I should firstly note that I haven’t read the manga. There are apparently major differences between the two which fans of the manga have disliked, but I’m judging the anime solely on it’s own merits independent of how well it adapts the manga.
Kurokami is a battle anime centered around the Doppeliner System and Mototsumitama. The Doppeliner system is essentially this anime’s version of the urban legends surrounding doppelgangers, wherein if one see another then one will die in the near future. This anime explains this phenomenon as one of the people being a Root with high Tera, which is essentially luck, and the other a Sub with low Tera, and upon meeting the Root absorbs the little Tera the sub has, thereby becoming even luckier while the Sub becomes so unlucky they die not long after. This system is watched over by Mototsumitama, who are essentially super strong human like beings that can form contracts with humans to become even stronger.
The plot of the first arc, which spans the first half or so of the anime, mostly just sets the foundation for the latter two arcs. It introduces almost all of the important characters and provides some background on them while also fleshing out the various systems and such and how they tie into character’s motivations. The main characters are the Mototsumitama Kuro and her human partner Keita. Kuro was a girl who was seeking her brother, Reishin, who had strayed from the path that most Mototsumitama followed but was instead seemingly just trying to cause chaos. Keita inadvertently got involved in her fight when Reishin’s underlings came after Kuro while he was with her and in order to save him, she had to form a contract with him, and thus the two of them were connected.
The majority of the first arc is pretty weak for a number of reasons. The first would be that like a lot of battle anime/manga, it doesn’t actually start out as being a proper battle anime, but rather tries to be something more complicated, focusing on the complexities surrounding the Doppeliner system and such. There’s still action, but it actually seems to spend a good amount of time trying to flesh things out in regards to ethics and such, but most all of it isn’t very good. Mototsumitama are meant to maintain the Doppeliner System to maintain balance or some other nebulous concept like that. However, it’s very clear that this system is god awful so it isn’t really clear why the viewer should be invested in that.
Furthermore, while the villain of this arc’s motivations aren’t properly explained at this point, his goal seems to be to essentially mess with the system, which doesn’t seem like a bad motivation to have. That could have been the basis for some actually decent ethical issues, but as mentioned this is largely left completely unexplained, and the anime instead just explores small things surrounding that while kind of trying to portray maintaining the system as a good thing. This largely doesn’t make sense, and thus everything just feels kind of contradictory.
The second issue is Keita’s personality during this arc. He behaves in a perfectly believable manner for someone that was dragged without a choice into an incredibly dangerous situation, and probably handles it better than I would have. That doesn’t change the fact that he still seems lame as hell. Him lashing out at Kuro and essentially trying to run away from having to be involved with any of this just felt kind of pathetic. This may well be because essentially all other similar stories seem to just have the protagonist roll with things like this and thus I’m conditioned to expect that, but it doesn’t change the fact that the protagonist was immensely unlikable.
There are a few other minor issues as well, such as how there are some ridiculously forced moments for the sake of plot advancement, such as characters just randomly running into other important characters somehow and just going with the flow in a way that feels really unnatural. As a result of those issues, the pacing for the anime overall felt pretty slow and like it was really dragging on as a lot of the content simply wasn’t that good.
Thankfully, all of that turns around near the end of the first arc, at which point Keita goes through major character growth, there’s solid growth in the relationship between him and Kuro, and the anime seems to drop it’s pretense about being deep and goes full battle anime. This leads to a pretty exciting climax to the arc, that doesn’t really resolve anything, but is a solid transition into the second arc, which spans the next quarter or so.
