Category: Kurenai

As much as I like the animation-style of the OP, the song does get annoying really fast! I’m hoping that if this series actually has more than 13 episodes, it’ll at least change the song for the OP.

In any case, this episode was chockfull of development and background. The big fight that takes place leads to Murasaki knocked out, and her guardian getting incredibly angry at Shikurou. What follows then is finally Shinkurou’s background, as both Murasaki and above mentioned guardian (forgot her name) learn more about the guy. It turns out that he not only lost his parents in that accident, but he also got picked up by what looks like child-smugglers. The interesting thing is that Ginko was with him at this time, and apparently he learned to fight because of Yuuno, who seemed to already posses a black belt in Judo when she was twelve.

There’s still no explanation of that strange body of Shinkrou, but now we at least know why he had trouble with his elbows: when he gets out of control, spikes not unlike those we see in Soul eater come out of his body, though for Shinkurou, this hurts like hell. Benika also tells about why she helped Murasaki escape, as it was basically a request by her late mother.

I’m also curious about the villains of this series, especially since Red Garden spent such an surprisingly large amount of time on Hervé, and yet we’ve seen hardly anything about the bad guys in Kurenai. I really hope that the director will give them the same treatment as Hervé, because this guy has really been one of the memorable villains I’ve watched.

How awesome! With this episode, there’s no mistake: the voices in Kurenai are recorded before the animation, instead of afterwards. Otherwise some of the conversations this episode could never have turned out as they did here, with characters who spoke right through each other, without having to worry about matching the lips. Seriously, more anime should attempt this style, because it gives the voice-actors so much more freedom. I think that by far the best example of this is the fight between Claire and her father in Red Garden. It was an absolute masterpiece, and it would never have turned out so incredibly emotionally intense if the voices were just regularly recorded after the animators did their work.

In addition, this episode was also a lot of fun to watch. Murasaki pays a visit to Shinkurou’s school, and for once Shinkurou wasn’t attacked by every single male in the school who was jealous of how he was living with a cute girl. I love how this series has been shattering clichés one after the other. A while later, we see a bunch of punks bully an old lady, and even though I dislike it when a series uses a bunch of punks as a random plot-device, it was probably one of the first time where the main character refused to save their victim. Murasaki tries, but it really looks like Shinkurou hates fighting. As it turns out, he only does his jobs because of Kuhoin (I hope that that was her name), who saved him after his parents were killed off. Makes sense.

The best thing about this episode was without a doubt Murasaki’s innocence, though. Both the comical and serious parts. I really laughed when Murasaki mistook a biology-puppet (how did you call these things again) for an actually live human, and yet her inability to understand why Shinkurou didn’t stop the punks really hit a spot, even without the amazing voice-acting. I can really understand why this series has become one of the most popular series of this season. It’s solid, it knows its characters, it’s fun and it’s got without a doubt the best voice-acting of all new shows that aired this season.

After the first episode, I was pretty sure that I’d end up blogging this series. The second episode of Kurenai is less impressive then the first one, but that’s only natural. If you’re going to start with a bang, you obviously need to take things easy in the second episode so that the characters can be fleshed out a bit. Especially Murasaki and Shinkuro got a lot of attention in this episode.

What immediately stands out for this series, apart from the art-style, is that these two main characters don’t act their age at all. I can imagine how Murasaki was educated early on, as she already speaks Japanese at adult-level, though at the same time she’s just like a princess who has been pampered for all her life. And yet she’s more than your typical spoiled princess, because most of her arrogance comes from her ignorance, and not her need to feel superior to all lower life-forms.

Shinkuro on the other hand, doesn’t show any signs of puberty at all (something of which I’m REALLY glad). We still don’t know much about him, but he’s seen his dead mother right in front of his eyes, he probably lost his father as well, he’s turned into a killing-machine with purple blood and strange elbows.

Another thing about this series is the use of dialogue. When the tension increases, the characters hardly let the others finish speaking before they say something. Where you’d usually hear a one-second pause between one sentence and the next, Kurenai shortens this to a quarter of a second. I’m not sure whether this series is the first one to do this, but it is the first time I’ve noticed it.

One thing I’m quite curious about is the length of this series: will it be 13 or 26 episodes, and if there are 26 episodes, then how does this series plan to fill its time? Some series are quite sneaky about it. For Persona, for example, I realized really late that it was supposed to run for two seasons, instead of just one.