K: Return of Kings

Tensions are running high among the clans as the Green King begins making moves that threaten to drive the world into pandemonium. Following the death of the Gold King, the safety of the Dresden Slate, the source of power of the Kings, is under threat. Nagare Hisui, the sly and mysterious leader of the Green Clan Jungle, is determined to procure the powerful Slate by any means possible.

Standing directly in his way is Sceptre 4, the Blue Clan, headed by their unyielding King, Reishi Munakata. However, the grim sight of his crumbling Sword of Damocles leaves the stability of his clan and all of Japan in jeopardy. Meanwhile, still recovering from their tragic losses, Anna Kushina and her aggressive clan HOMRA find themselves caught up in the Green King's games. Amidst the chaos, Kurou Yatogami and Neko are left vulnerable while their beloved friend, Yashiro Isana, the Silver King, remains missing.

As the remaining clans struggle against the Green King's formidable forces, one final king appears.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Isana, Yashiro Main

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Neko Main

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Yatogami, Kurou Main

Ono, Daisuke Japanese

Kushina, Anna Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Munakata, Reishi Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Suou, Mikoto Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Yata, Misaki Supporting

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Fushimi, Saruhiko Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Totsuka, Tatara Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Kusanagi, Izumo Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Kamei, Hiroshi Producer

Suzuki, Shingo Director, Character Design

Kanazawa, Hiromitsu Director

Yokota, Chikako Sound Director

Reviews

Jul 26, 2021

jotaro69joestar

Recommended

This series is one of the hidden gems in the anime community..
If you are an anime fan you owe yourself to watch both seasons of this anime,
I watched the S1 back in 2014 on Animax and was visually stunned by it.

In terms of animation, it's 8/10 since there is too much CG (more than necessary) but still enjoyable not on Hand shaker's level.

the story overall is 6/10 not because it is bad but rather it always seems like I am watching a small part of a much grander narrative (yeah, yeah I know should read the LNs) the plot is extremely rushed.

The characters ... are 7/10 not saying they are bad or average rather it has some of the best characters in any series till now but those characters are given very less screen time so I just can't connect with them. for example, Fushimi (the guy who betrayed Red to join the blue) is one of the well-written characters in the series but still has given little to non-background info completely opposite to Naruto where most bad written characters are given a ton of back-story so viewers are able to connect to them..

Overall the series is 7/10 and would have been 8 or 9/10 if it was long-running series with more world building and powers explained and character depth..

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Aug 17, 2021

siisiiaaa

Mixed Feelings

Personally, K: Return of Kings does not live up to its first season. While the sound design and OST stood out - which is a part that I would give kudos to this anime for - the story and the characters were exceptionally lackluster and might I say... Boring.

There were times during this anime that I genuinely felt bored, the pacing while not too slow - there are in fact only 13 episodes - was not dynamic enough especially for the first 3 quarters of this season. On top of that, I was thoroughly disappointed with how useless the main characters seemed to be in ... this season. It honestly felt like the creators forgot the stories, powers, and purposes they gave to these main, supposedly exceptionally strong and intelligent characters in the previous season and movie. Shiro appeared to be as good as disposable for pretty much the entire season and only pulled through at the very end of the series. The blue king's powers were terribly inconsistent throughout the entire season, going from stupidly losing to the Grey king one episode, to getting his ass whipped a second time then magically winning when his team shows up???? The green king who was supposed to be the villain of the story ended up being the most interesting and enjoyable character to the point where I thought that he should have been the main character in Shiro's place, who, as aforementioned was as good as disposable for the entire series up until the very end, DESPITE his vapid reputation as the First and STRONGEST king, respectively person in the entire world.

Apart from Nagare, Fushimi was another character that left a strong impression for me. By far one of the most compelling and interesting personalities in the series, I felt constantly intrigued and entertained waiting to see his next move.

