Glory be.
Like i'm sure a great many of the people who overcame any bad press they may have heard about this here series, I have some very fond memories of growing up with mega/super bomberman, and can assure you I would not have bothered getting this if I had not.
And so very glad I am that I did!
I can honestly say this is the least dissappointing unecessarily long series i've ever watched.
While it wont win any awards graphically, it wont get boo-ed out the theatre either. Each char gets a pallette of maybe ten colours per scene, which is left as an overlay, meaning it looks extremely plastic and 2 dimensional. But this works. Against absurdly detailed backgrounds, the characters really stand out.
Soundwise could be a point of contention, depending which points you prefer to contend on:
There are maybe 20 individual backing tracks, and at least one is repeated every episode. As such, when the drama/emotional piano bit comes on for example, its lost most of its lustre as it has been used EVERY SINGLE EPISODE for the same reason. Which is a shame because the lot of it is pretty well composed from a technical angle.
Voice actor wise it has Chiyo-Chan.
ok?
Chiyo-chan.
And a bunch of other people.
Unfortunately due to the nature of japanese "childrens programming", they either stand still looking constipated, shouting names, run around a lot, shouting names, or stand off the screen, shouting names. As such, their considerable competence is diminished by the constant need to turn the volume down.
BUT!
They know how to tell a good story. The plot for this has backflipped at least three times throughout the 52 episodes, and while it dragged on occassionaly, every time I was about to give up, something significant happened. A hall mark of the show really, when you think its about to degenerate into a by-the-numbers slot filler, it points at you, laughs and does something to be expected from a seriously serious series.
The characters making this happen had a fair bit of thought put into them, but they wont be prompting fanfiction any time soon. For each character there is a basis to be someone significant, but even with their lengthy development Not Very Much is actually done with them. Three major exceptions exist for this rule, and it is their stories that truly make this justified.
However, I have one major annoyance with this series, and that is it is, unfortunately, UNECESSARILY LONG. It will be a cold frozen apocalypse world before I think of rewatching this full series, but I might some day, with some small children on my knee pick an episode at random because they can all be watched out of sequence (with the exception of the ending). As such its 2 DVD+R's that exist solely so my harddrive is uncluttered.
But it was well worth watching first time through. As a short persons animation, it will not get very much praise from us esoteric hipsters who are likely to watch it in it's un-americanised glory, but if you will give it the time and dont expect a groundbreaker, it will exceed your expectations.