Jigoku Sensei Nube

I actually watched this anime a few years ago, when I was still in primary. This was when I started watching anime. Hell Teacher Nube, as a starting point is not bad. One of the best animes of it's time, I say.

Basically, it's a school story with all the weird and scary things you wish could happen to you in a real school, that is, if you're into ghosts and that kind of stuff.
Hell Teacher Nube is an anime about a schoolteacher with a demon claw in ... the place of his right hand, which he covers with a black glove, and all the hilarious and touching and sometimes just weird adventures he has with his students as what seems like the entire pantheon of Japanese lower mythology causes havoc in their school and town.
Nube and the students deal with ghosts, UFO's, youkai, oni, doppelgangers, curses...you name it, they'll take care of it.
Urban legends are also incorporated into the episodes...spirits of suicides in bathrooms, ghosts appearing in photographs, odd gods...
What else could you want in a supernatural school anime?
The best part of this anime are the stories. When I watched it, the wonder of all the crazy creatures and the wacky characters was a lot of fun. But what hooked me was that it was my first foray into Japanese superstitious culture. The stories are absolutely great!

Hell Teacher Nube is an episodic horror anime which blends with comedy, some action & the occasional episodes making you feel fuzzy inside.

Nube is an elementary school teacher who has an Oni sealed into his left hand. During his role as a teacher, he develops a great relationship with his students vowing to always protect them from danger. This is constantly proven when his precious students are attacked by ghosts, yokai, & other supernatural demons. While the series is episodic, it later adds more characters such as Yukime the snow demon & Tamamo a fox sorcerer which increases the quality of the anime.

Episodes contain a ... blend of comedy & horror, however sometimes its focus will be more on horror which can be very disturbing at times.(Ep31 & 44) Other episodes can be more comedy based or either touch upon an important morality lesson which tend to be some of the better episodes such as ep28 being about xmas. It should also be noted that the main character can vary every episode as some are focused on Nube while others are based on his students.

One of the highlights of this series is Nube himself as he a shonen hero in every respect and is a well written character who shifts from a wise mentor to a comedic love crazed buffoon. I should mention that a love triangle forms in the anime which intentionally was done for laughs but towards the end of the series becomes a very serious subject.

Overall, Hell Teacher Nube delivers in entertainment at times being a much darker version of Goosebumps. It may have a monster of the week formula but it's not a battle series & provides much more content as a whole. Examples include some of its dramatic storytelling and the good nature of people such as eps (20 &34 aka Nube's origin) or possibly the best heart touching episodes being 47 & 48. It may take some time to getting into, but you may end up loving this anime. Whenever you finish the anime, I recommend to watching the 2nd movie & the OVAs. The OVA episodes are actually cannon, being based on much later manga chapters with its final episode being the best way to finish the anime series.

Jigoku Sensei Nabe. I mean Nube.

This is a fairly faithful adaptation of manga, which, unfortunately, skips several manga chapters, and tones down material quite a lot (I suppose to make it suitable for TV). Due to doning down of material it is also weaker than manga counterpart.

It is a very solid/quality show, which is, unfortunately not outstanding. It has couple of amazing episodes, and few great moments, but number of those is fairly small. Out of 49 episodes maybe 5 were truly memorable. The rest is just alright.

Differences compared to manga: some of the brutal/gory moments from manga are toned down, changed ... or removed. Several deaths do not occur in anime, and gory horror moments are heavily toned down when possible. For example, instead of open wounds on sliced monsters we see silhouettes, some people don't die horribly in this adaptation, and so on. Also... compared to manga, story feels less dynamic.

Due to (slightly) toned down story you'd think this almost qualifies for kid's show... but on occasion it throws body horror and very tense moments. Which doesn't happen often. Still, it definitely feels like an attempt to make the story more child-friendly.

Anyway.

Here's detailed breakdown:

Story: 6/10
The story mostly follows episodic monster of the week structure, occasionally some events happen across multiple episodes. Meaning that even though though episodes are mostly unrelated to each other, few events happen in order. The reason why the story is 6/10 and not 5/10 because of few episodes I liked where the anime managed to shine (by being darker or more interesting). At core material is pretty much close to some sort of campfire stories and describes supernatural occurrences that are inexplicably centered around the same school.

Art: 5/10:
It is a tv show from 1990s. It wasn't done on shoestring budget, and doesn't look terrible (for example, it looked much better than Narutaru), but it could've been better. Animes of comparable quality would be.... hmm.... perhaps, slayers tv series, or ranma. Meaning fairly well detailed, but not outstanding.

Sound: 5/10:
Opening starts almost as a death metal composition, but quickly devolves into a sillier tune. There was a small number of interesting motives in background music, but overall music doesn't stand out and is forgettable.

Characters: 4/10:
Characters are not very well portrayed. They aren't stereotypical or bad, but they're not very believable. Due to amount of supernatural stuff that occurs in the school in question it is hard to believe when Nube dismisses someone's concern, or when people act in reckless fashion regarding possible yokai. Nube as a character is quite annoying, I also strongly disliked Ritsuko sensei. The problem with Nube is that he is portrayed as a completely incompetent idiot when it comes to women (or anything that is not yokai), and in some scenes I was feeling sorry for his objects of romantic interest. Ritsuko-sensei are completely one-dimensional and barely displays any character, ever, her primary job is getting angry at Nube. Quite a lot of characters are close to being one-dimensional, meaning they do what plot tells them, most of the time. The most interesting characters from the whole cast were Miki, Kyoko and to some extent Hiroshi. Yukime was also somewhat interesting, but Ritsuko sensei, and Nube's antics pretty much impacts show negatively.

Still, some of the side characters were interesting and amusing, which included some of the youkai.

Enjoyment: 5/10.
IT was alright, but that's about it. I'm not sure why I watched it, but I didn't hate it. I did enjoy few rare episodes that were of higher quality.

Overall: 5/10.
It is a decent show, but not a masterpiece.
I think checking out the manga instead of anime might be a good idea with this one. Overall the anime gives impression of being aimed at either children or young kids, if not for the occasional instances of body horror. Art style isn't bad, and some of the characters are cute. So... may be worth picking up for retro visuals or to kill some time.