speak, it’s great, they just make funny noises!); however, she feels so guilty for ostracising him after she hears her parents praising whoever saved the train full of people that they make up. Aaaw.

Bemu, on the other hand, does nothing except fight in this episode; since the series is named after him, you’d think he’d actually be more important, but I guess not!

The original Ningen Youkai Bemu aired in 1968, and recently ranked 78th in TV Asahi’s poll of the top 100 anime of all time. Everything looks pretty much the same as it did back then, except with higher animation quality, really (and I have no idea if Bero’s friend, whose name I have forgotten, was in the old series); some of the animation is actually quite impressive given how “old school” the show looks.

With that said, there is absolutely nothing here that makes me want to watch Ningen Youkai Bemu on a regular basis. It’s not a bad show by any means, but it’s also not especially interesting; as a kid’s TV show it would be fine (even if the monsters are a bit creepy) and since it airs at 7 o’clock on Saturday evenings I think it’s on at the best time for it, but I won’t be tracking this one down again.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 9:01 am and is filed under One Shot Wonders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.