Kuro no Su: Chronus

There are two anime studios I can safely say I’m a huge fan of without any real caveats: Ghibli and Studio 4c. The former delivers for me more in terms of consistency, but the latter is by far my favorite in terms of how they use animation. As such, whilst a few of my more Studio Rikka-inclined colleagues were eagerly looking forward to Harmonie, I was more looking forward to Chronus. And I’ve got to say, whilst I don’t think it’s great overall, it delivered way better than the former did.

First off, I loved how the first half or so basically resembled Boogiepop Phantom or ... Serial Experiments Lain in terms of presentation in order to represent the main's powers regarding the supernatural. I love that sort of cryptic direction when it's done well, and Chronus pulls it off in a way that can be a bit heavy, but not to the point that I can't see what's going on. Said presentation disappears in the second half when the story goes more traditional and kind of action-y, but it's still kept visually interesting through the free-flowing animation and colorful visuals. Movement was pretty fluid and it delivered on visual intensity whenever it needed to. In short, this thing is pretty damn interesting, visual-wise. But is said visual style being applied to something worthy of it?

Well, I think the story is pretty damn cool. A kid grows up with the ability to see soul-stealers, but he doesn’t do anything about it because he doesn’t see the point. But when said soul-stealers go after his female friend/crush, he realizes he has to take action. In essence, it’s a romance anime just like Harmonie was. However, this romance is between a girl who is about to die and a dude who’ll brave different dimensions and scythe-wielding specters in order to save her.

In short, it’s a romance anime where cool stuff actually happens rather than one where you just blab about said cool stuff like you’re in a typical VN adaptation and proceed to do nothing but weakly tie it together with the most basic of plot elements. When you tie it all in with the awesome visual style and a pretty damn cool ambiguous ending to the thing that leaves me wanting more, you know you’ve got something worth watching.

Yeah, this looks to be my favorite of the Anime Mirai stuff this year. Unless A-1 gained talent just for their contribution or something.

Makoto Nakazono is a high school student with a small dark secret. Since he was little, he has had the mysterious power to see "black entities" that steal souls.
One day, he is suddenly interrogated by one of the "black entities," Akira Seno: "Will you get in our way?"
But Makoto replies with an air of resignation, "There's nothing I can do anyway, so I won't."
At that moment, Makoto didn't notice the threatening shadow approaching his childhood friend Hazuki...

When I read this, I thought it was just going to be another Bleach rip off, what I wasn't expecting was that I would really enjoy this short movie ... and watch it multiple times.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see Grim Reapers? Well in Kuro No Sumika - Chronus - it does just this, what would it feel like to see your loved ones die, when you can't help it by seeing Grim Reapers,
Now onto the Review:

This is my first Review be nice.
-Art- 7/10

The reason I'm giving the art such a low number is because I've seen Art style like this in multiple movies and it's getting old, but what can you do?

-Story- 8/10
The story was very interesting but like I said I thought it was going to be another Bleach like story.
But they turned it around by him not being able to actually attack the Grim Reapers, all he could do is talk to them.

-Sound- 10/10
The sound was amazing, everything was in Sync, The voice acting was very outstanding I actually thought I was there in the movie.

-Character- 10/10
The Character Makoto Nakazono was a very out going and depressing type Character.
Their isn't really any Character Development because it's 26 minutes long, but I still liked his Character.

-Enjoyment- 10/10
I really enjoyed this movie, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time and no Anime movie has done that for years.

-Overall- 10/10
Overall I really liked this Short Movie, and I would recommend it to anyone.
Also it may be very sad for you at times, I teared up once and that's it.


Thanks for reading my Review, and Enjoy the movie :)

No spoilers

Kyro no sumika: chronus has a somewhat more minimalistic but fluent animation(I do not mind more minimalistic animation) but what it lacks in details it compensates with the use of effects, POV, camera motion and especially the sound effect.
For a one episode story it did more than many animes cannot do in 12 episodes:
- It presented enough detail to understand the setting but still left enough out to wanting to explore more.
- Even though characters had classic personalities there were still character development.
- And it told a story without plot holes (or I didn´t notice)

The story on the other hand wasn´t original but quite ... predictable but how it was presented the effects, the concept of the reapers and the asked questions made it interesting.
So I would like to give it 7 but the story could have been more original :)
Also it is a somewhat a first chapter story but I don´t mind, because even though I want more, I thinkthat it still ended good so it doesn´t really need a followup even though it would be nice :)