Kiznaiver is a twelve episode anime, that started off as an anime and did spawn a manga adaptation. It follows a group of seven high school students, although the lead is Agata. Agata feels no emotions or pain, but he was chosen along with the other six and became Kiznaivers. Basically, all seven of them now share a bond, and the most tangible aspect of that bond is that if any one of them feel pain, the others feel it as well. In effect, they share pain.
Each of the seven has vastly different backgrounds and personalities. In a normal situation, they would never have grouped together or become friends. At best, they would have just tolerated or acknowledged each other. However, now they are inexplicably linked, whether they like it or not, and have to understand each other as they now work as a team. The anime has slow pacing though, as it doesn’t reveal what their objective is for a while after the group forms.
By the time the halfway point arrives, you might still find yourself in the dark on just what the whole thing is about. By this point, we learn more about the interactivity of the pain shared between the group, but for what purpose? They are placed into unusual “tests” that they have to pass, so that data can be collected. There is apparently an experiment city that somehow has a role in all this. Although it’s hard to see the common threads between them.
This anime is produced by Trigger, well known for their other works such as Kill la Kill and SSSS.Gridman (although the latter was a released after this). Therefore as expected, the anime has a distinct aesthetics and the animation feels slick and fluid. It’s normally bright and colorful and brings with it, its own certain charms. Although also being a Trigger anime, there are some odd things and random reactions that happen over the course of the season.
The more interesting aspect comes later in the season, where we start to see the characters’ emotions being toyed with. As more and more information comes to light, you can’t help but feel sympathetic at the characters’ plight, and disgust at the people that put them there. They are put into situations that causes them a lot of pain, ruthlessly dragging out memories and emotions that they wanted to forget or hide. It does feel like the characters have to experience their darkest hour before we can get the typical idealistic ending that we’d expect.
One thing for sure is that the relationships between the characters within the group is a mess. Due to this, they are taken advantaged of. Stemming from this is the backstory of Agata and his lack of emotions or pain. Since it’s revealed late into the story, it feels consistent with the events that happened in the earlier episodes, and so you feel like it does a lot to explain what is currently going on.
The high is not sustainable though as the anime needs to wrap up, and it does so in a quick and messy way. To be fair, considering the subject matter and how it approached it, it was going to have a tough time executing the conclusion anyway. As a result, certain bits of the ending can feel extreme, while other bits feel lacking. It wraps up all the lingering plot points, albeit in a clumsy and inelegant way at times.
Overall, Kiznaiver is average. It’s not amazing but it’s not horrible either, just very average. The anime has the aesthetics and animation going for it, but the storytelling can be much stronger. Currently, it can be too slow paced in the beginning, but then loses focus and becomes messier towards the end when the more interesting aspects start to show.
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