Winter Preview Post: Kurokami: The Animation (Black God)

Welp, another season is soon coming upon us and as usual the preview image (which is out there somewhere) indicates that the next season is shit. Well, it probably will be, but there are some shows that could potentially be worth watching.

Potentially.

Things with great promise from the source material turn out to be shit (Chaos;Head, which still sucks but at least episode 9 is getting back to the real story), stuff that doesn’t have huge hype turns out to be amazing (Casshern Sins) and some shit is based off shit and ends up as shit (Index). I guess you could throw Gundam 00 into the “Well it was going to be entertaining anyway” category and Linebarrels into the “It was okay in manga form but now it’s awful” one. By the way, that Gundam 00 blog post has both full-length Anew and animated Taisa-Whackamole pics.

It’s always a crapshoot but hey, you take what you can get, right? Hopefully this preview will give you an idea of what Black God is about, because I’m pretty sure I can’t find any other good places that don’t give impressions that are short and awful.

Black God is a seinen manga that is fairly unique in that it’s produced entirely by Koreans. The writing is done by Dall-Young Lim, the art by Sung-Woo Park and the gruntwork by a whole bunch of nameless Koreans. They don’t have anyone in the studio who is competent or fluent in Japanese so they actually send their work all in Korean and it gets translated to Japanese before it’s published by Square Enix. You can tell it’s Korean because you can actually see what’s going on in the fight scenes and for some reason whenever a hit lands, some mystery black spray comes out even if it’s not necessarily blood. It doesn’t help that most of the omake chapters consist of them talking about being an all-Korean studio making a Japanese manga.

So the main character is Keita Ibuki, voiced by Daisuke Namikawa (Rock from Black Lagoon, Michael Trinity from Gundam 00). He is the average anime/manga protagonist: a generic looking, “kind-hearted, really, I mean he might be an ass outwardly but inside he’s a sure fine fellow” type of dude. Well, he’s also a really amazing game programmer, apparently, and he has this hot chick who he’s known since he was a kid who is in love with him and also takes care of him since he is an irresponsible fuck. He’s also kind of a dick. Oh, his mom died in some tragic accident in the past and that’s why he’s got this childhood-friend-who-wants-to-fuck taking care of him. Like I said, pretty generic start.

He goes out drinking with his buddies to celebrate his game picking up a publisher and ends up stopping at a ramen stand on the way home. While he’s eating, some girl with no pants shows up all hungry but it turns out he had the last bowl of ramen. Since he’s such a Naisu Gai™ he gives it to her and she chows down before being rudely interrupted by a mysterious man. The girl then proceeds to kick the shit out of him with her Boxing skills but unfortunately Keita gets hit by the stranger’s attack and loses his left arm.

He wakes up in his own apartment after a really dumb dream sequence and finds out he didn’t lose his arm after all. However, he finds the girl from before trying to pilfer some cabbage from his fridge. After he freaks out on her, she explains to him that she had cut off her own arm and switched it with his. Her name is Kuro, voiced by Noriko Shitaya (who I only know as Sakura from FSN), and she is a Mototsumitama. Basically they are a superhuman race whose purpose is to maintain balance in the world. Apparently humans are split into three copies of one another named Doppleliners. If Doppleliners happen to run into one another, the one with more terra (generic SPIRIT ENERGY aaaaaaaaaa) basically absorbs the energy of the lesser one. The lesser one, of course, usually dies instantly because apparently that’s how nature keeps the balance.

Kuro has formed a contract with Keita in order to save his life. Since his worthless human limb would most likely not be viable for re-attachment, she gave him her much superior Mototsumitama limb which can easily regenerate itself. Of course, since she’s totally awesome she can change the genetic structure of his human limb to become just as powerful as her old limb so really it didn’t cost her anything. However, the act of transferring limbs forms a contract. The human part of the contract provides willpower and strength to allow the Mototsumitama to use their Exceed, which is their special attack. Yup, sounding pretty shounen in here…

Kuro’s purpose in Tokyo is to find the strongest Mototsumitama and kill him. It’s a pretty straightforward goal, really. I like that. Then Akane, aforementioned childhood friend who is voiced by Sayaka Ohara (Milly Ashford from Geass, Haruka from Moyashimon, Bel Peol from Shana and a shitload of other minor roles) comes to visit and sees Keita all beat up with a pantsless girl in his apartment and hilarity ensues.

Just skipping forward to the next pair of important characters. Another Mototsumitama and Contractor pair show up a volume later and they promptly show Keita and Kuro how everything is done (i.e. beat the shit out of them). The loli’s name is Excel, voiced by Yukari Tamura (Nanoha, Rika, Mei Sunohara, etc.) who is Actually Really Old™ like pretty much every other loli ever in a fantasy-themed anime/manga. Her German Mototsumitama/lover (I’m srs) is voiced by George Nakata (MOTHERFUCKING DIETOHARDOOOO).

In any case, the manga is translated up to volume 8 but is also licensed, so your only choices are to either illegally download them from the internets or actually buy the volumes. Too bad the English releases you can buy now are only up to volume 3, with vol. 4 and 5 to be released by 2009. Yeah, pretty slow.

It feels a lot like a Shakugan no Shana clone with Korean art, but instead of an annoying, tsundere Kugiya vehicle, Kuro is a character who comes from the same mold as, say, Kozu-pii~. She’s pretty horrible at living in modern society and very innocent when it comes to expressing her emotions. Innocent as in she’s very trusting of others but at the same time very willing to kill. It’s also significantly darker than Shana. I mean, the main character loses his arm in like the first chapter and later on a girl gets run over by a bus in front of Keita.

I actually do have some expectations for Black God’s anime adaptation. I mean, it’s Sunrise so there’s plenty of money to go around. The Director worked on Twelve Kingdoms and Victorian Romance Emma but the the character designs, judging by the only crappy PV I could find look pretty generic anime, unfortunately. The OP is done by Minami Kuribayashi who did the My-*me OPs so I guess they’ll be catchy (not too big of a fan, really). The ED is by Yousei Teikoku which is apparently some two-piece group that does gothic-type music? Hell, I don’t know.

I’ll be watching the first few eps for sure, in any case. Besides, Kuro has a pet doggie that she takes everywhere with her.