Kemurikusa (TV)

A few young girls with strange powers and a tree that has grown through a railcar cling onto life in a desolate land, searching for its last reservoirs of water. Their routine struggle to survive is interrupted by the arrival of Wakaba, a boy with no memory beyond his own name.

The girls and their new companion commit to a perilous journey across seas of burning red fog—all in order to find what they need to sustain themselves on the more distant, dangerous islands swarming with robotic bugs. Their ultimate fate will be decided by their own strength, along with Wakaba's curious ability to understand the Kemurikusa: mysterious glowing leaves with wondrous powers. Besides the girls, Wakaba, and the hordes of ravenous bugs, the Kemurikusa are the last sparks of life surviving in this land. How did things end up this way? Why are there so many empty buildings with no one to live in them? Wakaba and the girls lack the answers to these questions, which means the truth can only be found within the Kemurikusa.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ritsu Main

Kiyoto, Arisa Japanese

Rin Main

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Rina Main

Sumi, Tomomi Jiena Japanese

Wakaba Main

Nojima, Kenji Japanese

Riku Supporting

Ryoku Supporting

Sekine, Akira Japanese

Ryo Supporting

Mimura, Yuuna Japanese

Riri Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Oomori, Shinji Producer

Takagi, Takayuki Producer

Tatsuki Director, Script, Original Creator

nano Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Nov 14, 2020

ancientpower

Recommended

Kemurikusa is everything I like to see in an original anime production: it is a unique display of artistry which takes advantage of its visual medium to convey an engrossing story to the viewer. The plot is inherently a mystery, and after watching the first episode I had a dozen ideas of how it might play out. Halfway through the series I had enough clues from the dialogue and set pieces to put some parts together. In the end, nearly every thread of the story was tied together into a conclusion which answered every question I had and even some I didn't know I had.

In ... my opinion the animation is a huge step up from Kemono Friends, Yaoyorozu's most prevalent previous work. There are still some moments where you'll notice cut corners, but this is the case for virtually every television anime series. For the most part the animation is fluid and effective. The character designs may look goofy at first but I quickly grew fond of them. The technical and creature designs are fascinating, with a combination of both familiar and alien elements. The titular Kemurikusa is visually striking and provides a strong over-arching motif which is drilled into your head throughout the series for reasons that become increasingly and alarmingly apparent. There is also a great deal of beauty in the environments, which often have hand-painted background art that plays nicely with the moving CG pieces.

If you aren't bothered by the animation or characters, and you approach the series with an open heart and mind, then I wholeheartedly recommend sticking through Kemurikusa as it becomes increasingly endearing as the story progresses and characters develop. The only man I envy is he who has not yet watched Kemurikusa, because the emotional payoff in the end is immense.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 28, 2019

Kurgo

Mixed Feelings

Kemurikusa is a perfect example of two things: how an anime can be more than the sum of its parts and what does an anime with a bento's worth of budget behind it look like.

There's a TLDR at the end, dw.

Art: Let's get this straight immediately: this is by far (I mean it) the worst looking anime I've ever had the displeasure to watch. It looks more like Foodfight than an actual anime, the characters look awful, the animation is frankly appalling, to put it mildly. It looks like a high school student project more so than anything else, I cannot find a single redeeming ... factor artistically, other than a random "oh that looks cute" which isn't exactly a high wall to climb.
It is at its best when everyone is still and talking as little as possible, while the action scenes are pure unadultered junk, they're so bad you'll start to wonder if you're watching a parody rather than a show taking itself seriously.

Sound: It doesn't help that the voice acting direction is dreadful, too, and that almost all voice actors range from ear-bleeding bad to just mediocre. I'm extremely thankful that Mikako Komatsu is Rin's voice as she's the only one that didn't immediately annoy me while talking. In fact, I don't know how her agent blackmailed her into voice acting for this series but I'm glad he did. She's by far the only one that can bring her wax-looking character to life and the only one that is actually able to convey different emotions (imagine that) rather than droning on in the same tone, whatever happens.
I found Wakaba's (the guy) seiyuu to be particularly irritating, the only emotion that you'll get out of him is mild surprise or childish interest for something. Whether he's eating, walking or someone's dying, the tone of his voice is always the bloody same.
Sound design and mixing is frankly poor too, things you'd expect to make LOUD sounds don't have any at all, you'd think it was a glitch of some sort. Rin in the last episode gets an arm and a leg cut off (don't worry, they'll grow back 20 seconds later) and you'll be wondering how did that happen since there was NO sound at all that even remotely suggested it.
Music is ok but nothing exciting at all.

