Kiznaiver

Mari Okada's melodramas are swings and roundabouts. Sometimes she can keep her chakras at bay, and, despite the complicated interconnected relationships, her pen can produce a very interesting work, such as Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea, but sometimes this lady can atrociously over-do it and drown an initially promising storyline in an overly sentimental mess full of stupid, irritating characters whose features are basically the only character trait repetitively shoved into the audience’s faces. Kiznaiver is unfortunately an example of the latter. Okada probably got the idea to write an anime about an experiment in humans sharing their pain, but she just did not feel like trying to think any deeper about the implications of implementing such an idea and elaborating on the laws of such a fictional world much, especially when she had the opportunity to limit herself to something she loves so much: melodramas! Emotional outbursts! That is what it is all about in the first place! We have to let them scream it out properly, we have to cram in as much theatricality as possible, and make the audience as moved as possible! ... or suffer like an animal. One star for something resembling an interesting reveal in the last few episodes, to only be followed by an idiotic grand finale at the end, at which point I did not know whether I should laugh or cry, and a small insignificant plus for the excellent opening, though it is a shame that the last single by Boom Boom Satellites, had to be used for something so utterly stupid. (26/11/2018)

The idea of sharing and feeling another person’s pain is quite interesting. If people could feel other people's pain, they perhaps would not feel the need to hurt them, and people would understand each other much more - I can get my head around that. Even so, this show lacked momentum, and the atmosphere only hinted at what it could have been, given it has an interesting topic. Still, this show is not bad. The main characters are, on the whole, an interesting mix of various extreme character types, and while I was not too impressed with them at first, the more I got to know them, the more I liked them. I was not too interested in the main male protagonist, although Hajime Tenga, Nico Niiyama, and Tsuguhito Yuta were quite entertaining. I am also going to mention that I liked the colorful and pleasant opening, even though electronic music is not exactly my cup of tea. In conclusion, even though initially I was not impressed, I gradually started to like this anime series. In the end, however, I still cannot say that it was all that great or that I became very enthusiastic about it. Sure I was curious to see how it would end and how the "very fragile relationships" would unravel. I did not feel disappointed (rather, everything turned out more or less as I expected), even though I think it could have all been much better. So, in my opinion, it is just OK and just OK is worth three stars. 5.5/10. (10/04/2016)