Art
When I first started to watch this show, I was a little concerned with how the art presented itself. It seemed like it was one of those old cartoon styles everything that moved had a different color palate than did the background. But I found after watching it more and more and becoming significantly more invested in the show as a whole this didn’t really bother me. I really liked the way how nothing was to extreme and over the top in terms of colors (except of course Nico). it all seemed to come together really well and when things started to really heat up i could feel the emotion that was present in each of the characters. The art style is anything but generic and actually unique in ways that make this show really pleasant to look at.
Sound/Music
The first thing one might notice about this opening song specifically is the similarity in the tune to a song called “Take On Me” from the ‘80s. And while that song is pretty cool, this song is way better in my personal opinion. This track is catchy and it is honestly one of my favorite parts of each episode. The other major thing I loved about the sound direction was the sound of pain that the characters felt throughout the entire show. When they were stunned with pain there was a shocker sound and it made me cringe just as much as the characters did. That kind of attention to detail brought me face-first into a show that I knew nothing about going into.
Story
The story in Kiznaiver is one of connection. These 7 people have seemingly nothing in common and one of them can’t feel any pain at all. But through a weird twist they all discover that they share a similar wound on their wrist, and whenever one of them feels pain, the others all share that pain equally. It comes out that they are part of a project that aims to study the way emotions are shared from person to person. At first it mostly deals with pain, but the deeper goal is to find how positive emotions such as love can be spread from person to person. It all wraps up with the nice little bow of a romantic subplot between a few of the characters that drive the story forward, even if I ship characters different than what the story says.
Personal Reflection
I started watching this show out of sheer curiosity because of the summary provided on Crunchyroll. I wasn’t looking to really get into it, but I found that after I really learned about the characters, it became such a pleasing experience to watch. I would look forward each week to the next installment of the series in eager anticipation to see where the story was going to go. I have always wondered about how I would be able to share my pain and my emotions with others because handling it all on your own is not a good thing to do. This show supports the notion that friendship, even with people that you have nothing in common with, is important. There will always be people that are going through similar things as you, and even if those things get drastically different, we all bleed the same color; red. I highly recommend Kiznaiver.
Overall Rating : 8.5/10
