Thursday 25 June 2009

Kurokami: The Animation - Episode 23 (Completed)

After finally (after one abortive attempt) finishing off the series proper last episode, what wonders does this final instalment of Kurokami hold for us?

A recap episode, pure and simple... To be honest, I've never quite fathomed why they bother with these things, as there's something vaguely depressing about seeing the twelve or so hours of your life you've sunk into a particular series shrunk down to about twenty minutes. In fairness, this particular offering did offer up some new animation, and slightly different takes and points of view of key events, but trying to squeeze so much into a short time frame was always going to feel rushed and jumpy, and so it proved to be here. Still, it did also serve to tie up the series final loose ends, albeit via the rather surprising revelation that Kuro doesn't seem to age at all - Either that or she's a rather sexy pensioner.


As for Kurokami as a whole, it's been very much a show of two halves - The first half of the series was frequently rather ponderous and seemed to lose its edge almost entirely after a bright start, not helped by Keita's moodiness and constant whining. Once we fast-forwarded six months into the second half of the series however things became much brighter, and Kurokami found its groove as a relatively stylish action series which delighted in ever more ridiculously large battles and set pieces that meshed into the story that was being told quite nicely. Certainly, you could argue that this series has never been anything other than generic, but when it hit its run of form it pulled off the succeeded in all of the ways you'd expect for just such a show, eventually making for a pretty enjoyable experience all in all. Kurokami might not be a classic, but if action-oriented shows are your thing it's certainly worth a watch if you can take a deep enough breath to plough through that slightly off-form first half.

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