RAR: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (Review)

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Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is an original anime by Wit Studio, the creators of the Attack on Titan anime. The series was directed by Tetsurō Araki and written by Ichirō Ōkouchi, with music by Hiroyuki Sawano and original character designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto. The series aired from April 8 to June 30, 2016.

SPOILERS!!! I can't really do a review about this anime without spoilers, but I will do my best not to have any major ones.

I was excited for this show. I was hoping it would fill the void by Attack on Titan while I waited for season two, and for a bit it did just that.

The story is set in a post-apocolyptic world filled with undead creatures called Kabane. They are like normal zombies except they can be skill warriors, move quickly, and have caged hears that are difficult to pierce making them difficult to kill. Humanity has created Stations, which are basically walled defensive towns that have a railway that runs through them. On this railway giant trains run between towns carrying supplies and people. Not terribly original, but not horrible or off putting. The series made it unique enough to keep me interested.

The story follows Ikoma, a lowly steam smith, who gets bit by a Kabane when his station get over run by Kabane. By one of his own inventions he is able to keep the virus away from his head and turns into a Kabaneri, a creature with a Kabane body and a Human head and mind. This concept, I thought, was interesting and was also explored fairly well. People have extreme mixed reactions, such as not trusting him and wanting to kill him for being a Kabane.

Mumei, another Kabaneri, is also there when the station gets overrun, and joins the refugees on the Kotetsujo, the name of their giant train. She helps defend it again the hordes of Kabane. This is where most of the action int his show comes in, defending the train from Kabane. This show has lots of good intense action with lots of gore. At first I enjoyed it; I though it fit well, and wasn't overdone just for shock value. As the show progressed however I came to the exact opposite conclusion.

With the introduction of Biba, the show took a nose dive in quality. He completely changed everything for the worse. Mumei's character completely changes for no reason. They try to set him up as a hero, just for him to turn into a homicidal psychopathic murder, who want to get revenge by killing massive amounts of innocent civilians.

They add a ton of unnecessary death and gore in the second half as well. It didn't seem necessary, or that it added anything to the story, it was just there for the sake of it being there. I have no problem with necessary violence. I like when a show isn't afraid to show some gore and violence if it is a part of the story. In this show however towards the end it was just excessive and took away from the story.

The show just goes completely off the rail, pun intended, with the introduction of Biba. His motivations are dumb or unclear, character development goes a drastically different direction, and new powers and abilities are introduced that make no sense to the rest of the show.

The character development on the whole wasn't very good either. I enjoyed it at first, but as the show progressed I realized how loosely defined these characters were. Since most of the shows run time was spent on the action not enough was spent on story, and it really suffered.

The bad story really deadened my enjoyment of the show. If you want a show with gore and action, but don't care about story or plot then this is maybe for you. I can't really recommend it though. This may be a cliche recommendation, but I would suggest you Watch Attack on Titan instead. It has good action, but with much better designed characters and story. The jury's still out on season two though.

Final Score: 5/10
 
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I heard the show was pretty bad, but at least the animation is solid right?
 
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Yeah. I had heard good things about it, and that it had gotten a western theatrical release as well. It was interesting and the animation was good, but the story was terrible and just kinda imploded on itself.
 
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