Zenki (Japan)

Rating: ***

Divided into thirteen installments.

Of course, there's a really cute and cheery heroine in this show, very much in the "Devil Hunter Yohko" (1990) vein. Sixteen year old Chiaki Enno just wants to be a normal teenage girl, but no, she happens to be the custodian of a powerful demon lord named Zenki. Normally, he's just an obnoxious brat with a knack for getting into trouble, but Chiaki turns him into his true mean and nasty form whenever danger and demons arise. Good animation with cute character designs, but sort of stagnant. The recycled transformation sequence gets tiring after a few episodes, but the monsters are always neat. The overall picture begins to develop around episode eight, which makes things much more interesting.