This post contains spoilers through episode 7 of the series.
Check out my first impression HERE!
I wonder a lot about the human race’s ability to survive its seemingly innate urge to destroy itself. Right now climate change is at the forefront of many people’s minds, but there are also a lot of military conflicts going on and concerns about nuclear weapons hordes, among other things. It’s the intrusive background noise of my life, static that makes sure my anxiety level never drops to zero.
Sometimes anime that addresses humanity’s natural (or decidedly unnatural) endpoint can provide some comfort, though. It’s helpful to think that, even if we destroy our society and bungle our management of the planet’s limited resources, there may still be remnants of our existence in this place that speak to our collective better qualities. I’d still rather that we get our act together and stop killing one-another, but theories about our eventual twilight years as a species as they manifest in anime and other media can be a comfort even in their melancholy conclusions.
That’s the appeal of Kemurikusa for me. I described it to someone recently as “Girls’ Last Tour” except with higher stakes and more action, and I think that’s a decent short-hand way to explain its good points to the uninitiated. It’s a series that’s not overly-concerned at this point about specifically describing what existential crimes the human race committed to exterminate itself, but its setting provides a mysterious, intriguing backdrop and a few scattered clues to get the brain speculating. The setting is really the most interesting character here, with its vaguely-recognizable, decrepit architecture and infrastructure, its flooded, foggy thoroughfares, and its surface dotted with robotic creatures both malevolent and benign. There’s a sense that something went grossly out of control among these buildings and roadways, and the crumbling concrete and twisted steel jutting above the sinister red fog are a testament to whatever that might have been.
The humanoid characters in the series are a little bit less inspired thus far, though the question of who and what they are is an intriguing one. The red-haired sisters’ biology seems to exist at the crossroads of flora and fauna – they look like “humans” but their metabolism is much more plant-like and they subsist on water. Even the non-humanoid Kemurikusa (literally “smoke weed”) they carry with them are often given names, so there’s a sense that perhaps there’s some actual kinship between the two different forms. Wakaba, the lone male character (and mysterious color-coded interloper) is constantly wide-eyed and curious and doesn’t always have a good sense for what’s dangerous to him. The characters’ personalities are very “anime,” for lack of a better word; The various sisters (including one we meet later on) are kind of a grab-bag of typical moé traits. This isn’t necessarily all that terrible, but to set the average characterization against such an interesting backdrop really feels like a missed opportunity.
Unlike many folks who are probably watching this series, I don’t have an emotional connection to the director’s previous work (Kemono Friends season 1), but I do get a bit of a sense that Kemono Friends was a show they directed as a stepping stone, and that this series is really the story that they wanted to tell. For all its wonky CG animation (which isn’t that bad overall) and “typical” characters, it also feels very much like a passion project with a very unique, specific vision – a rarity when so much of what we watch is beholden to some kind of source material.
At this point, the show feels like it’s plodding along toward its end-game, so it remains to be seen whether it can maintain its sense of intrigue while also possibly answering many of its outstanding questions. It’s a tough balance that I’m not sure the series can achieve. But I do hope that in the meantime more viewers might take the time to check it out. Though the Amazon Prime paywall may be a big hurdle for many and the series’ pedigree and visual rendering may be an even bigger one for some, the show has been an interesting journey thus far and definitely more entertaining that I would have expected.