Boy am I glad I decided to pick up this anime. I’d been looking for something like Saiki K no Psi-Nan, one of my all-time favourites, and found this on the list of recommendations. The two anime are actually totally different in many aspects, but Hoozuki no Reitetsu definitely filled the void left by Saiki K, at least for a little while.

The anime was fun to watch, it was interesting, it had an utterly brilliant and hilarious set of characters, and it even ended up teaching me a lot of Japanese folktales and history. Granted, there were a lot of references that I either needed to look up or only knew from other anime/manga, but that isn’t a bad thing so no negative votes on that. It’s actually a tribute to the anime that I enjoyed it so much despite likely missing a lot of the references.

Okay, now to the individual parts of the series.

Art/animation – not fabulous or anything, but appropriate for the type of anime that was being shown. It’s a very specific style, reminiscent of the old paintings and drawings associated with the folktales themselves.
Sound – here I do have to say, I actually couldn’t stand the opening. It was one of the only ones that I’ve ever skipped every time in an anime. That is, until I found out what it meant, and then it just became hilarious. The rest of the sound was great, lots of old style music which again fit in perfectly, and the seiyuus were fantastic. Hozuki’s seiyuu, in particular, managed to capture his character so well.

Story – very episodic, random, and sometimes nonsensical. Many of the stories had a Gintama-like feel to them in the way that events unfolded or the way the characters reacted to them, and especially due to the amount of (well-handled) gag humour.

Characters – absolutely great. The cast was lively, quirky, interesting and hilarious. From the bumbling king of Japanese Hell to the whimsical playboy Hakutaku, the cast of somehow adorable trainee torturers and especially the utterly deadpan ‘coolheaded’ yet brutal general secretary Hozuki, there will always be someone who is enjoyable to watch. The characters don’t really get much in the way of development, it’s more about exploring their lives and the events happening around them than seeing how they grow throughout the series.

I guess you could call it a satire, or parody of the slice-of-life genre, but basically, it’s just a lot of amusing and entertaining insights into the life of an administrator of hell. Exactly what it says.
I’m not entirely sure who to recommend this to, but if you like series with a lot of deadpan humour, episodic stories or general randomness – like Gintama, Saiki K, Arakawa Under the Bridge, One Punch Man, or Nichijou (The daily lives of High School Boys), try checking this out.