Shiro continues to be on the run, though he and the audience continue to not know why.
What They Say:
Shiro manages to outrun HOMRA with help from a young man named Kuroh Yatogami. But Shiro learns that Kuroh is after his life as well, and so he uses his wits to flee the scene.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With an opening episode that threw a lot of things at the viewer but without much in the way of cohesion, what sold K at the start here was the beautiful visuals. There’s a certain sense of intrigue that came from it, both in the animation, camera angle choices as well as the character designs but that’s not enough to make a show most times, especially one like this where it wants to bring a lot of things into it with the story. The opening episode definitely hooked me interest when it came to the approach but it didn’t win me over with the characters or give much clue about what the real story will be.
With Shiro going through his day as we saw in the first episode, it ended up with him on the run by HOMRA in a pretty engaging fashion. Having been captured, we get a better feel for Shiro as he tries to bluster his way out of it with some smooth words and gesticulation that’s pretty full of theatrics. It doesn’t sell him as a person well at all, really making him surprisingly unlikable as he tries to come up with ways to get the other guy to let him live. His escape is relatively cute and fun as it plays out, kitten and all including the dog suit he ends up in, but it also follows a kind of nonsensical approach. Which in turn leads to a separate fight on the streets as one of his friends runs up against him and is able to create a skateboard of sorts while going after him with a baseball bat. It’s brief but visually fun to watch.
The episode takes a twisty turn when it hsa Shiro running into a girl during his escape that’s seemingly naked (it’s a little hard to tell, it could be a skintight powder white suit) that’s named Neko and has the personality of one, though she’s at least a bit older and not quite so childish-cloying-cute cat-like. This all leads to yet another mild chase scene with the same interminable music playing on that just paints it as yet another set piece. As the episode goes on, it really feels more like it’s just going on and on and on rather than going somewhere. And when the episode actually comes to a close, you look back and you wonder, did anything really happen here? Really?
In Summary:
Pretty looks can’t save a bad show and K is one that is looking to be a terrible show based on the first two episodes with its scripting and story execution. Is there a story here? Sure, there has to be one that they want to tell, but it’s being executed in such a way that all you can really take from it are the visuals and that particular execution. I really like the character designs, I love the city design and the animation is brisk and fluid, coming across pretty well in the stream here especially with the color style applied to it. But it’s falling apart, and hard, in terms of story execution. Some shows can take time to really work their way to the story and that’s fine, but there are no real hooks here, no characters to try and latch onto and nothing else meaty to say this is going to be worth watching. When you walk away from the second episode wondering if there was any point to it, that’s not a good sign.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Viz Media
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
