Gokudo

Enter our (for lack of a better word) 'hero'. We find Gokudo in some random medieval dive, trying hard to brush off an old foretuneteller who's warning him that the Magic King is out to kill him. To really set the tone for the series, we watch him: 1, con a free meal out of her; 2, nick her coinpurse; and 3, make good his escape by way of a vile burst of flatulence on his way out the front door. The joke's on him, though... not only does her purse turn out to contain a rock (instead of the gold or gems he was more or less hoping for), but when he throws it against the nearest wall a genie (not so imaginatively named Djinn) pops out. Gokudo promptly wishes for fame, gold, and 'hot babes', which only results in the genie launching into a moral lecture about the human condition and why the former shouldn't squander his wishes on such base desires. And that's just the first few minutes of the episode. To give you a better feel for the blitzkrieg pace of the show, we then proceed quickly th

We learn that his cellmates include Rubette (a bona fide princess who's a lot more interested in a good swordfight than in waiting for Prince Charming to show up), Asuga (that landlord's daughter he was paid to rescue, but blew off instead) and Mora (a mysterious 'hot babe' with a preternatural awareness of magical traps). While searching for some way of out of the Magic King's parlous castle, they run across Seigi, your typical 'Prince Valiant' style caricature... handsome, gallant, charming, noble, and bland. While Asuga swoons, Gokudo's ready to vomit, and it's only through further manipulation by Mora (mainly by appealing to his endless greed for gold) that he agrees to help the others kill the King. Oh, yeah, and Gokudo's actually a 'prince' himself. Well, sorta. Fortunately for him, this revelation is made by someone in a position also to revert him back to his male self.

In the final episode of this three-part arc, our heroes converge on the throne room (only after contending with a hall of enchanted mirrors and Gokudo's abortive attempt to throw in with their enemies). The Magic King apparently didn't get the memo that Gokudo's rotten to the core, though, because he attacks the party with a knockout gas that only affects people with 'a good heart'. While his mates fall into a drugged stupor, Gokudo merely laughs and cuts loose with his very own 'gas attack', which, erm, 'revives' the lot of them. (I did warn you this wasn't an intellectual programme, right?) In the end, this whole epic combat turns out to be a marital spat between the Magic King and his 'lovely' wife... the same wrinkled crone that Gokudo ripped off two episodes back, who's also the genie's boss.

Starting off a new adventure (and ditching Seigi and Asuga, thankfully), this episode has the rare distinction of killing Gokudo in the first few minutes, as he gets accidentally shoved off a cliff by Rubette, who had been dogging his steps since he escaped from the Eschallato empire. (For the curious, he used his last wish to get Djinn to turn him back into a commoner after a frightening bout with the strictures of royal life.) But he's still interested in getting filthy rich, so it's not hard for one of the three princesses of Parmette - after resurrecting him, natürlich - to convince him to sign up for something called 'the King's Race'. Not that Gokudo has a clue what he's getting himself into. Highlights include a confrontation with the 'Dumpling King', a restaurateur-cum-martial-artist whom Gokudo (unsurprisingly) gipped out of a sizable meal at some point in the past.

Here's another good example of what's endearing about Gokudo. Take your basic fantasy premise (Parmette is a land awash with magic, but something has gone terribly wrong with the natural order of things), focus on a ridiculous consequence of same (the mythical beasts of the region have lately been metamorphosing into preposterous hybrid monsters, like the 'fearsome' sand parrot), and then do an anachronistic take on the situation (the kingdom derives most of its revenue from tourism, with people travelling thousands of miles to gawk at Parmette's weird creatures... which are now so silly-looking that no one wants to see them and the royal coffers are dangerously close to emptying). Of course, this episode also manages to work in a wisecracking unicorn, a Sphinx that gets so annoyed at Gokudo that she demands a 'moon drop' instead of asking a proper riddle, and a little demon masquerading as a monk of wisdom called Ikkyu, who is so taken with how evil Gokudo himself is that he actually

As those of you who read my review of the first volume may recall, when we last left our – ahem – 'heroes', Gokudo had somehow stumbled into a three-man race with the prize being the Parmettian Empire. Summoning Princess Coco to help him solve the riddle of the Sphinx, it soon becomes obvious (even to someone as thick as Gokudo) that she knows more than she's letting on. She finally spills that Parmette, whose biggest tourist pull and source of income is its wealth of exotic monsters, is in serious trouble ever since the kingdom's magical energy mysteriously started draining away. Apparently the Goddess has disappeared, and the way Coco tells it, Gokudo's destined to be the one that brings her back and saves the empire. As you might imagine, both the audience and Gokudo himself have cause to be sceptical in the light of such an outrageous claim... but when the demon Ikkyu returns just in time with moondrop demanded by the Sphinx, the entire party is granted permission to enter the roya