Plot Summary
The series starts in feudal Japan, where the protagonist, a young man named Kuro, is hunted down by a bunch of enemies who seek to murder him. He seeks shelter in a secluded house, where he meets a woman called Kuromitsu. The two appear to fall in love with each other, but while on the run from Kuro’s enemies he is lethally wounded. In order to save him, Kuromitsu reveals that she bears the gift and curse of being immortal, and she shares it with Kuro in order to save his life.
Flash forward a thousand years afterwards, where Kuro roams a post-apocalyptic land. Having mysteriously lost his memories, he seeks help in order to identify and hunt down the woman appearing in his dreams. Unfortunately, he is hindered by an evil organization who want to capture and use him as a test subject in order to reproduce his immortality. There are also people who view him as an abomination and want to put him out of his misery. Kuro struggles against all those obstacles and opponents, and manages to track Kuromitsu down, only for the story to come full circle: she re-erases his memories and sends him on another thousand year journey to track her down, thereby making their relationship endure forever.
Review
The animation in Kurozuka is amazing, that much is granted. Most of the focus of the graphics is on the many action sequences, which vary a lot in their setting, from swordfights to firearms. The foes are equally varied, randing from japanese samurai and kabuki actors to zombies and cybernetically enhanced brutes. The choreography is great, and I especially like the colour palette when Kuro slips into some sort of trance; I wish it could have been fitted more often into the series. Naturally, the protagonist being an adept sword user translates into lots of blood and dismemberment being shown on screen, and I suppose that that is part of the allure of the series. The backdrops are also very nicely drawn. The artists were called to shift rapidly from medieval japan to a blasted post-apocalyptic future, but they manage to depict every front beautifully. The atmosphere remains dark and gritty throughout, but each era has its own colours and design details. Which is just as well, because the alternations from one era to the other were confusing enough as it is.
Sadly, all those beautiful scenes aren’t used for anything other than stages for Kuro’s fights to the death. Indeed, Kuro’s path is basically a beeline from one battle challenge to the next. As mentioned above, the action sequences do not disappoint, but the plot to tie them together is mostly absent. The intial episodes showed great promise, hinting at a tale of love which transcends the barriers of time. Instead, we are mostly treated with the protagonists acting in two specific eras: Japan during the 12th century, where Kuro’s plight begins, and a post-apocalyptic city a thousand years into the future. The latter is where the plot, if any, is carried forward, and it has less to do with Kuro’s development and thoughts of his status, and more with evil scientists trying to discover and exploit the secret behind his undying state. Personally I feel that displaying the characters, for the most part, only in the extreme past and extreme future misses some wonderful opportunities for their development. I think that having Kuro and Kuromitsu meet several times throughout history would make both characters much more interesting, and it would be a wonderful opportunity to introduce some all-encompassing direction. As they stand, the two worlds feel disjoined. The post-apocalyptic world, especially, needs much more than visuals in order to become believable. It is drawn as well as it should be, but in order for it to pass as an everyday living environment it would require a backdrop of characters being shown to adapt to such alien circumstances.
And the characters are not actually interesting. The series is so thick with battles that there are only two kinds of supporting characters, the protagonists’ lackeys and their enemies, and most of them have really short lifespans. Other than a handful of adversaries for which we allowed to peek into their history and motivations, all of them are completely one-dimensional. The two protagonists don’t fare much better. Kuromitsu is a woman veiled in mystery, so there no effort is made to explore her thoughts. And Kuro is a stoic amnesiac who likes to yell warcries rather than parley. Trapped by their own nature, both characters are doomed to be nothing more than stereotypes of their kind.
The same could be said for their voices. Kuro and Kuromitsu say little and are required to show little to no emotion for plot and characterization reasons, so there is not much from which to judge the quality of the voice acting. The rest of the characters’ voices are similarly forgettable. As far as the rest of the sound production is concerned, what stood out most for me was the OP, which I hated. A hard rock tune with incomprehensible lyrics has no appeal for me, and it sounds particularly ill-fitting in the beginning of the series, where the action takes place in medieval Japan. The rest of the music score is more capable, and usually mirrors nicely the dark atmosphere of the series.
The very beginning and very end of the series reveal what it could have been: a marvelous story of immortal and unchanging love through the ages. Sandwiched between that is a nearly unceasing string of bloody fights with little heed to a greater picture. In the end, Kurozuka proved to be, at least for me, a gory swordfight anime with only some crumbs of story to fill in the edges.
Stats
Type: Series
Length: 12 X 20 min
Rating
Production: 8/10
Plot: 5/10
Setting: 6/10
Characters: 5/10
Overall: 6/10
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