K Review

Still missing a good handful of characters.

To start off this blog, I figured I'd start with a recent

series I watched: K or K Project or perhaps Project K.  Man this series has a lot of name variation!

Produced by Studio GoHands, K starts off as a pretty, gorgeously animated series which seems to have a lot of potential.  The problem is, with 13 episodes, this series never really achieves all that it could.  Despite its failures, K is still entertaining in a "I just want to know what's going on" way.  And if BL floats your boat, that too.  Actually, if you can latch on to any character (since each one caters to different tastes), you'll probably want to finish this anime.

K is basically about a gang trying to kill the potential leader of another gang who did something horrible until the cops show up.  But then the cops are actually another gang.  And they're color gangs!  The problem is, the potential gang leader has no memory of what happened, or even if it was him that committed the crime.

No, this is not Durarara!!.

No, really.  They're not actually gangs either.

I'm just going to jump right in to what this series did well, what it almost did well, and what it failed on.

If you haven't watched this series and don't want spoilers, stop now!

The Excellent

If you just want to stare at pretty characters, K will make your eyes shrivel up because you'll never have to close them.

Swap any of these characters with the rest of the cast, and the pretty stays.

Besides nearly all the characters, K also has beautiful animation during fights (usually) and music to accompany it.  The swords shine all the time, and there's huge pink flames and bursts of light.  The visuals and music create a very high quality picture to go along with a, well, sometimes less than riveting plot.

The 'Eh'

They tried really hard to make some characters likeable...but overall the cast fell flat.  While sometimes the lines themselves are dry, this flatness is more a result of the series' storytelling method.  K relies on its viewers' missing knowledge (of the Kings and their powers, of the past relationships, events, and more) to create a mystery.  While this method of storytelling resembles how Shiro remembers random fragments of the past, the story eventually starts being about all the Kings, not just Shiro.

Shiro + Neko

As a result, when K starts to explain how close Totsuka was to HOMRA, or how Yata and Fushimi had a falling out, it feels disconnected to the story of Shiro and his friends.  In particular, I'm a little stumped as to how the writers could fail to incorporate Totsuka's death in a more emotional manner as  this entire anime is a result of it.

Totsuka, sacrificed for the sake of plot.

If anything, his death should tie into the reactions of all the other characters.  And if the anime had been telling the story straight up, this flashback episode might have appeared in the beginning, or at least been referenced once or twice whenever they showed depressed Mikoto.  It's really hard to feel something for a random flashback character of HOMRA when the anime never really focused on the group as a whole beyond flashy action scenes.  Not in the beginning, at least.

And don't even get me started with Fushimi and Yata.  Their interactions are so randomly included yet emotionally charged that they stand out in an annoying way.  Here you have a story mainly about the Kings, but then suddenly two followers need attention.  I don't hate the characters.  It's the writers.  In a story where nothing is explained until the end, in the beginning characters' interactions don't matter as much to the viewers.  When there's a ton of characters with a ton of random exchanges that mean nothing to the viewer, it takes up time without having the viewer feel anything.  What's worse is Yata and Fushimi's interactions don't change until the end.  Even finding out about Fushimi's betrayal doesn't make the previous arguments feel anymore deep because they all had exactly the same feeling: rage.  One is enough.

In conclusion, we understand Shiro and his friends' dynamic.  We know zip about HOMRA, nada about the Blues, and no idea what Kings even are, but this anime pretends like we do.  K has a huge cast, but doesn't explain motives until too late, or not at all, for the viewers to appreciate most interactions.  The characters fall flat because until you understand what happened, all their actions and words don't carry any weight.  And when you do find out, lots of interactions still seem repetitive in retrospect (Yata and Fushimi argue, Mikoto is depressed, Anna is worried about Mikoto, Munakata is worried about Mikoto, etc). 

The EEEEK

I really hated how K represented women.  The recurring female characters are Neko, Seri, Anna, Kukuri, the class president, and the Silver King's sister. 

I must have a human form so I can have opposable thumbs and use Shiro's umbrella!

Neko is actually a cat, but she still represents a woman.  I mean, maybe they could pull a Chobits and try to get me to see the human in a non-human.  But K didn't try anything at all...why have an animal change into a human if being a human means nothing to the story?  It's off-putting because she has really cool powers and manipulates everyone, but she's still a cat at heart.  The most powerful female character isn't even human...in contrast, there's a multitude of powerful male characters (the Kings, Kuroh, some HOMRA and blue members).  It's really insulting to see that a strong woman is still just a cat.

Seri watches as the screen makes an effort to capture her from the chest up like normal.

Seri actually saw a pretty good amount of character development as far as relationships go, but after that she's used for fanservice.  She hardly ever gets to fight, and when she finally does, she doesn't accomplish anything more than a few sword swipes, if any.  Seri's whole character is based on her relationships with Izumo and Munakata, and on her body.  She's interesting, but ends up having no significant role in the plot (maybe she called Izumo, but it was done off screen!).

Oh no oh no oh no I lost Mikoto where's Mikoto if Mikoto's not here then I don't know who I am

Anna follows Mikoto around.  She hardly speaks.  Her backstory is non-existent, her powers unexplained.  Anna pretty much serves to plant death flags for Mikoto.  Everywhere.  As a female character, she's just there to emphasize Mikoto's depression.  She also can locate Kings...but not that well.  I'm really irritated that we know nothing about her other than stuff about Mikoto and the other Kings.

How u doin

Kukuri is a random student, subject to really dumb, really random fanservice, who gets possessed until she's saved.  Even though she seems to be fighting off the Colorless King in one episode, it turns out to be that the King can't remember himself.  Okay.  And her main roles in the series were to 1) remind Shiro that Neko made up his memories and 2) to get possessed and become an obstacle for Shiro since he can't kill her along with the Colorless King.  Also, no distinct personality at all besides damsel in distress.

Why can't she be the Green King?  Look at the hair.  Green Queen?  C'mon.

The Class President appears occasionally throughout K.  I got my hopes up that she would have some kind of role other than to be Class President.  Alas, she does not.

A character we knew for approx. 10 seconds has died.  She had Woman in a Refrigerator Syndrome.

Last is the Silver King's sister.  She died.  So the Silver King got on a blimp and sailed away into the sunset.  That's it.

So What?

K is an average story with beautiful visuals.  Would I watch it again?  Maybe before the second season comes out, and on a second watch certain details might make more sense.  Overall, if you do find K interesting, I would stick with it.  It still has potential, despite its fairly flat cast and dim portrayal of women.  The female characters aren't that bad, but the cast is so male-dominated that any poorly done female characters stand out a lot.  Here's to hoping the second season can fix season one's mistakes!