The joke is that a kid gets magic powers and absolutely nothing works the way it's supposed to. Taruruto's spells backfire, his transformations are humiliating, his enemies are somehow stupider than he is. Comedy this earnest, this committed to the bit for 87 episodes straight, either bores you instantly or becomes the only thing you want to watch. The show knows it's ridiculous and never apologizes for it. A real magical boy parody doesn't wink at the genre, it just lets a kid fail catastrophically every single week and laughs harder than you do.

Edojou Honmaru is a fifth grader and one of the most picked-on kids in his class. His luck changes when he meets Taruruuto, a magical boy whose powers help him cope with everything that troubles him, from girls to bullies to plenty of other problems. The TV series adapts Tatsuya Egawa's manga from Weekly Shounen Jump and mixes comedy and fighting with fantasy adventure and some ecchi humor.