The villain in the second arc seems to have somewhat complex motivations at first in that he tries to explain them as such, but it’s pretty clear that he’s just sacrificing others using the Doppeliner System for the sake of gaining power. Thankfully, the anime doesn’t really try to flesh things out as complex as it did during the first arc, and thus plays to it’s strengths by basically just being a battle anime with clear good guys and bad guys. There’s no exploration of complex themes, but there’s still solid character and relationship development in Keita and Kuro as well as solid character development in the side characters Akane and Yuki as well. Other side character’s don’t really get much in terms of development, but it builds well off the cast introduced in the first arc and a few still manage to seem pretty cool and add some variety to things. The anime felt well paced throughout with key moments built up to well and twists that properly felt exciting, and thus overall this part of the anime overall felt well written. This arc also ends in what feels like a proper conclusion.
However, this conclusion immediately transitions into the final arc. The beginning of this arc was somewhat of a mess. It introduces a bunch of new characters, many of whom basically only matter once. It also provides a lot of explanation for things previously not explained properly, such as where the Doppeliner System came from or why the Mototsumitama were protecting it. It ultimately is somewhat complex from an ethical point of view, though for reasons completely unrelated to those that were explored in the first arc, rather the reasons here are much simpler and make a lot more sense. Though it doesn’t dwell much on that either, still primarily being a battle anime with the complexity mainly coming from who’s fighting who and why. The mess arises from the fact that a lot of this isn’t explained very well, either not really properly being explained at all, being explained in a weird order where characters, mainly Akane, feel really inconsistent, or being explained through straight up infodumps and infodump flashbacks which kind of kill the pacing.
Still, ultimately everything is adequately explained, the mechanics of the world are clear and all the character’s involved have motivations that make sense, leading to a climax that’s intense, exciting, and easy to get invested in. This is paced reasonably well and ultimately ends in a pretty satisfying manner that showcases the major characters and the growth they had gone through quite well. After that, episode 22 essentially serves as an epilogue that isn’t action focused but rather focuses solely on how the characters will live their lives after everything had settled down. It builds heavily on the relationship between Keita and Kuro as well as other relationships built up to a lesser extent over the course of the anime for an immensely impactful ending. It wasn’t the type of ending I generally like, but I still found it pretty satisfying and a good end point for the series.
The problem is that episode 22 isn’t the last episode. The actual final episode, episode 23, is essentially just a footage from throughout the series that adds some context to earlier scenes in the anime. The vast majority of this context is unnecessary and doesn’t feel like it adds anything at all, and the scenes that do add something would have been better if they were properly integrated into earlier episodes. It’s somewhat a recap of the series, but it didn’t feel like all that great of one, in that it’s written weirdly in how it uses flashbacks. This episode also has an extra epilogue that goes beyond the ending of episode 22, but it doesn’t actually change anything or add anything the ending of episode 22 didn’t already suggest would happen, so I feel it would have been better to just have left it out as the ending of episode 22 was a really strong emotional beat to end on and this epilogue kind of dilutes it.
As for more general notes, the Doppeliner System is really interesting, even if the anime didn’t use it’s complexities all that well. I also wonder why the system was explained as involving three people instead of just two as the third never had plot significance with anyone and as far as I know the doppelganger urban legends only involve two. And if it wasn’t clear, I also really liked the action in this show. It’s mostly just fast and powerful martial arts, but with a single special move per character that was of the more supernatural variety to add some spice to things. It was really simple but also really effective and awesome to watch. The battles flowed incredibly well and were just in general really hype, in no small part to how the soundtrack and animation fit really well and greatly enhanced the experience.
Speaking of the art and animation, overall it was really good. The art style fit quite well. The character designs started out kind of weak at first, but improved tremendously and overall were pretty much all nice, and I especially liked the clothing designs. The sequences used for special moves and power ups were also really cool, with the Synchro sequence never getting old. And as mentioned, the animation for action in general was great, feeling quite fluid and dynamic. The soundtrack had a number of memorable tracks that worked really well, the majority of these being vocal tracks for battle scenes. The OPs were both really solid and good at getting the viewer excited for the episode, though to be honest that didn’t really fit all that well for the first third of the anime when it was still slow. The EDs are much softer with simpler visuals but were decent enough.
