The debt this series owes to Excel Saga is obvious and considerable, and wile I love both series, to me this has the edge in my affections. Sasshi and Arumi\'s efforts take them from one genre parody to another week by week, but unlike Excel Saga\'s scattergun "just because I said so" approach, the whole affair has a coherent and moderately serious storyline running through it, tying everything together. That one can maintain a single overarching plot through an RPG world, a kung fu world, a scifi world, a gangster world, a warfare world and so on is impressive enough.
But the fact that you needn\'t follow the plot, if you don\'t want to, is also pretty smart. If you prefer, you can generally ignore the overarching plot and concentrate on the humour, of which there is lots, and it doesn\'t really let up; none of excel\'s recycling here, no "cute animal anime skit number three". The exceptions are a couple of episodes that in fact aren\'t all that funny and are mostly concerned with the overarching plot, a bit of a weakness. Perhaps with a little more polish this element could have been spread across the whole spread of episodes, and as it is, it does require some concentration to fully \'get\' the plot. No matter, I found myself laughing my ass off most of the time anyhow.
Graphically, Abenobashi Magical Shopping Arcade has nothing very special about it - but it\'s a rare comedy that dazzles the eyes too. Everything is however perfectly unobjectionable, with character design probably the most impressive aspect. All the supporting cast, the familiar faces from around the Shotengai, appear in a new form for every episode; it\'s easy to take for granted the way they all fit straight in to whatever setting, yet are instantly recogniseable, no small feat in actuality.
There\'s a mostly jazz-flavoured soundtrack, the BGM nothing incredible, generic but pleasing, and far from seeming out of kilter; like character design it is easy to take for granted its modification to fit the setting of each episode. The opening theme is infectiously catchy and great fun, one of my favourites among Hayashibara Megumi\'s many, many happy songs. The ending theme is also one of hers, and is gentle and lovely, the sort of music that makes you think of summer sunshine.
Basically, Abenobashi Magical Shopping Arcade is one of those rare things that is as complicated as you want it to be. It can be just a parody humour show, or a more complicated tale with serious points to make about urban decline and the loss of community feeling, and also about genre cliches, if you like, on top of simply being funny as hell. You gets more than you pays for, for once.
