I've read many of the reviews and I disagree with many of them. I honestly do not think they do this excellent anime justice; thus I thought I'd throw in my two cents about it.
The voice acting is superb in this anime. Yuki Kaji, the voice-actor for the main character, expertly delivered the monotonous tone that was needed to convey the character issue - the loss of pain. However, despite the monotony the voice actor portrays in the character, I was not, not even once, bored with Katsuhira. From the first episode, the story developers easily establish the needed hints as
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to why Katsuhira is the way he is and why his loss of feeling pain was actually not how he was when he was younger. As a watcher of the anime, I knew that something traumatic had to have happened to him. Around episode 10, Yuki Kaji slowly changes the tone and intensity in his voice, offering more life to the character that wasn't present in the majority of the anime. At that point, I could literally hear Katsuhira slowly regaining his humanity, almost as if the voice actor himself was slowly realizing that pain is precious in its own way and that his character needed to have the desire to feel pain first before realizing that.
The other voice actors also did an excellent job. I found their delivery of the pain and suffering involved with getting their heart broken for the first time performed very well. I was convinced that Chidori was in a lot of pain and that Honoka had suffered greatly in her youth. Yuka Terasaki delivered that pain in every line and I thought Rina Sato (Honoka Maki) stayed in character and delivered her lines well. Overall, they all did well, and you always have to remember that the voice actors we hear all so often in animes do an excellent job anyway. If there ever is a blame, it is in the story and how those characters are drawn to convey emotion. There's only so much a voice actor can do.
The story itself was excellent. There are a few flaws here and there, but I"m not going to knock off a point for the story just because it isn't perfect. Perfection is, simply, impossible. Let me first start by saying that all of these characters are around sixteen, seventeen years old; so it shouldn't be a wonder that these characters are going to have high school related drama. In other words, they are going to fall in love with their friends but find out that friend doesn't love them but one of their other friends...etc etc. To be honest though, I thought the way the love stories developed was refreshing. If you've watched as many animes as I have, especially recent ones (e.g. The Asterisk War, GATE, Fairy Tail...even Fate/Stay Night...) I think you'll find the candid confessions of the other characters to be very refreshing, indeed. (cough cough, Gray and Juvia anyone???) I mean, how many times have you seen a girl character have secret, hidden feelings, blushing like no one can notice and stuttering at every word when she's around the MC? HMMMM??? Yeah, a lot. And how long does that last? THE ENTIRE FREAKIN' SERIES. In this anime, literally in the second episode, one of the female characters outright admits that she likes the MC. Let's just say that I was appreciative of that.
I thought the use of the Kiznaiver system was a good way to push plot development and character development. As other reviewers have stated, this anime is a character-oriented anime that involves a failed government program called Kiznaiver. This system started with nineteen adolescents (around the age of six or seven, although they don't specifically state that) with the hopes that if these children can learn to share their pain with each other, then world peace can be achieved. This is pretty intuitive actually. I mean, how many murderers would murder (unless they were like Hisomu) if the pain they inflicted on others rebounded against them? How many people would kill another if they were linked to that person knowing that that person they killed would be the end of them as well? Murder would, for all intents and purposes, cease to be; war would end and everyone would become more conscientious of each others wants and needs. Sounds like a great idea....right?
Wrong. There was a flaw in that system, resulting in devastating results for those children. I won't say why, for spoiler reasons. Once the sponsors and the government running heard of this failure, the scientists running the show were left scrambling to fix the 'error' they had created while pushing forward a failed system that still had the potential to achieve their ultimate goal. This is where the anime starts. Seven teenagers are 'kidnapped' and taken to a facility where they are all put into the Kiznaiver program. The anime is centered around these seven characters and through the series, they slowly become friends while learning how to cope with each other's pain.
Friendship, itself, is the saving grace for the characters and is pivotal in explaining why one of the characters is dead wrong in her pursuit. There is an underlining tone of being alone, of loneliness, and how that some people will try to do anything in order to achieve that. Sometimes you end up hurting the ones you care about the most without even realizing it. But that is the lesson of the anime; you can't go through life expecting not to get hurt and yet still live a fulfilling life. A fulfilled life requires good friends, friends that will still like you even if you cause them pain or, you are in pain for whatever reason. To me, that is what this anime is really about. It's realizing the importance of feeling pain. This anime plays around with that concept, such as in Katsuhira and Himosu. One doesn't understand pain and cannot feel it. But at the same time, he acts lifeless and uncaring to his friends around him. Himosu, on the other hand, loves pain because it makes him feel alive and it allows him to know who he really is. That is the contrast with the characters and Himosu stands out for that reason. Through pain, Himosu knows himself better than the others because they are afraid to get hurt. Katsuhira is the extreme version of that.
The flaws, I would say, is that the anime isn't long enough. I would have liked to see the love relationships developed more. Another flaw is that the final crisis in the last episode is weak (not super weak, but weak enough to cause me to think, "the poop hasn't really hit the fan, yet"). The anime also tried to make some of the characters immediate love interests, which I thought was very sudden. If they had extended the anime, that could have been fixed. But that wasn't really a problem since I got the gist of it. I didn't need a lot of backstory with all the characters since it was pretty self explanatory where most of the characters stood. I mean, adding the reasons why Tenga was a hot-headed fighter would have been unnecessary and distracting from the main plot, and diving deeper into Yuta's weight problem wasn't needed either. I get it. Yuta was fat and he was embarrassed by it. What else do I need to know? I do wish, though, that they had developed the MC's love interest storylines more. That would have been welcomed.
Anyway, I'm not going to edit this much. I just wanted to write something that was from the heart. I thought that was appropriate.
Jul 10, 2016
I've read many of the reviews and I disagree with many of them. I honestly do not think they do this excellent anime justice; thus I thought I'd throw in my two cents about it.
The voice acting is superb in this anime. Yuki Kaji, the voice-actor for the main character, expertly delivered the monotonous tone that was needed to convey the character issue - the loss of pain. However, despite the monotony the voice actor portrays in the character, I was not, not even once, bored with Katsuhira. From the first episode, the story developers easily establish the needed hints as ... |
