Kurokami The Animation

“I want my 8 hours back” was the first thing I thought to myself when I finished the final episode. I’ll be completely honest, this anime is one of the most appalling animes I’ve ever watched to date. Despite the somewhat interesting story concept presented here, the execution for this anime was simply atrocious in almost every single aspect.

In this anime, we have our protagonist, Ibuki Keita, who meets this girl, Kuro, and makes a contract with her due to sudden unforeseen circumstances. And throughout the anime, the ideas of “fate” is presented as a common motif as Keita and Kuro tries to find a ... way to stop all the sudden deaths that’s happening around them. Although this isn’t the most original plot idea, it could’ve been at least an entertaining show but I believe this is the worst aspect of the entire anime. From the beginning to the end, the entire concept of “fate” and how it connects to all the random deaths that’s been happening in this world is just thrown out the window for some mediocre martial arts styled fight sequences with the concept of “fate” just lazily shoved in the fights in order to present some sort of “meaning” in said fights (they don’t). The story structure is not only just repetitively boring, it’s also just pretentious, shoving in “meaningful” conversations that your characters are having while fighting isn’t how you present your motif effectively, and the scenes where the characters aren’t fighting each other are just as stale as the fighting scenes since the conversations the characters have never adds any sort of real progression to the story and is instead just used to show their defining “characteristics” if the dialogues isn’t forced in to talk about the plot itself. Also, when you’re attempting to present some sort of theme in the story, just stick to the one theme and try not to present more than you actually can do as this anime also attempts to bring in the concept of doppelgängers in this story, which was ultimately just used as a mere plot device that somehow connects to the ideas of fate without properly expanding on it.

Another dreadful aspect of this anime are the characters themselves. None of the characters are remotely interesting at all as all of them feels like cookie cutter characters you see in most animes, you have the action girl who loves to eat, the tough buff guy, the one minor antagonist character that has a very inconsistent goal, you get the idea. Now I do understand that creating interesting and meaningful characters that’s relevant to the story is a difficult task to do, but when all of the characters behave like ripoffs from other popular anime series, it’s just very hard for me to feel any sort of connection at all to any of the characters even if they have some sort of sob story that’s going to be revealed at some point. I understand that sometimes there are characters that aren’t meant to be likable but at least make them tolerable, and for this anime’s case, they aren’t. They’re either unlikable pieces of shit or just side character A.

The art is probably the only redeeming aspect of this anime as there are some designs that I found appealing but it’s not enough to redeem all the other shitty aspects that’s presented in this anime. It’s your standard late 2000s anime art style, nothing more, nothing less.

Although there isn’t much to say about the sound effects, I will admit that the music is very dull due to the lack of variety. Throughout this show, it seems like rock music is just everywhere in this show, and not in a creative way either, it’s just the most dull stock type rock tracks with almost no variety in the songs itself. I felt no sort of emotions at all whenever watching scenes with music, the music didn’t add anything to enhance the experience at all, it was just there to serve as background noise.

Overall, I highly recommend you to not waste your time with this anime at all. Trust me there are so many other animes that are worth your time instead of this. This anime is so dull and I don’t want any anime watchers to make the same mistake as I did by watching this anime in hopes of “maybe it’s gonna get good at this point” which spoilers, it doesn’t. The ending of this series will definitely make you go “so what the hell was all of that for?”

I thought in the beginning this anime would be pretty good but the further I progressed into this storyline i realized that this was just another cookie-cutter program. He dies then miraculously comes back to life multiple times. the bad guy dies without a doube then somehow comes back to life. this is stupid after a while. this isn't even creative at this point. It's a paycheck. I'm only watching this one now because I've come so far in the story I want to see what the stupid ending is. I've seen a lost of anime at this ... point in my life, more than what I've posted here. I can say that this is one of the biggest disappointments that I've come across. It's too overwhelmingily cliche. The back and forth is so predictable. I could support the claim that many storylines in anime have been done therefore new ideas are few but this is so cookie-cuter that I can't seem to muster the energy to support it. Hopefully true anime fans will feel the same way about this. I can't believe that I'm all alone here.

Kurokami was a very interesting anime I've ever come across. The story line was fairly decent, it had decent background information and such. The theme is based on boxing, which isn't the typical kind of anime you'll find me watching. Though this anime didn't have much romance, which I was not expecting (forgot to look at the genre) the action made up for it. It was kinda disappointing how wimpy and useless the main male protagonist was though, I don't find anime's interesting where the girl tends to protect the guy, but hey, that's only my opinion. I would have gave this anime a ... 6/10 if I hadn't have watched the ending which was a complete shock and bummer. It just had me at shock and was nothing that I was expecting. It also left me hanging a bit, which makes me want to give it a rating of 2/10. It is only my opinion, but I don't think you should waste your time. The characters barely develop and it's just nothing amusing.

This anime pretty much consisted of war cries and the main protagonist yelling "KURO!" in the complete wrong pronunciation - my mistake for watching the dub. It dragged on an had no plot development whatsoever. From start to finish - or at least as far as I got before just abandoning the show all together - I was confused as to what the heck was going on. The show doesn't bother to try and slow everything down so you can fully understand what's happening, so if you plan to watch this show, pay attention. If you daze off for even a couple seconds, you could ... miss a lot due to poor explaining. 

In a normal anime that I love, if there are 24 or less episodes I usually learn all the characters names by the end due to good character development. Well, this anime lacked that, so I pretty much only knew Keita and Kuro from all the shouting of their names during the long and mediocre fight scenes. 

The show got an R rating because of violence, and at first I understood that because people were being brutally killed at the beginning of the show. After a while, the only "violence" that was going on was the Terra guardians and their contractees shooting balls of light at each other. I was super disappointed with this anime and can honestly say that it was the worst one I have ever seen. 

