Review: Kiznaiver – Episode 2

Summary

Basically everyone has to introduce themselves at the most embarrassing level all while receiving shock treatment, along with other dangerous consequences, every time they don’t get to the hardest thing for them to say. In the end everyone reveals the deepest part of themselves that they didn’t want to share.

Review

So last episode a lot of people were complaining how the characters were all introduced but none of them were really developed as characters all that much. There was a lot of exposition dumping and other than the art design and scenario, the script didn’t seem that inspired. I for one liked this since they felt more like real people who don’t shout their ideals as soon as they’re introduced. Anime has a bad habit of this and I was happy that Kiznaiver avoided doing that. When you think about a show basically about our character and how it clashes with others, it makes sense that we wouldn’t reveal or even hint stuff like that in first meetings. Also it warrants the question if we are even aware of those things in the first place.

Kiznaiver sort of follows suit in this episode with giving everyone’s defining character reveal and forcing them to reveal it sooner than any anime would ever dream of. Normally shows would hold onto these character reveals until late in the show once you’ve understood them. Kiznaiver is proposing that to learn to understand them you need to know the true things they don’t wanna share first. Again, I wouldn’t call this true but I think it’s an interesting idea to explore. Which is why I’m watching Kiznaiver in the first place. There are a lot of cool ideas and emotional concepts to explore, but again the question needs to be asked. What is it in service of and if it’s any good. Can Kiznaiver survive on more than amazing visuals and its premise?

I’d say this episode was better than the last solely on the fact that there is a bigger interaction and a lot of forced tension. Having it be forced may seem like cheating because the characters are literally given no other choice but to admit these things super early on. Tenga even brings this up, quoting how they’re skipping several character steps and just getting to the good stuff. It works though, and will probably work for the show as a whole in the long run. This overly forced and rushed character reveals hints at what Kiznaiver has for an end game. Meaning that there is something more emotionally distancing ourselves, other than pain and our worst secrets we keep from everyone. Everyone is already on a path of discovery, even if they don’t know it yet, to find those answers. I’m ready to see where these characters go given the key things they revealed so early on in the game. It’s like they revealed everything you would see at the end of a movie. Now Kiznaiver is going beyond the movie and exploring what happens after those end credits. Which is another cool concept to add-on.

While this concept may seem good, we still have no idea how this will fit into the narrative. At this point I don’t see it happening other than an “obstacle of the week” format where each characters trial is introduced with a special scenario for that episode. This poses a problem seeing the only reveals I cared about were Nico’s confession of her fake uniqueness/rich family, and Maki revealing that she’s killed someone. The others really don’t make me want to explore them just yet. Which is a big problem when your narrative depends on the pure exploration of these characters from the onset. I don’t want to wait around for episodes to get some clarity for people I don’t care about. That’s fine when the narrative is engaging enough, but that’s also yet to be seen as well. Kiznaiver is still a load of questions whether is comes down to having potential for being a great show. Even though the concepts are super interesting, they need to fit into a package that actually means something for the show itself. We haven’t really seen that yet. However I’m hopeful that given the concepts and that cold open with all the grown-ups, there will be an anchor of a plot to hold Kiznaiver together in the long run before it runs out of steam.

Episode Rating: B