But to end on a more positive note, I did enjoy the ending. It felt as the most fitting for this series and for the chain of events depicted within it. It felt almost... Nostalgic. And that really gave the series a very nice wrap. This season shone through its sound design, OST and animation. And while the story and characters were pretty rushed and hastily written, it is still a good enough series to watch and also somewhat enjoy between better shows. It was a good for passing some time. It is a tad sad that a story with such potential ended up being executed in such lackluster manner, but alas, I still enjoyed watching it. This review is a bit all over the place as I do not want to leave a lengthy bitter note with all the aspects I did not enjoy and that frustrated me, since I still enjoyed finishing this show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 25, 2023

DiscipleOfKreia

Not Recommended

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THIS SERIES AS WELL AS THE ORIGINAL K!

What a disappointment!

So, for anyone who read my review for the original K series, you already know how much I love it. I still, to this day, believe that K is one of the most underrated anime shows out there and I stand by it. But after watching both the sequel movie as well as this series, it is more than clear that the writers of K did not learn from any of their past mistakes. In fact, they capitalized on the issues and added a plethora of new issues to the ... mix.

This review is going to be different from how I do them normally. Instead of talking about the good and bad, I’ll be going over the issues in detail, point by point.

So, to start off, let's list the biggest issues the original series had (in order from the greatest flaw to the weakest):

1) The writers invested time into developing a plotline that required more than 13 episodes to properly flesh out. As a result, the final half of the series was rushed and much of the rising action developed by the first half is lost as a result.

2) The series lacked substance. There wasn't really anything to get emotionally invested into and there weren't any real stakes in much of the main storyline either.

3) While many of its characters are solid and fun, there are many more characters that are fairly weak and forgettable. The blues in particular are all cliche archetypes that represent the main theme K attempted to promote, that being the delicate balance between order and chaos. As a result, each of the blues, who represent order, are fundamentally all the same character and can't really be distinguished from one another (aside from the leader because he's the leader and the hot blonde lieutenant who serves as nothing but fan service for the entire series). These characters all mesh together and function like a unit, which is the intention, but to call any of them characters is a bit of a stretch.

4) The main plot and star characters of the story (Shiro, Kuro, and Neko), while fun and fairly interesting individually, are constantly overshadowed by the far superior side characters and story arc of the gang war between the reds and the blues. In fact, most of the stakes felt in K is largely found in the character Mikoto (the leader of the red gang) who's Sword of Damocles is about ready to shatter, fall from the sky, and end his life, which would cause a massive catastrophic explosion, destroying and killing anyone and anything within a several-mile radius. Pretty awesome actually!

5) The lore and world, while interesting and used uniquely, is largely unoriginal. It borrows and steals from several other anime as well as elements from Greek and Roman mythology and, while it finds a way to make it its own, is nothing we haven't seen before in some manner somewhere else.

These are all the major flaws of K. The rest are minor details that can easily be overlooked. Now, this is nothing new. Many who watched K said the same things and it was a lot of criticism that the writers could have worked with, but in typical Japanese fashion, they ignored all of it. Return of Kings has every issue I listed above and then some.

In addition to refusing to fix the issues, the writers added a whole new plethora of problems to the mix, including:

A) Ignoring the established lore set by the previous series and electing to redo and remake established rules as the series went along to fit the story they wanted to tell. This is most recognizable when analyzing the power of the green king. The previous series established a set hierarchy of the power-level for the kings: silver being strongest and colorless being the weakest. Green was said to have been one of the weaker kings yet in this series he is somehow by far the strongest of any of them and has the most influence of all of the kings put together. The other major example, which is more of a problem with the movie that established this, is that the new red king is the loli girl from the original series. It was said that the one who becomes the next king is supposed to be selected at random, so the odds that this little girl, who was already a member of the reds, could become Mikoto's replacement are almost nonexistent. Yet, somehow she's the new "randomly selected" leader. Everyone accepts her as the new leader. It doesn't make sense.

B) Return of Kings is poorly written. It establishes its new kings, characters, story, and the stakes pretty much at the start of the series and ties up most, if not, all of the loose plot threads from the original series all at once. As a result, much of the emotional investment (what little still existed prior to the ending of the original series) is lost and it creates a mess of a plot in the process. They constantly had to come up with lame excuses for why certain characters don't make certain decisions and just end the fight once and for all, or they just didn't explain it at all. As the series continued, the plot holes continued to pile up.

