Konjiki no Gash Bell!! or Zatch Bell for those gaijin westerners.

The only way I can think of how to describe it is the illegitimate love child of Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale and Pokémon.

The basic premise of the story is that every thousand years demon children come to earth and seek out human partners. Each demon has a spell book and the criteria for a human to become a demon’s partner is that they are able to read the spells written in the book. Apparently for each demon there is only one person in the entire world that will be able to read their book.

I’m still not sure if the demons can die in the human world. The series never really shows any demon deaths. Sure they get beaten to a pulp and all bloodied up but it seems the only way to defeat them is to burn their spell book. Burning the book simply sends them back to the demon world and any demon that takes damage that would seem to be fatal, their book automatically catches fire.So once the demons obtain their partners they are forced to battle each other until only one remains. The final demon wins the thousand year battle and will become the new king of the demon world.

The series follows, Kiyo Takamine, a 14-year old boy in junior high school who believes his superior intelligence makes him better than others. His father, Seitaro Takamine, discovers an unconscious demon named Gash Bell while in a forest in England. Takamine’s father sends Gash to live with Kiyo in hopes that Gash will be able to show his son the value of friendship. Unlike the other demons, Gash lost his memory of the demon world. Kiyo learns about the spell book when he accidentally reads a spell causing Gash to fire lightning from his mouth. As Kiyo and Gash begin to encounter different Demons and learn more about the Demon battles, they discover that there are those who do not wish to fight and there are those who fight for the wrong reasons. After meeting a Demon named Kolulu and seeing how she was forced to fight against her will due to the power of her spells, Gash promises to become a kind king in order to stop the battle from ever happening again. As the story progresses, Gash and Kiyo meet other Demons that share similar views to them and become allies.

The story is fun and it’s interesting to see how Gash and his allies gain new spells and how they use their new abilities in battle. The down side to this series is that it could be told in it’s entirety in about 40 – 50 episodes. The producers however seemed to have wanted to stretch the series out so they added about a hundred episodes of filler. The series also suffers from filler music videos. Kinda like how Sailor moon and her crew took fifteen minutes to transform in each eppisode leaving only ten minutes for plot progression.

Some of the music is cute and catchy like Victoreem’s Very melon

but there’s also the horribly overused hit song of Folgore, Chichi Chichi Oppai

… Ok, so bear in mind that this is a kids show, let me break down the lyrics of that last song.

Chichi chichi oppai. Boin boin. Moge moge moge. Chichi wo moge.
Which roughly translated goes…
Titties titties breast. Large breasted woman large breasted woman. Grope grope grope. Groping breast…Brilliant!

It’s a fun watch if you have the time. I give it 06 chichi’s out of 10 oppai.
06/10

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