Director: Hiromitsu Kanazawa, Susumu Kudo
Starring: Daisuke Namikawa, Sam Regal, Daisuke Ono, Matthew Mercer, Kenjiro Tsuda, Keith Silverstein, Mikaka Komatsu, Stephanie Sheh, Tomokazu Sugita, Patrick Seitz
Running Time: 300 minutes
Certificate: 12
K represents many great ideas getting lost in an increasingly complicated plot. It is to the show’s credit though, that such convoluted strands are hinted at throughout and so do not come as an unwanted surprise. Many typical story elements are weaved together early on, including amnesia, mistaken identity, murder, prophecies, chosen ones, and magical cat girls. With so much going on it may sound crowded, but since the focus is on the most interesting element, a murder mystery that involves a seemingly natural schoolboy, it’s easy to ignore the political struggles of the 7 kings of the 7 clans that provide a canvas too big for the painting.
Yashiro (Namikawa/Regal) is a student at a large school situated on a single island. The school setting doesn’t add too much, other than being a means to establish its target audience. Most of the usual nonsense of high school politics and rights of passage are completely ignored, and more is made of the fact that it is easy for students to get lost in such an overwhelmingly large school. They seem to lose their identity, and once the murder mystery aspect kicks in it is clear that nobody really knows of Yashiro is a student or not. This slight social commentary is, again, left on screen for those willing to interpret it as such, rather than being hammered in hard.
Yashiro is suspected of having killed a man, while also being suspected of being involved in the battle of the 7 kings in some way. This mythological plot disguises itself in its modern day settings rather well. The majority of clans are made into street gangs or more organised police forces. It lends itself to a particularly rich visual style but it is never elaborated upon in great detail. Realising the murder mystery is its strongest strand, K holds its big reveals for far too late in the show. The constant teasing of information, while expecting us to care for the in depth history of characters and events, can become very tedious at times.
Luckily there’s also a lot to enjoy. Yashiro is joined by a cat that becomes human, which adds a lot of humour to proceedings. Yashiro as a character manages to break away from many anime protagonists thanks to his calm and confident demeanour, without being stoic and distant. The animation is very fluent, and captures movement very well, especially when getting involved in chase sequences or battles. K is a strong enough series for 12 episodes, but since this was an original anime not based on previous material, it seems odd that they would try and cram so much into so little. A 24 episode run really would have benefited the story and pacing.
[usr=3]K is released on Blu-ray/DVD dual play via Manga Entertainment on 14th April.
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