Kurokami: The Animation - Episode 19

The end of the last episode of Kurokami managed to land us with the mother of all surprise cliff-hangers, introducing Akane as the contractee of Reishin. Only one thing was ever going to follow on from this devlopment, and that was an episode of kick-ass action... and whaddya know, that's exactly what we get here.


After setting everything up perfectly, it's no surprise at all that episode nineteen concerns itself exclusively with the battle between Reishin and Kuro, supported by Akane and Keita respectively. Why has Akane chosen to partner with Reishin? Was it even her choice? These are all questions for another day as this instalment chooses to focus solely on ever more powerful bug action set pieces. In a sense, this particular battle isn't as spectacular to watch as some of the others we've seen recently on account of Kuro and Reishin's respective powers (both of which basically come down to "make a really big explosion with my fists"), but as the episode moves along everything ramps up nicely, accompanied by that ever-improving soundtrack, to turn into exactly the kind of action fest you'd hope for from this particular match-up.

As pure action-oriented episodes go this works pretty well, but in a sense my attention has been deflected from the sheer spectacle of it all by the questions about Kuro, Reishin and Akane that this episode (and indeed the instalment that preceeded it) throw up - There's certainly still plenty to be covered by the series beyond simply powerful Mototsumita beating seven bells out of one another, and I'm suitably intrigued as to what these revelations might be. For now though, Kurokamisimply gets to enjoy its crown as the most enjoyable pure action anime that I'm currently watching, which leaves me once again wishing it had managed to find and utilise the qualities it now possesses from the very start of the series.