黒塚

KUROZUKA

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
December 23, 2008
LENGTH
23 min

DESCRIPTION

Adaptation of Takashi Noguchi’s manga, which itself adapts Baku Yumemakura’s supernatural romance novel.

The original novel is about a 12th-century man named Minamoto no Yoshitsune (Kurou). Kurou flees into the mountains after losing to his brother Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first Shogun to rule all of Japan. History records that he committed suicide, but instead, Kurou meets a strange, beautiful woman named Kuromitsu in her mountain hermitage. Eventually, Kurou falls in love with Kuromitsu, but then realizes she conceals a dark secret. He learns that he is unable to die and continues to live for a thousand years as Japan evolves into a future society.

(Source: Anime News Network)

CAST

Kuromitsu
Romi Park
Kurou
Mamoru Miyano
Kuon
Miyu Irino
Rai
Houko Kuwashima
Izana
Kazuhiko Inoue
Arashiyama
Shinichirou Miki
Karuta
Keiji Fujiwara
Benkei
Jouji Nakata

EPISODES

Dubbed

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RELATED TO KUROZUKA

MANGA ActionKUROZUKA

REVIEWS

TheGruesomeGoblin
45/100
Gory post-apocalyptic mixture between action and romance that only excels in strangeness.

"A gory violent horror sci-fi action romance series featuring an immortal samurai who wanders around while being forced to live forever as the world changes around him. You've got my attention. I'm not expecting anything, but you've got my attention."

Introduction

Kurozuka is an adaptation by Madhouse of the manga by Takashi Noguchi which itself is an adaptation of the novel by Baku Yumemakura. It begins as a dark action romance series and then transitions into sci-fi territory as the protagonist awakes in a ruined and post-apocalyptic world and starts fighting futuristic soldiers. Also, why not throw the vampire angle in the mix to mix it up?

It could have been a reasonably okay action series. Not everything has to have an amazing deep plot. Sometimes, I do occasionally just go: "I want to just watch something where a guy just kills a bunch of guys." There's really nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

But of course, there is a plot behind all of the action and gore. And... that's partially where it all goes wrong. The swordsman Minamoto no Yoshitsune/Kurou along with his friend Benkei is fleeing from his brother who wishes to take his life. Historically, Yoshitsune was believed to have eventually been forced to commit seppeku following the defeat of his retainers and Benkei. In Kurozuka, Benkei and Kurou end up meeting a strange woman who lives in the middle of nowhere named Kuromitsu.

Kurou and Kuromitsu end up falling in love, Kurou finds out that Kuromitsu is in fact a vampire, Kurou's pursuers attack them and Kuromitsu floats the offer of becoming a vampire to live with her forever until literally the end of time to a fatally wounded Kurou who says "Sure, why not."

All of this basically happens in the first two episodes. Then, there's an immediate and sudden transition to Kurou waking up in a forest and then seeing the standing ruins of modern civilization.

It's all downhill from here.

"He learns that he is unable to die and continues to live for a thousand years as Japan evolves into a future society."

Admittedly, this very much is on me. From that line, I had expected that the show was going to be about this immortal swordsman actually living throughout that thousand years. That would have been cool, an immortal samurai watching as the world changes and then eventually descends into this ruined dystopian hellhole? Would have been great.

Instead, we only see flashes of that occasionally dispersed here and there. Kurou becomes a vampire, gets his head chopped off, and then wakes up in a forest and we're already to the post-apocalyptic portion of the show. Which is... arguably the worst and largest part of the show?

You get two episodes of this:

Then after that, it's just Kurou killing guys with guns. These guys are armored and have assault rifles, but this lone swordsman is capable of killing all of them with ease. But hey, maybe his immortality also makes him a killing machine. Like I said before, action is fine, I like action, but like the first Kurou action scene following the transition into post-apocalyptic times has him stealing one of these soldiers' pistol and straight up shooting them point blank to death.

