There's this show running on Imaginasian TV right now called Kurokami. It aired just a couple hours ago and will be running again shortly, if you get the channel: not many off the East and West Coasts do. You shouldn't really bother, but I figured I would give you a heads-up and at least tell you what's up with the show.
The sole reason I watched this was that the distributor tried something interesting: Kurokami is actually a brand new show. It hasn't been out on DVD for a year, it didn't run on TV in Japan two years ago. It's running in Japan simultaneously with the English-dubbed broadcast on Imaginasian. This is a pretty neat model, and I hope to see more simultaneous broadcasts like this (please avoid Crunchyroll, thank you kindly). The only problem is that Kurokami is a bit shit.
Based on a Korean comic targeted to Japanese readers, Kurokami is a pitch-perfect replica of tired manga cliche: a sullen, antisocial young lad with a number of inexplicably doting women in his life falls in with a magical girl. The girl-- perhaps the centerpiece in character design here-- is:
- unfamiliar with normal human existence
- overly fond of ramen
- wearing a giant cutesy dog collar ala DearS
- toting a cutesy puppy mascot
- an indestructible martial-arts expert
If this is your first anime you might not be tired of this character type, but you're here so you are. The protagonist ducks out of social situations to rattle off amazing cookie-cutter teen angst zingers like "THE SYMPATHY OF OTHERS WEIGHS HEAVILY ON ME". You're supposed to wait for character development at a point like this, but I don't see these characters going anywhere that isn't predictable from miles away. So far all the show has going for it is quality fight animation. The plot clearly hasn't had a chance to begin yet, so I can really make no comment on the overarching narrative.
From the overbearing, pretentious air of teen whine that pervades this episode, I'm not sure I really care what the hell happens in this story. This week's episode actually culminates in two desperate grabs in a row at edginess: the finale is so shamelessly manipulative and over-the-top that I pointed and laughed at my TV all the way through the ending credits. Kurokami may not be very good, but it's a perfectly targeted work: it's for whiny teenagers who'll mistake this shit for "deep". The show will probably be fairly successful.
Unrelated to the post, but I was wondering if you were watching the new Hajime no Ippo series (or even if that was your cup of tea).
Posted by: Comic | January 10, 2009 at 07:20 AM
I am watching Ippo. It's promising thus far, and I doubt Madhouse will let it drop when they get to the fighting. Ippo is one of those things where you know what you're getting: a man fights, a man gets knocked down, a man stands back up, and there are dick jokes in between.
Posted by: David Cabrera | January 12, 2009 at 04:50 PM