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WARNING - THE SECOND HALF OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. I have included a warning in the text itself, so you'll know where to stop reading if necessary.

For those who haven’t seen Kemurikusa yet, I'd say: if you like this show's premise, then go for it, it's a harmless watch. Following the characters on their adventure is somewhat enjoyable, and the worldbuilding is intriguing. The ending - my least favourite part - isn't offensively bad either. I actually feel bad for giving this little show a 5, since it does have a lot of heart. It almost feels like some kind of indie project from ... a small, unknown creator. So I need to get my problems with it off my chest.

Playing into the indie feel, is the low budget – immediately one of its problems, sadly. This is especially evident by the CGI, used to animate every single movement in the anime. The animation of the Mushi ('bugs') still looks passable, but the character designs are just off, and that's hard to ignore in the beginning. The expressions of characters show zero emotion and their movements look incredibly awkward. An overload of stills also makes watching this anime quite a static experience. Luckily, there's still something I can compliment the art section on. The usage of moody colours in the background art is very effective, and helps conveying the post-apocalyptic setting.

Many points of critique I have centre around the characters. I bear no heavy dislike towards any of them, but I'm afraid they didn’t contribute much to me. Wakaba, for example, is filled with childish wonder about Kemurikusa and the world that surrounds him. It's nice that we have a character sharing our curiosity about the universe built in the show, but too much of his dialogue consists of him saying things like "How interesting!", and him being overly hype so often makes it seem like he barely takes things seriously – in heavy contrast to when he’s suddenly surprised at the dangers of the situation, even though those should already be known to him. The Rinas exhibit a similar air of carefreeness, as they mainly seem to care about being able to eat new things. And I feel the need to note that I’m not talking about normal food here. Oh well, at least their iron uptake won’t running low anytime soon… But that aside, these characters serve for a lot of retread comedy and dialogue, and it isn’t especially entertaining.

The more serious characters aren’t outstanding either, but they mostly serve their purpose. Ritsu is a meek but kind-hearted girl, who cares deeply for her sisters and Midori-chan, her Kemurikusa tree. Then we have Rin, a turbulent but strong-willed girl doing everything in her power to protect her sisters from the world’s dangers. The dilemmas she faces in this endeavour are easy to relate to, and make her the most intricate character of the bunch. Sadly, there’s still something about her that annoyed me. She’s in love with Wakaba, and that receives quite a bit of focus, but there’s never any actual romantic development. The interactions between Rin and Wakaba are all too often rehashes of earlier dialogue.


MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. If you haven’t seen the show yet, this is where you should turn away.


There are still three other sisters: Riku, Ryoku, and Ryo. All of them are pretty fun characters, but I won’t focus on their personalities, since they don’t get a lot of screentime. More importantly, those sisters are thought to be dead by Rin & co. It turns out that this is not fully accurate, as they somehow ended up merging into one Kemurikusa after dying. The thing is, these three girls all came to their end at different times and in different places, and it’s never explained how this Kemurikusa was able to revive each of them. And that’s not the only problem. When Wakaba encounters Riku, he is told to keep her still being alive a secret, but no single reason as to why this would be necessary is given.

Building further on my point about Kemurikusa, I unfortunately have to say that the conclusion poses problems yet again. The range of abilities among Kemurikusa is seemingly infinite, and the show uses that as an excuse to just do whatever the hell it wants with them. The keystone in the whole story is the ‘First Person’, a little girl, and in the end it’s revealed that she split herself up in a Memory Leaf and six people – the sisters. Maybe I’m thinking about this too seriously, but I just don’t get how these Kemurikusa can create six people with widely varying personalities and abilities out of one person. To elaborate on Rin’s feelings for Wakaba, it’s a safe bet to say that Rin received those in the process of the First Person splitting herself up, and some of the other sisters seem to be aware of this, as they make fun of Rin for not understanding her own feelings. Thing is, this information should be locked up in the Memory Leaf, so the only conclusion I can draw is that the other sisters are somehow clairvoyant.

And the single biggest issue I have with this thing is the trigger for the whole story. Combining a few colours of Kemurikusa apparently enables the First Person to make the strongest one ever, and apart from destroying the other Kemurikusa as intended… it destroys most of the world. Additionally, all the Mushi the group encounters during their adventure were spawned by this one Kemurikusa. This comes off as a giant asspull, since there’s barely any explanation as to why this Kemurikusa she created would be so powerful.

One might beg the question: what did she seek to accomplish with her actions? You see, Wakaba was a scientist occupied with extensive projects involving Kemurikusa, which means little of his time could be spent together with the First Person, who cared about him deeply. The reasoning behind her decision, as stated by the anime, is that she wanted to relieve Wakaba of his high workload. However, it should have been obvious to her that Wakaba was actually very passionate about his job. What this signifies to me is that the loneliness she felt during Wakaba's absence is what actually drove her. The problem I have with this, is that we're given no reason as to why she would be so attached to Wakaba. Their relationship isn't fleshed out at all. And Wakaba himself? He immediately forgives her, and tries to cheer her up, since she did it for him. I’m not asking for him to full-on scold her, since that would be out of character, but he doesn't even show a hint of remorse. It's weird, to say the least. To summarize, the entire world ends up being destroyed because of the love of one little girl for someone else. This may sound cool to some, but how the anime goes about shaping up to this event makes it fall flat on its face.

