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This anime is not for everyone. It's an anime for children and adults, but not for teenagers.

This is an anime that is a lot more enjoyable if you know about it's roots. Is based on a mobage produced by Nexon. It was part of a crossmedia project that sadly failed. The game closed a month before the show aired.

The creators of this anime weren't expecting to make something huge. They are a very small team with a very limited budget from a game that failed.

And this is how everything starts. With a poorly animated first chapter, some novice seiyuu and low expectations from the creators ... and the community.


Story:

The story starts pretty simple. A girl lost in some kind of park where people with animal features called ''friends'' live with no memories of who or what she is. This is the story of her travels as she goes to a place where she can learn who she is. She is followed mi Serbal, the first ''Friend'' she encountered in the park and together they solve problems for other friends using her SUPERIOR HOMO SAPIENS MIND because the ''Friends'' have the sapience of an human but the intelligence of an animal.

The plot is pretty simple. Sometimes you don't need more to make something enjoyable but that's not everything. Kemono friends uses the ''show, don't tell'' in the explanation of the subplot. Japari Park is an abandoned park. You can see things left by humans in state of decay like some post-apocalyptic setting. If you pay attention some friends talk about how they where normal animals at first but something transformed them. (Spoilers chapter 4)At some point a character even is surprised that not all humans are extinct. (/spoilers)

You can watch it for a mindless cute adventure or you can dwell more in the story of the world and his mysteries.



Visuals:

I can't talk about this without talking about the infamous first episode. In the first minutes you can totally see it. Even someone who doesn't pay attention to detail can tell how low budget everything was. How they where trying to do something with what they had but it wasn't enough. It's a really bad first impression that made a lot of people stop watching in that moment. Fortunately is not a sample of how everything goes in all the other chapters.

After they got the hang of it in the first couple episodes you can see an improvement. The CGI is more polished but not perfect and that works in it's favor. Kemono Friends has a hand-made feel to it, like something that is not perfect but you can see the effort the team put in it. The design of the characters is very good and with a lot of variety. They managed to be faithful to their animal counterpart in a lot of details and every character has his own personality that is evident just by looking at them.



Personal opinion:

I liked this a lot. This season has more animes of cute characters doing cute things but this one feels like the more natural of them. Even it's flaws add to the charm that it has. The characters feel more real and you can see in every episode how everyone tried their best.


This anime is more than the episodes themselves. Is the story of the underdog. With how limited they where they managed to make good characters, an interesting story and the voice actor gave it all they had. How it rose to be one of the most popular this season when even their creators weren't expecting a lot.


This is a show for children or adults. You either need the ingenuity of a kid or the maturity of an adult to enjoy it. Don't watch it if you expect ''traditional'' anime. Watch it as a whole and get outside your comfort zone of good visuals and expert teams. If you can see past it's flaws and see not only the anime but the project as a whole you will see one of the best shows this season.