C) The main villain is both retarded, brilliant, vulnerable, and impossibly strong. It's established early on that the green king has an extraordinarily vast network of clan members due to a phone app he created to both recruit members from all across the world and give his followers powers (a cool idea by the way). It's utilized horribly and the green king never uses the app properly. The green king should have a vast spy network at his disposal with the capability of watching his opponents every move, anywhere, at any time of the day. It's also never explained why he doesn't have sleeper cells implanted into the ranks of his enemies in order to feed them false information or have them wait to strike from the shadows within. At the same time, the green king is ludicrously fast, impossible to hit when fighting, and somehow he loses in the end in the most absurd manner possible.

D) The pacing is atrocious though it does get a little better towards the second half. This is due to keeping the same 13 episode formula from the previous season despite not being able to tell the story to the fullest extent possible and establishing the villains and major players early on.

E) If you haven't already seen the movie, Missing King, you'll be totally out of the loop regarding certain things, such as the fact that Anna Kushina has been crowned the new red king (never explained in Return of Kings, only in the movie, Missing King) or why the gold king is dying or why Shiro, the silver king and protagonist, is with the gold king at his death bed or what exactly Kuro's beef is with green clansman, Yukari Mishakuji. It relies on you having already seen the movie previously in order to understand necessary information about what is going on. One can make an argument that it isn’t really an issue considering the movie is a prequel to this series, but this is the second season of K. You should be able to watch it after finishing the original series without going to external media sources for necessary information.

F) The fan service in this series is turned up to 11. I never considered it a big deal in the original series as it was pretty much limited to one character (Seri Awashima) and it's barely present or in your face. In this series, it happens nearly every episode with several characters and serves as nothing more than to provide more than a little spiciness for the viewer's pleasure. This is a problem with fanservice in general; it doesn't have a purpose in any show or movie its in other than for pure, unadulterated sex appeal and it totally breaks the immersion.

The other issues are minor, but they're there.

There are still some good things about Return of Kings that are worth mentioning however. The artwork is amazing as per usual, and the soundtrack and sound design is just as solid as the original series. It has good ideas, even if they are poorly executed. Expanding upon the lore of the original series, introducing the other kings that were only mentioned in the previous season was an excellent and natural start even if they broke the lore in the process, and some of the new characters are decent additions (such as the Brown King and Sukuna, the green clan's highest ranking member).

There was also a surprisingly good subplot regarding the character Saruhiko who pretended to defect to the green clan and abused a loophole in their admissions system to make it all the way to the top. He ingratiates himself as a member of their clan and his past as a defector of the reds gives them a convincing reason to believe that he would also defect from the blues as well. He was easily the most interesting blue clansmen from the original season of K and he's easily the best character this time around. It kind of doesn't make sense how nobody else managed to find this particular loophole in the system already (won't spoil what it is) nor is it explained why he's the only one to figure it out, but it's still cool nonetheless.

CONCLUSION:

While the sequel movie to the original K is more of a medicore follow up, K: Return of Kings is a disappointing spin-off that has more flaws than it does positive elements. Aside from the spectacular artwork and a really solid soundtrack and sound design, most of what made K so awesome and fun to watch is lost in this sequel. It's worse in nearly every way than the original, and all the mistakes and flaws that the original series had were never addressed and fixed in Return of Kings. In fact, the writers made the issues far more noticeable and added new mistake on top of that.

The final score is a 4/10 (Subpar). It still has some merits and qualities that are worthy of mention, but it has lost all the goodwill built up by the original series. A real shame too. K could have been a spectacular franchise if only it had better writers.

FINAL SCORE:

- Story: 3/10 (Bad)
- Art:10/10 (Masterpiece!)
- Sound: 8/10 (Really Good)
- Character: 4/10 (Medicore)
- Enjoyment (Subjective): 5/10 (Medicore)
- Final Score: 4/10 (Subpar)

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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K: Return of Kings Episode 1 and 2 Recap

A new season of K is here! This time around, the events of the first season seem to be the foundation, as past events are mentioned once more, while new kinds of trouble slowly arise.

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K: Return of Kings Episode 3 Recap

In this week's K: Return of Kings, JUNGLE is on the move to create more chaos in the city. This time, a special place from the first season is revisited and a battle ensues among the clans. Did you know important clan members can have 4,000 Jungle Points?

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