Another (one bites the dust)...


WARNING - Apart from the first 3 paragraphs, THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This series does have some points of intrigue, but it’s wrecked by the writing flaws. The logic behind the supernatural curse that the show revolves around isn't convincing at all, and deaths feel like random occurrences. The extravagant ways in which many characters die do not exactly help either. The series yet again manages to disappoint me with its conclusion. Many characters become unbelievably rash and stupid, and certain reveals give birth to new problems that further downgrade the series as a whole.

That said, the way the plot unravels ... does actually make most of the show gripping to watch and the moody artwork helps further building atmosphere. There is some nice exposition in the first half, most of which is done by Mei - the girl through whom our MC gets to understand the dire situation. As the calm, almost detached person she is, Mei herself is also an interesting character. The finale kind of puts a damper on her likeability, though.

Flawed as the series is, I don't discourage you from giving it a try. Start off by watching it as something genuinely interesting. Just know that it will not last. After noticing a serious drop in quality, begin watching it as some kind of horror B-movie - during the dark hours if you want to maximize the experience. And finally, watch the last two episodes to laugh at the overwhelming flaws and stupidity.


NOW ENTERING HEAVY SPOILER TERRITORY.


For a series revolving around a supernatural curse, possibly the most important thing is to make the logic behind that curse feel convincing. This anime succeeds in one aspect, and only one. In 1972, a student of class 3-3 dies, and unable to deal with their feeling of loss, the other students start pretending he's still there with them. In a way, the students draw death closer to them. Consequently, class 3-3 draws death to it from that year onwards. In other words, one deceased person who was previously in that class magically reappears in the beginning of every school year, and the others have no idea that this person is actually dead. After all, the class in 1972 also lost sight of the fact that their deceased classmate was in fact... well... dead. Personally, I think this part of the concept is fascinating.

Where the series derails, is the lack of logic behind the deaths that occur. With some fantasy, one could argue that the students out of class 3-3 are drawn to death just as death is drawn to their class, and as such they run a high risk of dying. However, that explanation makes little sense if you think about one of the countermeasures. An effective way to prevent the calamity is for the class to collectively ignore an arbitrarily chosen person, yet this strategy does nothing to change the fact that the class is close to death. The anime seems to go for a different type of logic: since one person in the class is actually dead, there’s one more person than there should be. To compensate, someone from the class has to be ignored. If not, one random person will die. Except…

Once the calamity starts, there will be multiple students dying and this will continue for the whole year if it isn’t counteracted in a very specific way. In no way whatsoever is this string of deaths justified throughout the whole series. It also never gives any tangible reason as to why the curse affects certain characters at certain moments, and I’m even more baffled by the fact that relatives of the students can be affected as well. The series desperately needs a twisted but logical explanation for the specifics of the curse, but it has nothing of the kind. People die, because this is a horror series, I guess. Yep. The same lack of justification is present for the altering of tapes and documents, which is obviously just a means to an end as there would be no mystery element otherwise.

Approaching the end of the series, the bodies pile up and (understandably) the tension rises ever higher. However, that absolutely doesn’t give characters a free pass to become giant idiots in the last two episodes. Well, surprise surprise, almost all of them do. One mentally unstable character is - so to speak - ‘dead set’ on Mei being the dead person and decides to present her flawed reasoning to the rest of the students via speakers. I guess, logically then, basically the whole class proceeds to try killing Mei - and after a while each other, because why not? And you know, throwing some lady into the mix, who also goes berserk – for no reason whatsoever – will help to spice up the whole ordeal as well.

At the end of all this, it is revealed who the dead person is, and it’s… baffling? Frustrating? Just plain stupid? The show didn’t allude to this twist at all, and the fact that it is their homeroom teacher (/Reiko) also serves for a new layer of intricately broken logic. What was that flashback? Keep her private life and role as teacher separate? She said that at the beginning of the school year, right? But what in the world does it have to do with her being the extra person? We are given absolutely no information about her background and are just supposed to believe that this proves that she is the dead person because things wouldn’t add up otherwise… Oh hey, Mei already knew it was Reiko for a long time, practically rendering most of the series useless. Not even thinking about 'killing' Reiko while everyone was going mental (which resulted in several others being killed) was also a very solid decision on Mei’s part.

And if we're touching the subject of questionable decisions, there's some very general stuff that can't be ignored as it shakes the entire foundations of the story. We are told that the school tried taking all types of measures to put a stop to the calamity, like changing the location and name of the classroom. These were to no avail. The anime seems to conclude that there was absolutely nothing else they could have tried, which is honestly insulting. How about altogether disbanding the class and sending the students elsewhere? Heck, just shut down the entire school if necessary; it's tens and tens of lives we're talking about here. This common sense is discarded by the writers in order to have a story to be written at all.