First off, I will be writing some spoilers about the characters, especially Mikoto and Shiro. If you have not watched K, don't read the second half of my review. I won't review the plot, simply because I believe all plots should revolve around the characters and never the other way around. With a lot of mystery and action series, you are basically watching a puppet show with forced actions and personalities onto the characters just to keep the plot engaging. This will never work for me. Never.
K is different in that the plot is built around the characters. This is easily done in a slice of life series, but for a short action, fantasy, and mystery story, this is extremely hard. You have to build the characters the same time you build up the plot. This seems pretty easy in theory, but in reality, to prevent the plot from taking over the characters is a pretty hard task in a limited amount of time. The creators have to constantly keep in mind this cheesy idea: the “soul” of each character that tells them where they want to go.
Here comes the spoilers on the characters. I will focus on two only because others involve around them.
1. Mikoto. Yes, Mikoto. He isn't the main character, and no, I did not put him in the first place because he is my favorite. In fact, I dislike him. However, he is the most important character in K nonetheless. He is the foil, and actually I haven't seen in a long time this kind of fascinating foil. He is the foil that never truly interacted with the protagonist, Shiro, but it makes me excited just to think about them together. Oh, I should stop here for a second and comment something about the yaoi suggestions. I'm a fujoshi. But I'm not a fujoshi who drools over every boy love story. For example, I did not like Kuroshitsuji no matter how much I liked the boy and his butler. The beyond reasonable plot and cheap character development ruined it for me. Now back to K, if you are a person who is extremely sensitive to boy love suggestions, then K might not be a show for you. But truthfully K has very little boy love suggestions.
Now seriously back to Mikoto. Mikoto is the kind of tragic hero who is lost in his resolution from the beginning to the end. I wouldn't say he did what he did out of revenge. Of course, revenge is a part of it, but Mikoto is a much more complicated person. Let's say, if Johan Liebert from Monster and Kuroro from HxH sit at one extreme end and Luffy from One Piece sits on the other extreme end, Mikoto is the person in the middle. I don't like him exactly because he is in the middle, but that's just my personal taste. Mikoto could not abandon his sadness and anger and become monsters like Johan and Kuroro, and he also could not change the negative energies into positive forces like Luffy can. From the very beginning, he is already like a time bomb, both literally and abstractly speaking. Glass-kun tries to stop the bomb from killing himself and others around him. That's Glass-kun's role in the whole series, so essentially, Glass-kun is the foil to Mikoto. I won't get into other characters around them, but each major follower of Mikoto has his unique personality. Despite the differences in their personality, they still followed Mikoto till the end(except for that one particular person with his psycho voice. he is still interesting, don't get me wrong). So what made Mikoto so attractive for them? I think it's Mikoto's vulnerability that turned into strength for others, but not for himself unfortunately. And no, I don't mean they feel superior standing beside a more sensitive and vulnerable person that suffers alone. It's because they could feel the warmth from the fire he burns, so like Tatara said, Mikoto's power protects people, and his followers feel it. This whole set-up is symbolically consistent with Mikoto being the red king that wields fire that is a potential source of warmth and Glass-kun being the blue king that's cold in appearance but calms the fire when it goes wild.
2. Next is about Shiro. Personally, he is my favorite, along with Kuroh and Neko. I won't reveal his real identity here, but honestly, whoever Isana Yashiro is, Shiro is Shiro. That's why I like him the most. His warmth, unlike Mikoto's, doesn't come from self-sacrificial burning, but from his smiles. Shiro is a playful character that smiles a lot, even in dangerous and sad situation. His unfitting smiles are not satirical, unlike most people's when they want to feign confidence. Shiro is a person who believes in people around him and allows others to believe in him. His foil Mikoto can also do this, but again, they do it differently. That's why I feel so excited about this setup between Shiro and Mikoto. In appearance, Mikoto is a dying person while Shiro is an immortal, but they suffer the same loneliness. Mikoto self-sacrifices while Shiro smiles but they do it for the same reason. Kuroh and Neko are essential for the development of Shiro as a character. They are there so that Shiro has someone to smile at, especially when he smiles out of sadness. The cliché way of putting those three would be, they complete each other. Unfortunately for Mikoto, the person who completes him died. Their fate consequently changed because of this development. I feel in a way, Shiro and Mikoto switched their places in many respects.The most obvious one is Mikoto who had a special friend ends up losing that person while Shiro who had no one gains kuroh and neko. This situational switch triggered much of the character development.
In summary, K is a story about gaining and losing important people around us, and also learning from them about ourselves. I think it carries a very beautiful message.
I don't understand where K is confusing, how K is superficial, and why it deserves the low ratings and harsh reviews. From my point of view, I saw great characters and witnessed their stories. It's been so long since I can write so much on anime characters. Mikoto and Shiro are so well planned out characters, and I promise you, even if you have already watched K and deemed it not good, give the characters and their roles, even their power, more thoughts. You'll end up finding a lot of interesting surprises.
