The story is so unfocused, and the exposition is all over the place because, between wanting to tell the past via flashbacks, or telling the present via dialogs more boring than watching a peanut go out of its shell, the writers slip through both sides, improving the chance for the viewer to just not care about it. Because it's hard to know what the hell are they trying to tell in the first place.
Art is incredibly good, no doubt about it, however a personal gripe is the use of stock footage. You will notice an attack position and sequences used more than one time. This is some Sailor Moon level stuff right here. It makes the animation look as corny and worthless that it makes you think, if the people invested so much in the visual details, why didnt they use it to avoid things like that? Or better yet, why not hire actual, competent writers instead of throwing all the money to the dumpster to focus only on looks, but I digress.
The soundtrack itself has its charm, with interesting and atmospheric tunes, so it's the best aspect of this series to me. The OP as well as EDs are pure, generic, run of the mill anisong stuff though, so there's that. Lots of people might like them, I prefer a little more variety in my music, so obviously I don't.
And then we come to the lowest point in this series: the characters. Seriously, they're as flat as the floor the voice actors seemed to have stepped in. Even the mics the VAs used to record seem to have more personality than those. Either that or they're so annoying you only wished they were dead by the next episode. We have people portrayed by the series with some characteristic trait, yet when these characters get into the action they seem to flop all this buildup by acting as generic and aloof as possible. A complete waste of plot. Another gripe is that, with a cast that big and only 13 episodes, most of the supporting characters end up being only cannon fodder or background filler, which completely defeats the purpose of having a cast of such size. You could take some of them out and wouldn't even make a difference.
Overall, and how I always say: Mediocrity never looked so beautiful as here, and adequacy is as flat as it gets. K, in concept, tries too hard to be the next Baccano/Durarara while failing miserably in its execution. A good setting which goes to waste, a story that seems interesting but is told in a piss-poor manner, and characters so worthless that they end up killing any little interest I could have in them. Not exactly the best look for a series which tries to be turned into a full-fledged franchise, and goes out of its way to do so with a huge amount of material. The bottom line is, people don't care enough for this anime to blow up, and given its flaws, maybe it's for the better.
