K – The Most Anime Anime That Was Ever AniMADE
I wanted to write a bit of a review/final post for each of the anime I watched in the fall that finished, so I decided I’ll start with K.
It’s Animazing?
K is interesting because it somehow feels very familiar and very peculiar at the same time. Everything about it screams ANIME to me. It’s full of unusual characters, most of whom are as hip and stylish as can be. There’s battles with magic, swords, and guns. Really goofy jokes. Random fanservice. A convoluted plot. And a fun, exciting setting full of Cool Stuff.
So K may be a hodge-podge of anime tropes all crashing into each other and causing a ruckus–but just how good is it all?
I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about K at first. It was fun and silly, and I rather liked the main character Shiro (a lighthearted high school boy who finds his life in danger when he encounters a magical catgirl and a modern samurai–like I said, it almost sounds like the Default Anime). But I could hardly make heads or tails of what was going on, and it was a bit difficult to see the point of the surprisingly extensive cast of side characters that composed some kind of magical power struggle in the city.
As the series went along, things somehow become less engaging for me. There were lots of interesting things happening, but it was somehow a bit difficult to really care about it all. I guess it largely boiled down to how we were gradually learning the WHAT behind all the clans and kings and magic abilities and murder mysteries and whatnot, but there was relatively little of the WHY or the SO WHAT that was delved into. Similarly, the animation that was so mind-blowing in the first episode or two turned out to be a bit more hit and miss as the series went on, which kind of diminished some of the anime’s unique energy away at times.
But as luck would have it, K went from being just OK to GREAT in the final episode. The series ended on a very high note, bringing all the main story arcs to a dramatic and very well-executed conclusion. Everything involving Shiro was the highlight of course, but I suddenly found myself caring about most of the side characters in the Red and Blue clans as well. Apparently all the zany escapades beforehand were indeed setting up for this grand finale, and all in all I was quite pleased with each of the emotional climaxes it was able to throw in there.
So did K know what it was doing all along? Well… maybe, maybe not. But in the end it was worth the watch, and I am pretty excited about there being a second season some time in the future. With a rather expansive setting and a large cast of colorful characters, there’s certainly a lot of directions the series can go from here.
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