AllMovie

Originally titled Gash Bell, this half-hour Japanese anime series was based on the manga by Makato Raiku. The premise: Every millennium, 100 Mamodo from outer space were sent to earth to battle for supremacy. Although not children, the Mamodo looked and acted like kids, and thus needed youthful human partners (actually counterparts) to activate their powers, as dictated in their ancient spell books. The winner, of course, would become King of Mamodo--but should one of the spell books be destroyed, the owner of that book would instantly disintegrate. The hero of the piece was Zatch Bell, an amnesiac Mamodo who was discovered and rescued by the archeologist father of junior high student Kiyo. Although Zatch and Kiyo were unaware of the awesome powers at their fingertips, they soon learned--especially when threatened by the series' various villainous Mamodo-King wannabes. For its American debut, Zatch Bell was served up as part of Cartoon Network's "Toonami" manifest on March 1, 2005.