Karas
鴉 -KARAS-The world of the humans and the world of the demons (youkai) have overlapped one another, leaving humans to walk the streets of life as they normally would, while demons walk, hidden from the naked eye, down the very same streets. A seemingly young woman named Yurine and her servant, the Karas (from the Japanese word for "Crow"), have long maintained order and balance between the overlapped worlds, ultimately keeping the demons from interrupting the lives of humans. However, humans have come to forget and jest at the existence of demons, and no longer understand the privilege it is to live without fear. Disgusted by this arrogance, an old Karas turns his back on the laws he had once upheld, and in his human form, named Eko, he creates an army of Mikura, or mechanized demons, to ready an attack on the human race. A young man named Otoha inherits the powers of the Karas and takes his place at the side of Yurine, who claims that his soul called out for her while he lived the life of a human. They live in the world of the demons. It is now up to Otoha to prove himself as a Karas, and restore the balance that Eko threatens to upset. Meanwhile, a superstitious police officer named Sagisaka and his rational new recruit, Kure, follow the trail of the murders dealt by Eko's Mikura, as well as the trail of a rogue Mikura named Nue. The prophecy unfolds from here into a grave revelation for all in the city. (Source: Wikipedia)
Reviews
kale.jerde - 2014-11-26 22:17:17
HyperWind's review #4
Before watching this show I heard a lot of praise coming from the anime community towards it. Some called it deep, some praised the animation, the sound, etc.
So I expected this anime to be really good, but, after watching it all of my hopes and expectations were shattered to little pieces.
-- The Story --
The story is about a guardian (or a "Karas", as the show likes to call them) of the Shinuku district, Tokyo and his quest to slaughter all of the demons called Mikuras to prevent the old Karas from causing the apocalypse.
Also, there's a side story about two cops trying to figure out a series of mysterious murders involving the body fluids completely sucked out of the victims.
In the end, these two stories converge into one actiony clusterfuck involving a lot of action scenes, "drama" and other uninteresting things.
Yeah, nothing deep there, but not everything has to be deep and philosophical to be good, some of the best anime are simple stories, just executed pretty well.
By the emphasised words in the last sentence you probably could have guessed why I really didn't like the show. Yeah, the execution was atrocious.
The show felt like it was really slow and every episode dragged on for ages. After watching it I felt like I marathoned something as long as Bleach or One Piece, and that's really bad if your show is only 6 episodes long.
Other than that, I really didn't like the characters (but that will be expanded in the character section), the show was really boring at times and there were a lot of plot conveniences, ass pulls and heavy usage of plot armour.
-- The Animation --
The hand drawn animation looked pretty good, the colors were vibrant, the animation was fluid and expressive, and the character designs looked pretty ok, but the thing that killed it was the CG. The CG was horrible, heavily overused and it looked out of place for the bigger part of the series.
-- The Sound --
The music is pretty decent, but forgettable at times. Also it sometime suffers from the Death Note syndrome of hyping minor events too much, but I don't consider that a bad thing per say.
-- The Dub --
The dub isn't the greatest, the voices lack emotion and sometimes don't really fit the characters. Also, some of the translation is derpy and the adapted character lines sound really strange on unorganic (especially with Eko Hoshunin, his lines were horribly delivered). Overall I'd chose the sub over the dub.
-- The Characters --
Oh boy, where do I even begin?
I guess I'll start with the main.
Otoha Yosuke is as bland as a main hero character can get. For the most of the series he either tries to play hero and save everyone or goes full "cool guy" and trows around ignores to everyone, everywhere. The creators also tried to give him some edginess and backstory by making him an incest child between his brother and mother, but in my view that only made it worse.
The next important one would be Nue. To me, he's the most well made character in the series. He actually has some interesting backstory that explains his motivations and actions later on. His design is also cool, having this hippie vibe to it.
The last "main" would be Yurine (or Yurines to be more exact, but that would be heavy spoilers), and, well, she's just another Rei Ayanami clone. She serves the purpose as the helper of the guardian, she also gives them the power to wield their katanas and do Hollywood stunt tricks every five minutes.
The other characters were pretty bland and generic too, having only minimal backstory and blurry motivations. Though, for me, Narumi Kure stood out as the most interesting from them all.
-- Final Thoughts --
Karas is not worth your time, it's just too generic and poorly made to be interesting. You should avoid it for the most part, watch it only when you run out of other stuff to watch or if you, like me, get challenged to watch it.
-- Other Info --
Karas was directed by Sato Keiichi.
Written by Yoshida Shin.
Made by Tatsunoko Production.
Licensed by Madman in Australia, Manga Entertainment in the US and the UK.
It originally aired from the 25th of March, 2005 to the 3rd of August, 2007.
Fun fact, karas means war in Lithuanian.