First Date: Kurenai
- Title: Kurenai
- Studio: Brains Base
- Genre: …Not really sure yet. Drama, I guess?
Ratings (out of 5):
- Story: ♥♥♥½
- Animation: ♥♥♥½
- Characters: ♥♥♥
- OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥♥
- Overall: ♥♥♥½
Thoughts:
Orphaned (or at least living alone) high schooler Shinkurou Kurenai has some kind of awesomely-adjusted body such that he makes ends meet working as a “negotiator,” a task which seems to largely involve taking down random punks. He gets his jobs via a woman named Benika, who one day comes to him with a seven-year-old girl in an expensive kimono and asks him to protect her. He, hoping to make more money (and feeling sympathy for the girl, who seems as alone as he did at her age), accepts.
Now, Benika and her assistant Yayoi actually sprung the girl, Murasaki Kuhouin, from her incredibly gilded cage. Details haven’t been fully offered yet, but apparently the women of the Kuhouin family are kept under lock and key in an “inner sanctuary” and aren’t allowed to leave it. Murasaki was desperate to get out and I guess somehow arranged to do so with Benika.
This isn’t quite one of those “big burly dude gets taken down a few notches by a little kid and they become inseparable” comedies per se– Kurenai is nowhere near burly, for starters –but it does have certain elements of that genre so far. The two have a little argument in which Murasaki refuses to believe that someone can live in a one-room apartment like Kurenai’s. The next day he leaves her in the apartment and goes to school, only to have her disappear before he gets back. He chases her down and apologizes for making her lonely. Yeah, you know the kind of thing I’m getting at.
But let me say, the visuals thus far are top-notch. The animation is fantastic, as is the character design…though something about Murasaki makes me think of Lilo from Lilo and Stitch. I think it’s the nose.
The OP and ED songs are semi-forgettable, but the animation for each is fun and highly stylized. The OP appears to be a flash animation with stylized versions of the characters dancing around and it’s really cute and fresh looking (though I’d like it if they moved in more different ways– it’l make sense when you see it). It’s incredibly cute. The ED is also brightly-colored and artsy.
Speaking of colors, I couldn’t help but notice that they’re playing with them bigtime in this show. Kurenai’s life is pretty colorless: his school uniform is black, his apartment dark and dingy, and his jobs largely taking place in dank alleyways. Murasaki herself wears a bright pink kimono and beautiful obi and other accoutrement; meanwhile the Inner Sanctuary is mostly animated with dark golds and reds.
Overall, I’m interested in the plot, particularly why Murasaki and the other Kuhouin women are locked away. And I’m definitely interested in Kurenai’s mysterious body. I suspect that the plot will involve a lot more of the Kurenai/Murasaki bonding than anything else, though, so we’ll see how it goes. (But it’s soooo pretty!)
After reading your review I decided to check this out, and I’m glad I did! Really digging the fast pace with jump cuts.
Thanks “First Date!”