Abenobashi Mahou Shotengai (Abenobashi Magical Shopping District) is the tale of two children, a boy and a girl, who live in a shopping area of Japan.
The first episode is rather dull, serving merely to introduce the characters. Then, in episode 2, all hell breaks loose. The children find themselves transported to a medieval world that seems suspiciously similar to that of Dragon Warrior. Their parents and friends are the NPCs of the world. After adventuring enough, the kids discover a demon that will transport them back to their home world.
Or so they think. They end up in a space station instead. And it continues on like this. Each episode, they travel to a different genre of anime stereotype and try to find their way home.
Only in the later episodes is it revealed why they aren't reaching their home world. At this point the anime loses its humorous edge and is not as enjoyable.
Overall I'd give it a 7/10. The early episodes are hysterical; the remainder just doesn't uphold that level of entertainment. If nothing else I recommend you watch the first four episodes.
I saw the first four episodes at Otakon, and would give them a 10/10. I don't know anything else about the rest of the series.
The manga roughly follows the same stroyline, but is in some ways quite... different. If the anime made you uneasy, the manga will cause severe brain hemorrhages.
When I first started this series, I figured I'd like it. It started off with ecchi parody which is general an easy win with me. My problem was that it didn't pull it off well. It'd flip right through a genre, toss out a few quick rapidfire cliches, reduce the mains into a set of quick cliches, and fire right into another genre next episode. The speed at which the story was delivered hurt it. Having stopped after watching a little over half of it, they still hadn't really touched the main plot aside from brief snippets tossed on the side near the end of the episodes. It was just blah. A good 'idea' marred by lame production.
Dracos
The plot does end up being interesting; it's just that they lose the "funny" which was the strength of it.
5-6 eps too many for the premise, and talk about ramming the point home... the first few eps are fun though.