This is painful. The Ganbare Goemon games are some of my favorites, with an interesting world, a unique sense of humor, and memorable characters. This anime strips out nearly all the charm of the games, turning Goemon into one of the most generic, by-the-numbers anime I've ever seen. This anime regrettably follows the tried-and-trite formula of game-to-anime adaptations, where the focal character isn't the protagonist of the games, but some ordinary kid who serves as an audience surrogate. Enter Tsukasa, a dreadfully boring boy who meets Goemon when he pops out of his TV and emerges from his original video game world - meaning the anime takesplace in contemporary 1990s Japan instead of the unique Edo world of the Ganbare Goemon games. Nearly every episode is about Tsukasa facing some problem or another that Goemon and his friends help him build confidence in solving, and none of them are interesting.

So, it's already a show that mostly focuses on some new kid instead of the game characters, but even the game characters themselves are watered-down versions of their original selves. Goemon - who in the games is a wry, short-tempered but still good-natured guy - is reduced to a generic squeaky-clean hero; he even calls himself "Goemon the Good." His co-stars Ebisumaru, Yae, and Sasuke are similarly sanded down into generic good guys without any of the edges they had in the games.

The villain, Seppukumaru, is refreshingly entertaining and carries the spirit of his game counterpart - so of course they had to kill him off halfway through the series and replace him with an anime-original villain whose main quirk is being itchy. Yawn.

This series is dreadful, and not even the giant-robot Impact battles can save it. It's not even worth viewing as a curiosity, even if you're a Goemon fan. Leave this anime in the dust where it belongs.