Demon Fighter Kocho

Original Title: 厄災仔寵
Romanized: Yakusai Kochou
Literal: Disaster Kochou

Plot Synopsis

Kocho Enoki came all the way from Taiwan to study Astrology from the rather unassuming professor Kamo at Heian University. Along with her not-really-boyfriend Kosaku (whom she fights over with her rather worldly high-school-aged sister Koran), she is a member of the little-known Astrology Club. When the school is stricken with an increasingly violent spate of supernatural attacks, it's up to these four semi-competent heroes to use their dubious supernatural talents to get to the bottom of the haunting and banish the evil.

Review

Rating: 1.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-10-19

Demon Fighter Kocho has the basic idea right--cute girls, dirty jokes, some semi-scary ghosts, and maybe a bit of action on the side. Problem is it's as short as it is lowbrow, so even though it's not outright bad it's also not much worth watching.

Basically Devil Hunter Yohko without the action or even the pretense of horror, Demon Fighter Kocho doesn't even try to be serious. The humor may be base, but the characters break the fourth wall enough to elicit a chuckle or two, including a mildly amusing potshot at overkill narration. There are three or four good gags, including the world's most hideous transformation sequence: The cute girls end up sans-clothing a lot, but it's the tubby professor who does it in classic anime style, with another character speaking up for the viewers and pointing out just how wrong it is. Wrong, but it made me laugh, anyway.

The characters are as sleazy as the humor. If you ignore the intro there are only four speaking roles in the whole thing, and except for Kocho, who's generically perky, the other three are all dirty-minded in at least passably amusing ways. The young male lead is... well, the young male lead, although a little more lecherous than average. The professor is the high point--he plays the wise demon fighting trainer, but half of everything he does is an excuse (pointed out by the other characters) to get somebody naked or leer at them. Kocho's younger sister is distinctive, anyway--a "kogal"-type character that you rarely see in anime, she's a brazen hussy, but there's at least one half-decent dirty joke that comes of it.

Hey, I give credit for being an equal-opportunity exploiter--one female character as dirty-minded as the men, and there's some wholly unnecessary male nudity, even if you'll really wish there wasn't.

Demon Fighter Kocho's other strength is that it's reasonably good looking. The animation is acceptable, the character designs stock but passably cute (except for the distinctive professor), and the backgrounds are at least functional (some shadowy school locales, but nothing I'd call creepy). Kocho's sister also has a heavily-tanned look going on (not full-on ganguro, though), again rare in anime. There isn't, however, any action to speak of--people jump around and use demon-busting magic, but it's just flash, not fighting.

That's the positives. The negatives are pretty obvious: It's as sleazy as all get-out, takes every opportunity to expose some female flesh, is shamelessly unoriginal, there's no character development at all (heck, there isn't even any character establishment, for that matter), and if you charitably call the progression of events a "plot" it still feels more like a set-up for a series than a standalone story. It's also a little too willingly dirty to qualify as a full-on parody. Plus, at under a half hour long you don't even get much bang for your buck. At least it keeps the pace up throughout.

The acting in Japanese is decent--energetic, if nothing else. I did like the professor--he's given a distinctive voice with a hint of sleaze by Kouji Ishii (who voiced the main character in Black Heaven). I only glanced at the English dub, which has the humor altered significantly (in particular less 4th-wall-breaking) but sounds reasonably good. The music isn't even noticeable except for the end theme, which is sung by someone who actually has a bit of talent and gets credit for having something to do with the plot, not to mention a whole lot of vague innuendo about "demon gates."

In all, Demon Fighter Kocho is too dirty and unoriginal to appeal to most, and even if you do enjoy the leering and sleazy humor, it's so short that it's not worth more than a rental anyway. It'd be a decent target for mocking with friends except the humor is so self-aware that the characters will beat you to most of the punchlines.

Related Recommendations

Nearly identical to the variety of Devil Hunter Yohko movies, but somewhat sillier and lighter on the horror-action. For a less randy take on the not-so-serious haunted school thing, there's Haunted Junction and Phantom Quest Corp. also has some fairly lighthearted paranormal investigation.

US DVD Review

The DVD has nifty-looking box art, and includes English and Japanese stereo audio and an accurate English subtitle track. The video looks reasonably good, although the credits are a little weird--the English crawl is over a montage of scenes from the show that look very grainy, and the song subtitles are hardcoded onto a garish border around the video and credits. The only special feature is a "behind the microphone" section of outtakes (with video) from the dubbing studio and some video from the cast party. On the positive side, this is quite long, and you get to see the actors working (or goofing off), which is kind of neat if you're into behind the scenes stuff. On the negative side, it's quite long (cumulatively longer than the entire feature, in fact), and the outtakes aren't generally very funny, so I lost interest after a bit. Still, some should find it interesting, and Kocho's voice actress is certainly lively in the studio.

Content Guide

Anime Works calls it 16-up, and with good reason--dirty humor and semi-explicit mature content abounds.

Violence: 1 - There's some fighting, but it's sparse and mild.

Nudity: 3 - Not voluminous, but a moderate amount of flesh.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - A number of significantly dirty jokes and some offscreen hanky-panky.

Language: 2 - Some profanity in both the dub and subtitles.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a comic series of the same name by Nonki Miyasu. It's not available in English as of this writing.

Kocho's sister Koran is specifically called a "kogal" in the story, though the subtitles just went with something similar. For those unfamiliar with Japanese fashion trends, "kogal" (technically "kogyaru") is subculture of older high school girls and young women known for being obsessed with expensive designer clothing and accessories, wearing blatantly sexy clothing, and a tendency toward being extroverted and openly sexual. They also frequently have artificially tanned skin and lightened hair like Koran, although they don't take it as far as the Ganguro look and subculture that they share many similarities with.

Availability

Available in the US from Anime Works on bilingual DVD. RightStuf has it on clearance for $4 while supplies last.

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