I believe I finally figured out something much like Agata of this episode did. Over the course of watching Kiznaiver something in the back of my mind bugged me about it. It was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on but after watching this episode I believe it’s finally hit me. I now know what’s wrong with this series and it’s truly it’s most evident here. For you see, I don’t think Kiznaiver was truly planned out. I think they had an idea of the themes they wanted to touch and knew what the quirks of what the characters were going to be. I believe they had a vague concept of how they were going to go about this but didn’t actually plan it out. So they took these concepts and just stuck them together and hoped the end result would make a tuned out narrative. For looking at just how this show has conducted itself and now seeing the endgame I truly see that it’s was floundering around for a concrete plot. This all feels unplanned and not thought out with how it sets up foreshadowing of future developments only to disregard it entirely. But let us cite some examples.
Take Hisomu for instance, he was given an episode to be fully introduced which highlighted his tendency for masochistic behavior and moral ambiguity. Taking into account how the series showed him in the beginning, one would assume he would be taking an antagonistic role. After all he is an outsider from the original group gathered and purposefully brought in by the project supervisors. His masochistic tendencies gives him good reason to incite discord among the group and stand as prefect example of why forming bonds with people can be dangerous. Because some people want to hurt you for their own pleasure. However then Hisomu proceeded to have no bearing on the plot at all, only bring discord when he pointed out Maki being selfish. Now in recent episodes he is doing the exact opposite of what his introduction suggested and is playing a supportive role in bringing everyone together. This truly feels like they didn’t really know what to do with him once they introduced him.
There’s also the male teacher who at first was playing the role of a supporting comic relief character before being shoved into an antagonist role and now suddenly he’s acting as Noriko’s support. Shouldn’t that role be for Noriko’s sister? His motivations just seem jarring because if his role was to help Noriko then why was he so antagonistic last episode towards the Kiznaivers? Maki, started off as someone with a dark past, spent two episodes getting her out of her shell and two episodes later they shove her right back into that shell. Niko, started as comic relief, then a foil pushing the group together, then shoved into a love triangle out of nowhere and now she’s back to comic relief? Now we have Noriko, started as a well intentioned mysterious girl, then acted as a love interest, then pushed in a victim to be saved and now she’s a full blown antagonist. If you look at all the characters they all have haphazard character arcs like this with the only consistent ones being Agata which has focused on him getting back his emotions and Chidori which has been all about getting together with Agata. This really does feel like the writer has been throwing ideas against a wall and looking to see what sticks. That’s why I wasn’t able to see where this show was going, because the show itself honestly has no idea where it’s going.
I probably went on about that too long as this should be about the episode itself. Though maybe that’s because this episode was rather uneventful. It mainly detailed about Agata thinking a lot and then just gathering everyone together to tell them to all be friends again. With lots of speeches about feelings which I find somewhat irksome. For you see most of the expression through this episode was done through dialogue and let me tell you something. For something like Books and Manga, expressing emotion through dialogue is somewhat of a necessity, however it is a fact that 55% of human communication is through body language. Anime is a visual medium and there should be no need to rely so heavily on words yet most anime forget this. They have the characters make big speeches on how they think and feel, basically articulating their emotion to the audience in painstaking detail which isn’t right. For some of the most powerful emotional moments of cinema and anime are points where the characters don’t say a word. That’s the problem here, characters are telling the audience how they are thinking and feeling when they could simply show it. As an experiment try this, in this episode it showed three characters saying out inner monologues to themselves in sequence.(Those characters being Maki, Yuta and Tenga) At that scene turn off the subtitles, turn off the sound and tell me if you really need that monologue to understand what the characters are feeling. There’s power in motion to show emotion so to disregard it and focus on conveying through words loses half the impact. I think I will leave this with one last thing, took you long enough Chidori. You selfish idiot.
~AidanAK47~
Have to agree with your assessment. I liked the show up to episode 9 when it was largely zany and lighthearted, just taking its time throwing interesting characters against each other (except the masochist – I’ve never liked the masochist schtick – nor have I ever appreciated Japanese society’s morbid fascination with fetishes). Let the reasons the homeroom teacher is pushing buttons remain mysterious. Let the experiment remain vaguely unexplained. Just enjoy the character interplay, and above all – DON’T RUSH THE ENDING TO SOME HALF-BAKED RESOLUTION. Let the first season remain unresolved on a lot of points.
I liked it when it was a random collection of wackiness and had a more fun tone.
Unsurprisingly, episode 9 was not well received by me, and I honestly haven’t gotten around to watching anything since then.
Basically this. Thanks for pointing it out. I had a similar problem with KlK, although it was plot related there (this show was often just a big flip-flopping between serious developments and following turnarounds to funny jokes and status quo for me) whereas it is character related here. I only really realised it when Nori was talking and acting like she did in 1 again. I expected her to change after her confrontations with Kacchon and the others in the previous episodes, but instead we are basically back at the beginning again.
Hisomu also bothered me. I expected him to be like O.D. in Gatchaman, meaning some weird one who becomes relevant near the end. But he wasn’t even relevant for shipping, like all the others. I even kinda like him, but I fail to see the point in dedicating an episode to his introduction when he plays no part in the plot. Maybe there’ll the twist that he’s one of the old friends and just colored his hair, maybe he learned to feel a bit of pain over the years and the former lack of it was the reason for why he became a masochist – but I guess I’ve to wait for the last episode to see if I’m right or if there was really no reason to add this character to the cast.
Interesting, since I found the last couple episodes delivered musch stronger drama, now that the Kiznaiver gone. The drama is still no way subtle but this is still a rollercoaster of emotions. Still my favourite out of this season