Final Thoughts: Kurozuka

And the mystery is solved. But Kurozuka probably sells more as an unabashedly violent gore-fest, sauced up with a bit of romance of the darkest variety than a true mystery.
EPISODE 12: The Black Tomb
More Screencaps from Kurozuka 12
Who is the Red Emperor? That's the question. But it seems the Red Emperor is not even a character. At least, we don't get to see him being directly addressed as such in the last episode of Kurozuka. What we find instead is a character who is never once mentioned in the "future" episodes, a fact which led me to wrongly conclude that he is dead. Ah, the Red Herring.
Kuro goes up to face the Red Emperor, only to encounter more of his underlings. He wastes no time in bathing the chamber with their blood. When all of them are dead, Kuro faces off with the Red Emperor. He manages to break his mask but in so doing, something strange begins to happen as blood on the ground start to rise up, engulfing even the dead bodies of his former comrades, Karuta and Rai.
In the next instant, Kuro finds himself walking towards the hut from thousands of years ago and there he sees Kuromitsu and Benkei. He overhears how Benkei fell in love with Kuromitsu long ago and because of this love, he betrayed Kuro to be with her. That time, when Benkei cut off Kuro's head, he swallowed some of his blood (a combination of Kuro and Kuromitsu's immortal blood) and this gave him an abnormally long life but not immortality. Kuro reveals himself then and he and Benkei finish their fight. After Benkei dies, Kuromitsu embraces Kuro, then cuts off his head, saying only that he will have Kuon's body to use.
Kuro's consciousness remains and he only feels Kuromitsu hugging his severed head to her bossom. He says that his memory is only complete when he is like this and realizes that everything that happened has happened to him before and will happen again, and thinking of the eternal future he thinks he's had enough and tells Kuromitsu this. But she only reminds him of his promise to accompany her to the end of time.
When Kuro awakens next, he is in a forest and the first thing he remembers is Kuromitsu. Before him lies a different world, a different time but the same people. And he finds himself again on the run from Benkei's people and Hasegawa and joining up with Izana and his ragtag rebel army and always, always searching for the elusive woman who haunts his thoughts.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I like this series. All my expectations have been met.

I expected romance and Kurozuka is indeed a romance, just not the sort you often see in anime. Kuro's complete, absolute and often blind devotion to Kuromitsu is the stuff of dreams. It came out of the blue in the first episode (note: random groping in the forest) but as the story unfolds itself I was convinced that the two belong together. 'Otherworldly' is how I would describe their relationship, almost comical in its insanity, unabashedly twisted and yet thoroughly psycho-romantic. In short, just the sort of romance you'd find in a vampire story.

Speaking of which, I expected vampires and what do you know, the two main characters are vampires. Although I don't like vampire stories (I prefer zombies and to me, these two horror sub-genres are mutually exclusive), Kurozuka doesn't really focus on the fact that it's a vampire story, other than to explain the theme of immortality.

Another thing I expected was violence and sex. The sex part was tastefully presented in artful stills. I was worried that Madhouse was going to do it like in the manga where little left is to the imagination and full-frontal is the name of the game, but that did not happen in the anime . Which is just as well as I don't think anyone would be sane enough to show the panel-by-panel animation version of the manga, unless they want the censors breathing down their backs. On violence, Kurozuka is a gore-fest. You've got Kuro slicing through people like they're nothing more than sacks of rice and the blood, oh, the blood! Flying severed limbs are but an ordinary sight and we've got monsters like you would never believe.

I did not expect horror and I was right not to expect that. Kurozuka is not scary but it is rather dark and grotesque. But that's only because the plot itself, stripped of all its fancy elements (i.e. vampires, time-leaps, Red Herrings, action), has truly dark underpinnings.

I'm still convinced that even if the creator of the story did not resort to the cheap device of making the characters vampires, Kurozuka would still be able to stand firm on its general concept of man's eternal struggle.

Kuro is the quintessential human being -- half-mortal, half-immortal -- who finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings but with the faint memory that he is destined for some higher purpose. Pursued by thoughts of his being "more" than what he is, he struggles against his present, which is his mortality, and goes out, searching for the elusive, that thing that haunts his thoughts -- he calls it his "destiny" -- in order to reconcile the two aspects of his being.

Kuromitsu turns out to be the MacGuffin. She provides Kuro's motive but the reward (her love) is unimportant to the story, considering that it doesn't end there and Kuro's struggles will continue forever. In the end, this is what Kurozuka is about: man's struggle. A universal concept.

Character design: I'm not a huge fan but it is markedly better than the original manga design. Animation and art: flawless action FTW, never mind if I still can't get used to all that neon. Thankfully, the studio did not flood the screen with neon in the finale episodes, wisely choosing to wow us with highly stylized scene-rendering instead.

All in all, it's a very satisfactory anime. Kurozuka is not for everyone but if you like your violent, psychological mystery, this is one show you won't want to miss.