Review of K

K is an anime I remember hearing a lot about right before it came out and little after when it finally aired. From the trailers it looked amazing with exceptional artwork and dazzling characters, but I heard from people who had seen the show that it ended up being somewhat underwhelming. For that reason, I put this show off for a long time and finally got into it recently when I ran out of stuff to watch. While I can see why people were disappointed with this series, and despite its problems, I feel that the show doesn't get enough credit. In fact, I'm convinced it'sone of the more underrated anime out there. For anyone interested in getting into the show, I personally recommend going into it with as little knowledge as possible and as few expectations. For this reason, I'm going to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible.

The best part of the show is easily the artwork in every category: design, the backgrounds, character designs, the quality, and animation, all of it is absolutely breathtaking and some of the best in the industry to date. If this were a review based solely on the artwork, it would easily be a 10/10.

The sound design and quality is also really good, though it isn't anything particularly unique (aside from its soundtrack). The voice acting was as good as could be expected for anime dubbing (yes, I watched it dubbed. Sue me.), but it's decent and the soundtrack, while well developed, interesting and stylish, doesn't exactly heighten the emotion like a soundtrack is supposed to do. That being said, for every thing the soundtrack does not do, it more than makes up for it by adding a fresh atmospheric layer to the series in a way that most anime are not able to do. You definitely can't say the sound team didn't try something new with its jazz piano and contemporary orchestral beats.

The series oozes style! Aside from the art, this is the best part of the anime and the reason why it was such a highly anticipated show when it released, and nowhere is that more apparent than by the way the red's (one of the show's two main gang factions) were designed. Every member of the red gang has his own individual style and quirks, almost as if they grew up in the designer stores of Harajuku, Japan. The other characters, while not as flashy nor as interesting to look at as the red's, also come into their own style's as well (with one major exception: virtually all the blues). Everything, from the way the characters dress to the way they fight, tells a story in and of itself and says a lot about the characters in a way that the story was unfortunately unable to capture.

That brings me to the first negative of the show. The quality of the characters themselves (style and artwork aside) is pretty mixed. There are some characters that are really good (pretty much anyone in the red's, Kuro, and Shiro) and there are characters that aren't as good (pretty much anyone on the blue's, Neko, Shiro towards the end, the colorless king, etc.). Not that the characters are bad, mind you, but if you've noticed, there's a disparity between the two gang factions; the blues and the reds. For those of you that have already seen K, why do you think that is?

The biggest reason why the blue's aren't as interesting as the red's is largely do to the homogeneity that the faction is meant to create. Unlike the reds, who represent chaos and individuality, the blues are meant to represent order and the collective. The blue's all act the same, dress the same, and talk the same way and as a result, the characters suffer. The only blue that's ever somewhat interesting is Reishi and that's because he's a defector from the red's whose loyalty is always understandably in question.

You might have also noticed that I haven't even talked about who are supposed to be the main character of the story, Shiro. He is a good character with his own quirks and personality (and fashion sense), and he's actually fairly well developed up until the final few episodes, but the other characters are so much more interesting and fun to watch that he's constantly stuck under the shadow of the red's and Kuro, the man who's trying to kill him.

For that reason, it's admittedly difficult to get into the main story when the whole west-side-story-type gang war going on between both the red's and blue's is so much more interesting. In fact, if the writers had simply developed the series on solely THAT story instead, the score would have probably been higher. The main story involving Shiro, Kuro, and Neko and the mystery surrounding the Colorless king is still enjoyable, but no where near as interesting as everything else that's happening around them.

And onto the story itself, for the most part it's fine. It's nothing to write home to about, and it definitely uses familiar tropes and borrows elements from other anime and stories to develop it's world and lore, but it comes into its own more and more as the series develops.

K is kind of like a Guy Ritchie movie: tons of style, little substance, and that's largely due to this show's short runtime (13 episodes). The story that the writers wanted to tell was much more ambition and larger than what they had the capacity to create, especially in the manner they chose to develop it (a slow boil), and by the end of the show, the writers had to wrap up so many plot threads that it felt very rushed, and many of the twists and turns the show takes at the end were not only predictable, but underwhelming and undeserved.

It's not exactly badly done though. The writers did the best they could with the time they were given, but they needed to make the show longer in order to better develop both the main characters and the main story. In fact, despite the short runtime, they had managed to wrap most of it up while leaving a cliffhanger for future stories relatively well. There are some plot holes here and there, but they're mostly minor details. And while the show is short, it's a very fun ride, especially for the first half of the show.

CONCLUSION:

I Loved K! For the first 5 or 6 episodes, I was thinking this was totally going to be an 8 or a 9 out of 10, and until the last few episodes, it would have been. The reason the show wasn’t as good as it could have been was because the writers bit off more than they could chew for a 13 episode runtime. K is not going to be your favorite anime, but I'm sure if you keep your expectations at a reasonable level, (don't go into this thinking it's going to be a masterpiece) you'll enjoy the hell out of it!

SHORT VERSION:

Story: 6/10 (Decent)
Art: 10/10 (Masterpiece!)
Sound: 8/10 (Really Good)
Characters: 5/10 (Mediocre)
Enjoyment: 8/10 (Really Good)
Final Score: 6/10 (Decent, and the highest 6/10 I've ever given)