I wish I could be objective about anime shows, but unfortunately, I’m about as biased as they come. It’s not so much that I see a show about loli schoolgirls or Key adaptations or harems and then refuse to watch the show; it’s kind of more like the opposite. I’ll watch a lot of things rather idly, but when it comes to the things that I really like, my buttons are pressed like whoa and it’s hard for me to see through the haze. I’m not really even sure what exactly these red flags are– it can be something really stupid, like how my impressions of Night Wizard are completely colored by the fact that the last episode found my button for fake memories and sacrifice and pounded on it.
Which is why when I tell you guys that Kurenai is the most amazing show ever, take it with a grain of salt. Everything about Kurenai, from the voice acting to the dialogue to the music, attacks my most basic loves in anime.
(Sorry, guys. My screencapping technology failed me for this episode. You’ll have to forgive my lack of pictures.)
Kurenai’s basic setup: There’s this family called the Kuhouins. The current head was in love with this woman named Souju, but was forced by his family to be with another woman, Kazuko. Souju had a daughter with the Kuhouin head named Murasaki. One day, Murasaki’s servant allows a mysterious woman named Benika to take Murasaki away from the Kuhouin mansion. Meanwhile, a boy named Shinkurou works for Benika as a mediator for small things, like debt collection. Shinkurou lives by himself in a studio and is ridiculously poor. Benika entrusts Shinkurou to act as Murasaki’s guardian/bodyguard.
There’s so much to talk about with Kurenai. Like, how the opening and ending sequences are almost complete 180s of the actual show– the opening sequence is a bright, flash-inspired bit that looks like something that escaped from Harajuku. The ending sequence is almost Red Garden or Gankutsuou in its patterns and colors. But the actual show is in these subdued, ordinary hues with the occasional splotch of color for Murasaki’s clothes.
Or the dialogue in this show, which is not exactly slice-of-life, but somewhere between that and a rapid fire witty back-and-forth that you usually see in, say, a Sorkin drama. Especially around 13:45, the back and forth between Shinkurou and Benika adds to the tension and development of the show, but in a playful way, as if mocking the fact that Shinkurou’s neighbor and landlady are outside eavesdropping. It happens again when Murasaki is drilling Shinkurou about his apartment. The whole scene highlights the extreme difference between Murasaki, a rich sheltered girl, and Shinkurou, an orphan(?) who has had to support himself, but there’s also a note of hilarity because in a way, the emptiness of Shinkurou’s apartment is kind of funny, if you ignore the fact that it reveals just how bare-bones his entire life is.
Or how about the fact that the entire first episode is almost harem-esque in its development? Shinkurou has a childhood friend Murakami, a classmate named Yuuno who definitely is attracted to him, Benika from who Shinkurou desperately wants acceptance and respect, a landlady who likes to tease him, a neighbor who is two inches away from sexually harassing Shinkurou, and then Murasaki, a little girl that Shinkurou is playing the white knight to. And that brings me to the fact that kurenai’s greatest accomplishment right now is defining personalities in seconds. Though the women other than Benika and Murasaki have less then ten minutes combined of screen time, it feels shockingly as if you already know them. They all add a bit to the overall atmosphere of the show, which is accentuated by the jazzy music that highlights Shinkurou’s life and the simple, traditional music that follows Murasaki.
But you know what? Really what drew me to this show is the voice acting. Around 08:00, when Shinkurou chats with Murakami, and then Yuuno interrupts, the voice acting is so incredibly smooth and full of tiny subtleties. Yuuno is light and flirtatious, and Murakami is friendly and teasing, but in an entirely different way when she laughs. Shinkurou plays the smug card and the oblivious, somewhat uncomfortable card extraordinarily well, and oh, listen to that bit where Yuuno tells him the time and Shinkurou says, “oh, that’s right.” It sounds so real, so convincing, like the actor themself just realized the time.
Mmmm, personal anime buttons.
