Hana no Zundamaru

Before I begin this review, it's worth noting that I am the first to review this title on MAL. It is my belief that every anime deserves at least one proper review, deserves to have its content engaged and reckoned with. No matter how obscure it is, and no matter how long ago it was made, an anime still represents the creative passion of its creators, the hopes and dreams of the team that made it, and as such, I will give this one a fair and honest accounting here. Hana no Zundamaru is good old Saturday morning fun. It flies by at a milea minute, with some excellent comedic pacing, with much of the comedy being wordplay, cultural references, and of course, a fair bit of toilet humor. The story is the perfect canvas for this, and is the strongest aspect of the anime for the comedic value of the writing alone. Various ninja schools exist, and they all take up different tasks and jobs as part of their training and business model. Zundamaru is an underachieving, second-rate ninja, despite his boundless and often misguided enthusiasm, which prompts his principal, Kouchou, to try and kill him by sending him on impossible missions, which he often survives by dumb luck, getting distracted by pretty girls along the way. Even his dynamic with Sayuri, from a rival ninja school, manages to be consistently funny. That's one thing that I can say for sure, is that this anime is good for a lot of laughs, even if it just amounts to comedy shorts without much substance behind them, and some of the more culturally-specific Japanese jokes won't quite land with a foreign audience. Even so, this anime sets out to be funny and ends up being surprisingly so- that is if you can keep up with the rapid dialogue communicated to the viewer by a set of lightning-fast subtitles. The rest of the anime leaves much less to talk about. The art is mediocre, though I feel this sketchy, tactile style is a purposeful one, and enhances the comedy throughout, especially the visual slapstick, of which there is quite a bit. The sound is good, meeting the basic standards of quality that you'd expect from a title like this. The characters are also good, existing as the instruments of comedy- of them, Zundamaru and Sayuri are my favorites. Zundamaru feels like your classic cartoon protagonist, fit to air on Saturday mornings with his zany, harebrained energy. When paired with the art style, I even think he would feel right at home in an American cartoon like Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Meanwhile, Sayuri also exhibits similar elements, namely through her contentious romance with Zundamaru, and the fact she turns into a little gremlin type character when she gets upset. Overall, I think this comparison to western cartoons is the best way to describe the kind of humor this anime puts on display, and indeed, it has a good command of it. It's hard to say exactly why this title's so obscure- maybe it's because it's based off a Japanese children's cartoon from the 60s, or maybe because it only exists as a series of 5 minute episodes, but in any case, I think more people should sit down and give it a chance, as it really is quite funny.