Saturday 31 January 2009

Kurokami: The Animation - Episode 4

After grabbing me and dragging me excitedly into this series via its first episode, my enjoyment of Kurokami has waned quite considerably since, and this forth instalment felt rather like another bump on that downward slide towards mediocrity.

After spotting the crazy amounts of Tera around town, the man and girl combo we've seen previously pick Akane as their next port of call as far as their investigation of said Tera levels goes, and of course this ultimately leads them on to Keita and Kuro. To be honest, this is pretty much the only noteworthy thing that happens in this episode, unless Kuro eating a lot or Keita having ridiculous mood swings counts.


Following from the template of the last episode, what we get here is another case of fifteen minutes of crawlingly slow plot progress followed by five minutes of action, which again felt a little sub-par and half-hearted compared to the awesome action sequence in episode one. Kuro versus men with bikes seemed all set to impress, but it ended up being a damp squib which even Steiner's raw strength couldn't pull from the doldrums.

Perhaps I was expecting too much by thinking that Kurokami could be anything other than a generic action anime, I'll only admit that, but the problem is that this series is starting to slip up when it comes to even that - The actual action has been pretty sparse of late, and there hasn't been anything of sufficient enough interest to take its place and allow me to grant its forgiveness. The animation quality has taken a turn for the worse, the plot has become a little messy and dull, the characterisations are clichéd (and downright annoying in Keita's case... stop acting like a nice guy and then suddenly blowing up on people!) and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find much positive to say about it. Still, perhaps if we can learn a little more about what appears to be Akane's "rival" for a Master Root position and why half of the city is underwater, I might be able to change my mind next time around.

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