Characters: oh boy. If you want an assortment of archetypes you'll get them here.
Tsundere? Check.
Nyan-girl? Check.
Lolis with blackboard-scratching high pitched voices? Check.
Cute robot sidekick? Check.
Stupid boy with a heart of gold? Check.

It's uncanny. If I'm honest though, I didn't find the characters all that offensive. There's nothing new or surprising about them at all but they don't milk their archetype to death like you'd expect from an anime of this kind.
You'd expect me to write more about them but there really isn't more to it than that. They're not developed much if at all and even when they are, there isn't anything eye-opening, rather just confirmations of behaviours that were already apparent.

Story: This is the only part of the anime that I'd give a pass to. We're in this world where there is basically one enemy, a red fog that takes control of robots (called mushi, although I preferred the ones from mushishi) which then proceed to kill any living thing. Kemurikusa, these different-looking (and different-acting) leaves, are pretty much the hearts of almost all characters, who are obviously trying to survive and then, logically, destroy whatever is causing this red fog to occur. In this journey (well, right at the end of it) there'll be also a clear explanation for pretty much everything that lead to this situation (granted, there's a lot of painstaking stupidity in those explanations but whatever). The concept of kemurikusa is not one that I'd heard of or read about before watching this show so it was nice and interesting. It would have been far more interesting if it had been explored more but that would have meant more episodes and my eyes and ears can only take so much. The very end is extremely convenient, blandly clichée-d and phoned in but again, for this kind of anime I wasn't expecting anything more so I'm fairly happy with it. Be aware that there are A TON of huge plotholes in it so don't stop asking "wait what" or "wait why", just take it in stride and move on.

Enjoyment: I know I pretty much panned this show to hell and back and I do stand behind everything I said. Still, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit, although I can't really point at a single reason why. Kemurikusa won't waste your time, won't drag its feet and it doesn't try to do things that it knows it won't be able to pull off (well, most of the time anyway). It's a nice journey and one that has a very obvious ending but thanks to its relative brevity, it's a journey that can be worth undertaking, if this anime resonates with you.

TLDR: watch the first 2 episodes, if you can stand the art and the characters, it's all uphill from there. If you can't, you're not losing out on anything special at all.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 8, 2019

Mujtabu

Not Recommended

Preliminary (5/12 eps)

Spoiler

SPOILER ALERT if you haven't watched the show yet read at your own risk

Alright gentlemen fasten your seat belts for we are going to delve into the big failure that this show has fallen into
from what this show could offer, it is nothing compared to what it did
the story takes place in an apocalyptic world at the end of civilization
among all the wreck and collapsed buildings it revolves around a group of girls (it is implied that they are not human which i'll get into in the characters section) who happen to fight Unknown entities so called "Bugs"/"Mushi" in order ... to survive this cruel environment, they also have to find water which they consume dozens of 'cuz y'know "Life needs water". the souls of those girls in the story are represented by leaves, which wither by time if they don't get water.
with this being the premise is actually pretty good in fact I was hooked when I read the synopsis.

now we get into what I hated the most about this show, the characters
it doesn't have a lot but they're all obnoxious and feel awkward especially the Main character "Wakaba" an annoying human brat which the fact of him having curiosity about everything is forcefully ingrained everywhere in the show in contrast to the other girls (who like I said are not human) this also implies that curiosity is the main core in evolution because the girls are incapable of being curious thus not going any further. This show cherry-picks what it thinks is "Good" for the audience
because you have the catgirl, the loli(s), the tsundere and lastly the delinquent
it tried to mesh fetish and "the dark elements" in it making it more awkward and ironic, there's also the "Love" element which just like I said is hand-picked for the audience, I mean heck why are they capable of Love (they call it poison lmao) and friendship or "Liking stuff", and not capable of being curious or having the sense of adventure, are they being more human as they interact more with wakaba? Probably not.

the art is amazing and some shots look cool but it's screwed up by the cgi
because everyone knows, when you're going to have a show with fighting scenes
the cgi (if is poorly executed/done) only makes it worse.
I don't have much to say about the voice acting as it fits the annoying characters of wakaba and the rinas (seriously rinas' is earrape )

At last I couldn't enjoy this show and I dropped it because of all the reasons mentioned above, I forgot to mention that this show is taking the drift of becoming an Isekai-harem show so Yeah...
If I had one thing to praise about this show it would be its opening song honestly
I downloaded it just so that I can headbang to it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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