Arriving on blu-ray with bells on is the wacky demon comedy Onipan! from Sentai Filmworks. Grab your shorts, slip ’em on and get ready for some silly shenanigans of Oni proportions!
Himawari, Tsutsuji and Tsuyukusa are young oni who are sent to Earth as goodwill ambassadors for oni-kind. They are tasked with doing good deeds to improve relations between humans and oni and are given magic puffy yellow shorts that when worn over their clothing allows them to transform into various helpful costumes. While attending school as part of their mission, they also run across Momo Momozono, a descendent of the great demon hunter Momotaro, who they become immediate frenemies with. We proceed to watch the girls try to drum up positive oni/human relations by helping build a mech robot, putting on a cooking contest and even becoming J-pop idols. Can they succeed or will they be replaced by more legendary oni better suited to the job?
Onipan! is a series that is meant to be taken pretty lightly. It consists of twelve 10-minute episodes and rarely escalates into any kind of serious conflict. The biggest antagonistic challenge they are forced against is late in the series when the legendary oni show up to replace them. But it’s really just a motivation to push them to succeed with no serious stakes at heart. Honestly though? I think that’s fine. Not every anime has to have an all-powerful hero saving the world from death-bringing terrors. Sometimes it’s ok to have a cute, fun show with some silly demon girls trying their best to make people happy. All the characters are pretty one-note (the bubbly one, the feisty one and the laid back, odd one) but with half the length of a regular 12-episode series, characterization is going to take a back seat to antics.
The video quality is nice and clean as one would expect of a newer anime series. This show is very brightly colored and looks quite nice in HD. On the audio front, we have just a DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track in Japanese (sorry dub fans… you’ll have to learn to read!) but it does the job adequately. On the extras front, we have the usual Japanese promos and clean OP and ED animations.
If you’re looking for a light, fun show that doesn’t take itself seriously at all to spend a couple hours with, Onipan! will do the job in a pinch for sure.