Kiznaiver 1-4
I haven't really done any sort of post about the show and it has progressed enough where I feel I have a rough idea about how things work and what the character dynamics are. If any other studio or director was working on this, they would have drowned in the writing resulting in a work that was utterly turgid. Almost all the characters here have been done before with various degrees of success. There's nothing really new on the characters' side and the larger narrative itself is virtually non-existent. The show's goal up to this point is, "Let's everybody be friends. Happy Happy Time For All." It's almost slice of life but the larger conspiracy elements prevent me from putting it in that category. Now for a show oriented around the characters, under normal circumstances having characters be almost walking tropes would be show-ending. In fact, that's still my primary gripe about the show is that a number of the characters are both boring and shallow. Katsuhira, Noriko, Honoka, and Yoshiharu are all kinda flat. Katsuhira has about the life energy of a mop. Noriko is a boring version of Senjougahara. Honoka has some bite with her comebacks but she's so utterly unlikable that if she jumped off a roof, I don't think anybody would care. Then there's Yoshiharu who's primary character trait is to be a perpetual monkey in the wrench. That's four out of a primary cast of eight. Chidori is on the borderline as she has potential, as it becomes even more obvious to her that she's going to lose. As mentioned earlier, normally this would be a death knell. However the comedy is serving to undercut a lot of the characters and dramatic moments, thus preventing the work from taking itself too seriously. A perfect example would be in episode 4 with Honoka saying that she and Nico aren't friends.
Most directors would have blown that up and made it more dramatic with either more tears or crying. Instead there's a quick cut and the next scene has Tsuguhito, another character who has an atrocious personality, pointing that out.
The last line with Tsuguhito has impact precisely because of how awful Tsuguhito's personality is too. When someone who is a piece of shit is telling you your personality sucks, well damn. It also works as a comedic way of undercutting the scene between Honoka and Nico by reinforcing that Honoka is just a bitch. Sure it takes the bite out of the drama however considering how stale the drama actually is in
Kiznaiver, that's more than fine. That's something both
Kiznaiver and
Mayoiga are similar in, in that they don't treat the drama seriously. Compare that to
Black Rock Shooter where everything was deadly serious while having scenes such as the below:
So far
Kiznaiver is keeping an even keel to the dramatic scenes resulting in a work that doesn't have any real emotional highs to it, but it also doesn't have any of the abysmally low lows that other Okada originals have. So what is keeping the show afloat then? The comedy. I don't know how much of this is attributable to the director himself or the studio as a whole but the show has a comedic streak to it that keeps everything going and engaging.
Since the backbone of the show is character interactions, having the majority of them being intentionally comedic in nature gives the audience some meat to bite into. It's not just drama, drama, drama. This in conjunction with the surreal atmosphere gives the show more leeway than it normally would.
It's sorta similar to
Kyousougiga in that there's a feeling that anything can happen in this town. Whether that's from people being kidnapped in broad daylight to student counselors using a real gun in an arcade (although this definitely pushed the limit for me), the whole scenario has a tinge of insanity to it. It's not just due to the Maromi-like mascots but background elements like the architecture or setting work. For example in episode 4, there is a curtain inside the bus that visually cuts the characters off from the outside world. Assisting that are things like the delusions/dreams that are marked by the scenes being all in one color. I'm not overly sure what those colors mean though, although I suspect scenes in red mean that they didn't actually happen.
We'll see how the next episode and the conspiracy elements progress, as the next episode looks to take a more serious turn, but so far so good. The direction seems to know what works and isn't lingering on the potentially bad aspects of the writing. Tenga and Nico are putting in a lot of the work right now, which is fine. However both Katsuhira and Noriko need to become more engrossing characters quickly. I'm not sure though what niche Katsuhira can fill up as it seems the other characters have everything covered.