Let me give you a description of a show and tell me which one it reminds you of. It is about your average teenage boy making a life pact with a supernatural fighting girl, which is responsible to maintain order in the world, and where there are copies of yourself as replacements in case something goes wrong, and everything is explained with a very weirdly named terminology… BZZZ, and no, it isn’t Shakugan no Shana but its lesser cousin, Kurokami. Sorry dear Kurokami, you do not have a loli tsundere voiced by Rie Kugimiya so you never stood a chance in succeeding from the very ... second you got green light for adaptation. Further more, you do not have 4 goddamn seasons of endless softporn and millions of otakus who are watching you for the sake of wasting their brain cells. And above all, you are based on a mahwa, and there is no such thing as a good mahwa. Sure, there are very good in terms of fighting but their storylines plain suck. So there you go, I just explained to you why Kurokami never had a chance of being a good anime.

Reader: That is the worst negative bias I have seen in my life. Won’t this guy talk about facts instead of straw men, or just say something about the damn show?

Sure, I was about to do that. The above was just an introduction to what you are getting yourselves into. Something NOT good. So basically we get this story where your typical/boring/overused stereotype Keita meets this naive/kind hearted/dumb chick/super fighter Kuro and learns that the world is not what it seems to be. Every person has two others like him as safeguards and in case one dies, the other gets his luck and whatever superpowers that comes with. It is a weird concept but does have its captivating charm; imagine one day that you learn you are nothing but a replacement and that when someone dies is not tragic because his copy will inherit his luck/powers. Scary indeed.

Otaku: WOOO! A show about a fighting chick and an intriguing premise. I am scoring it with a 10 right now and head to buy her figurine!

Sit down no-lifer and let me finish! The premise and the fighting are the only good things in it because everything else is pretty much a mess. And sure, if all you care about is brainless action and shallow philosophy, I am sure you are going to like it a lot. Yet the moment you try to reason the whole thing, it won’t take more than 5 seconds to realize it is all nothing but gibberish. Fighting your fate with punches and kicks? Since when can raw power and violence solve such existentialism issues? And why is Kuro so willingly explaining all these top secret stuff to a random guy she just met? And why is such a dumb naive girl in charge of such an important mission to begin with? It all happens in the most silly way possible and makes everything feel shallow and passable.

Action fanboy: Who cares about realism? Anime don’t need to be realistic, they only need to be entertaining. If it has good action and nude chicks, I have no problem with it.

Good for you my superficial no-brainer; but I am not you. I like when things are excused to be as such and to pass as probable based on their importance. If a bimbo appears out of nowhere and starts mumbling about invisible pink unicorns, I will not take her seriously, nor will I care to participate in whatever she plans to do.

Reader: Will this guy ever tell us anything about the ACTUAL show?

I thought I was already doing that. Hm, anyways, I guess I will talk about technicalities like the production values. Animation and artwork are ok for this sort of anime but they are not amazing. They have a fair amount of details and colouring but they otherwise lack the finer touches that would make it look special or awesome. For example, all the backgrounds feel generic, it is just schools and buildings and streets I have seen a billion times already and no amount of details can save them from feeling generic. Every time I look at such sceneries I always end up comparing them to the “5cm per second” movie, and Kurozuka’s level is plain ok. I could say something similar about the character figures, who also feel generic in appearance and are occasionally drawn with inconsistent facial structure. As for the sound part, it is very passable in overall as the characters usually don’t have much passion in their voices and the soundtrack is average songs you will forget very fast.

Action fanboy: Who cares about all that? Is the action good?

Yes it is my fellow no-brainer. There is a lot of choreography in it to make it look like a good martial arts series, plus it has several superpowers to offer variety in tactics and counters. And yes, it also has some basic fan service too, as Kuro is always fighting without pants and her clothes keep ripping. And there are other nude scenes thrown here and there.

Otaku: WOOO! Masterpiece! I will go look for her beaten up and in agony version.

Whatever no-lifer; I was more interested in if any of that make sense as a whole. And guess what, they don’t. It is just the usual shounen stuff we see all the time, where injuries mean absolutely nothing if the hero has enough resolve or if the script said so. It’s the same thing all the time, they just storm in and punch rapidly at the baddies until they are beaten. The premise of the story ends up being nothing but a poor excuse after awhile since all it matters is punching your way through any obstacle. It gets too fake to like it after awhile and the directing is not helping much because most of the action has unfit BGM or the duration of the attacks is usually too short or too long to like them properly. As for the rest of the story, most of the plot is either fillers or boring events. It does have a solid conclusion but by then I didn’t care in the least about the basic idea. It was barely looked into.

Reader: Just tell us a few things about the characters and be over with it; I am about to stop reading here.

Ok impatient reader, I will. The characters are standard stuff you can find in many shounen. As usual, only the main ones end up being interesting and developed, with everybody else being nothing but ephemeral opponents and cannon fodder. The thing is, their chemistry is nothing we haven’t seen before and it sure feels less captivating if you compare it with other famous boy-girl pacts in anime. The ones I can think of right now are Fate/Stay Night, Shakugan no Shana, and Birdy the Mighty. Heck, even lesser works like Zero no Tsukaima and 3X3 Eyes feel more enriched than this one.

Action fanboy: I don’t care if it looks like other shows, or if the story makes no sense. I am watching this for the same reason I am watching Bleach.

Otaku: And I just want to increase my waifus and this is a perfect opportunity.

Whatever you idiots; I told you it is not a good show and you are free to go waste your money/brain cells/time on it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you afterwards.

Reader: What an asshole… *downvotes*