Don't even get me started on this bunch of human "characters" that then get introduced that are like this rebel organization that's against the "Red Army" which is the ruling faction originating from the people who found out that Kuromitsu was a vampire in the first part of the show. This group of humans is really just there to die more or less. Each and every one of them are completely forgettable and they drop off like flies.

There continues to be scenes of flashbacks about Kurou and Kuromitsu because you can't forget this is also a romance, but the romance (the whole purpose of the show following episode two is Kurou is now trying to get Kuromitsu back from the "Red Army" or whatever) mostly boils down to: Kurou got decapitated too soon after being turned into a vampire, causing him to have to have his head removed and put on a new body because his body eventually begins to start to break down or he gets amnesia or something. Kuromitsu happily decapitates Kurou every so often after Kurou himself unknowingly kills the person whose body he'll be taking, and then Kuromitsu eventually leaves him unconscious in the woods to repeat the whole endeavor again until the literal end of time as she previously promised.

There are also these super soldier/mutant guys created by the "Red Army" in experiments using Kuromitsu's blood but... like one dressed like he was a turtle, another one had control of vines for some reason. Spoilers, Kurou kills them all. Because while he became an immortal through Kuromitsu's blood as well, he's outright unstoppable unlike these super soldiers/mutants.

Remember how I said the human characters drop off like flies? There is a point where Kurou is carrying the last surviving human of this group and just out of nowhere, gets immediately shot in the head, and she's dead. The person who fires the gun had the jump on and could have totally fired at Kurou instead, but purposely aims at the person Kurou is carrying instead. To be fair, the character that does this has literally gone insane and proceeds to shoot at a bunch of windows and laugh maniacally to himself as he does it. But still.

"Well, we need to get to rid of this last human character. Let's just have her get shot in the head and be done with it."

Oh yeah, he also then kicks her corpse out of one of the windows. Just because.

At about that point, you realize you're at episode eleven, and you just want this to end already. You've long since grown tired of the action and even tired of the blood. But you have to see how it ends. That's when they bust out one of the most possible cliches they could have thought of:Benkei, you bastard. YOU'RE AN IMMORTAL TOO. I bet Kurou's gonna have a fight to the death with you since you betrayed him, are in love his with his vampire lady, and became immortal after decapitating him and accidentally somehow tasting his blood in the mess following the decapitation. ...What? The fight lasted literally seconds and Benkei's dead? Oh, come on...

Then, one of the most nonsense weird "nothing" endings I've ever seen happens.

Kuromitsu congratulates Kurou for killing all of the bad guys and makes him aware that oh whoops your princess is in another castle AND DECAPITATES HIM THEN EMBRACES HIS SEVERED HEAD WHILE NUDE AND TELLS HIM YOU HAVE TO KEEP KILLING PEOPLE TO BE WITH ME FOR ALL OF ETERNITY BECAUSE WE ARE BOTH IMMORTAL VAMPIRE MONSTERS. Kurou just wants to die but nope, he's attached to a new body, wakes up in the woods again, and oh look... the world's not ruined anymore/has been reset somehow (the lady that got shot and kicked out of a window is shown to be alive again) and then... it shows Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Benkei from the beginning again. "I have been dreaming." So, it was all a dream? AND THERE'S THE CREDITS.

Conclusion

All action series do not have to have the most super in-depth or intricate plot (if the action is enjoyable/entertaining on its own). But there are action series that do have reasonably okay or perhaps even good or better stories to them. Kurozuka tries to have a plot (required disclaimer of the manga seems to be different from the anime) but it's... a disjointed and weird mess (going immediately from samurai times to post-apocalyptic is not okay). Whatever enjoyment the action provides grows very thin by the final episode, and the romance of Kurozuka is...

The whole point is Kurou is trying to get to Kuromitsu and his reward for it?

Being repeatedly decapitated by her. Any love present goes immediately out of the window the moment decapitations enter the picture.

If you're looking for not an amazing action series, I could maybe see an argument for this one just because of how weird/strange it actually is. I give it a score of 4.5 out of 10 or 45 out of 100.

~~I watched this months ago and the opening is still stuck in my head.~~

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