Ushio & Tora fits all of the stereotypes of bad shonen anime: ugly character designs, lots of fighting, and a "save the female love interest" plot line. However, get past all of that and you have a genuinely funny OAV series.

The show starts out a lot like Tenchi Muyo! (teenager living in his family's shrine who thinks his father is full of crap stumbles on ancient demon living somewhere on property), but this demon isn't a woman, it's a really big lion-looking thingy who's kiiiiiinda pissed off for being locked in the basement for 500 years. Ushio leaves him there (he'd be stupid not to... the thing was rather loud in his plans to eat him). The problem is that just throwing open the door to his chamber let loose all these little tiny demons, and Tora has to get the big demons help to destroy them all. (Ushio names him "Tora," which is Japanese for "Lion.") Of course, his tomboyish love interest routinely gets in trouble, and what starts out as an angry "why-am-I-helping-him?" relationship turns out all lovey-lovey.

I'll be blunt: this is really, really corny. It's also pretty darn funny. There's certainly nothing to separate this title from all the other hordes of comedic adventure anime out there, but it's worth watching once.

The dub... yes, the dub. Well, it's not great. Tora is really good, but Ushio fumbles a bit, and his girl interests really really suck. One of them has a really bad British accent, while the other talks like a reject from Clueless. Worse yet, the writing for all of the characters is just one bad clichÈ after another.

Ushio and Tora isn't the best thing on the shelf in any anime collection (unless the only other thing you have happens to be M.D. Geist). It's a good watch, but not a good buy.