It is figuratively killing me that I have been unable to put out content lately. To help combat this, I figure I should probably start talking about some of the shows I'm watching. Someone said at some point that was a thing they'd like me to do, so I figure, why the heck not?
Let's begin with one of the latest offerings from my mancrush Studio Trigger, and the bizarre show that is Kiznaiver.
I'd like to begin this by stating the following: I f***ing adore Kill la Kill. And while I won't go into it here (frankly, that show deserves it's own essay-length WILA at some point), it's important that I establish my biases.
If you're familiar with KLK, then you'll find the art style to be very familiar. But just in the first few minutes, they manage to establish a completely different tone from KLK, or even Gurren Lagann. In fact, despite sharing a lot of visual similarities with their past works, it is clearly evident that they intend to take a more serious tone this time around, and it's one that I find pretty interesting.
It's hard not to look at Trigger's work and not compare them with Gainax of old - doubly so because the creative minds behind Trigger spent so long working there. But right from the start, Kiznaiver strikes me as the Evangelion period of Gainax - that time when they came up with a really bizarre concept, and kept a straight face the entire time they ran with it. The show has it's funny moments, to be sure, but they aren't the gut-busting outrageous moments we were given thanks to Mako and her family, or the interactions between Ryuko and Senketsu - instead, we laugh because of the sheer absurdity of the characters themselves, but despite their absurdity it all remains pretty grounded in reality.
The opening sequence reminds me a lot of anime in the early '90s for some reason. Not the TV stuff, mind you, but more what we got with OVAs. Good quality animation, a starting sequence filled with mystery and intrigue, and hints that there may be some exploration of the human psyche - stuff that always made me appeal to anime from early on. This is something they hit us with near the end, when they drop the somewhat heady concepts right in front of our faces, and go 'yeah, this is actually the thing we're going with'.
By this point, I'm going to have to assume that you have seen the show, or are about to. Therefore, consider this your last warning for spoilers. Because from here on, I'm gonna spoil the shit out of what I've seen.
This core concept I refer to is the idea of 'sharing pain'. It's not really anything new, mind you, but the way that it is portrayed is kind of new to me. Literally, six kids are linked up together, and when one feels pain, it is equally distributed across all six. Our main protagonist is able to survive something that should have killed him because the 'pain' was shared among the other five, which caused them to pass out on the spot.
Mind you, I have many questions about this, since it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not just the sensation of pain that they're sharing, but also the physical injuries, supposedly. Our hero should have broken his damned neck from the fall, but thanks to the other six, everyone walked away with relatively minor injuries. Technically there's no possible way this should be possible, not without some serious f***ing wizardry. But what caught my attention wasn't the somewhat ridiculous premise, but the even more ludicrous reasoning behind it: World Peace.
According to the walking exposition device, the town was created for the sole purpose of studying how to get people to 'share pain'. The idea is that it is difficult to feel someone else's pain, but when your body is physically linked to another through some voodoo magic that currently eludes me, it may be possible to get disparate groups to actually get along.
I'll be honest, I don't buy the rationalization. In fact, I get this sneaking suspicion that there's actually a lot more going on here, and that everything we've been fed so far is just a cover for something much more sinister. I believe that the city was created with the purpose of experimenting on people. I just don't buy that the lofty goal was world peace. Considering the main character starts the show off escaping from some kind of laboratory, I am fairly sure the whole point of this was to explore the potential combat applications for this mystical technology.
Up until now, I've focused exclusively on the plot, which is already promising to be weird as balls. It reeks of Paranoia Agent, with a healthy dose of Evangelion , wrapped in the art style of Kill la Kill, with just a hint of Panty and Stocking and thrown in for good measure.
For the most part, it all remains pretty grounded. That doesn't stop them from making references to their past works though - for example, two of the characters discussing the fate of Cicadas, subtly referencing the plot of Gurren Lagann.
Of all the things I've seen Kiznaiver offer though? The characters are what really draw me. Hands down, my absolute favorite is Niko so far. Not because she has blonde twintails. But because she's so f***ing bizarre, I can't help but absolutely love her. If I had to describe her, it would be as such: Like a sane Nui from Kill la Kill spliced with Mako's relatively random personality.
When you introduce someone desecrating a statue on school grounds claiming to be making an altar to summon fairies, yeah, I'm gonna f***ing adore the shit out of that. She is so batshit insane, and yet still oddly grounded in reality.
All of the characters fascinate me in different ways, and while they are described as embodying some new twist on the traditional 'seven deadly sins' (which I think is pretty shoehorned, but I also get the feeling that's some weirdness on the character delivering the lines, rather than some subtle message the writers are trying to convey), they all feel pretty human.
End of the day, the bottom line is this: I walked into Kiznaiver knowing nothing more than that Trigger was behind the show, and that it looked kind of like Kill la Kill visually. I walked away relatively pleased, slightly confused, and thoroughly interested. I want to see where they're going with this, and just how batshit everything will wind up getting.
Judging by the cliffhanger from the first episode, I get the feeling there may be a little bit of Star Driver in its DNA as well, spliced with a smidge of Bokurano.
It's really an interesting combination, and definitely one well worth my time.
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