Kiznaiver! Finale Review!
The wild and emotional ride that was Kiznaiver has finally come to an end.
To follow up on my previous episodic reviews, I’m going to wrap up my thoughts on the series now that it’s complete. Before, I focused on the episode events more heavily than what the meaning of said events were, but since the series is over I’ll do the reverse: what I thought the narrative of the show was in its complete form.
Overall, I have high regards of this series and thoroughly enjoyed watching it from start to finish as the episodes came out over the spring. This is the kind of series I would recommend to new and seasoned anime fans alike, as it’s accessible and relatable to an average person.
Now on to the finale!
Episodes 11 & 12 wrap up the series and answer all of the questions that have been in the open. I can truly say that this was an ending I was satisfied with.
My Thoughts
The ending of Kiznaiver gave me the kind of closure I rarely get from watching a series. In the end, everybody lives happily ever after! Now, that may sound cliche but when I think of it, the idea is perfectly sound in an anime like this. Kiznaiver was never an Anime where life-or-death battles were the norm, or there was some sort of generic impending doom. This show, at it’s core (which I will go into greater detail on below) is about being an adolescent and learning about how to deal with your emotions. While it’s been the norm in anime for a character to obligatorily die for the sake of impact at the middle/end of a series, Kiznaiver had no need to do so, and didn’t. Instead, we get a perfectly sound and lovely ending where all of the Kiznaivers end up friends for life ♥.
There are so many things in this block of screenshots worth talking about! That last picture of the whole Kiznaiver gang in the hospital room visiting the recovering Katsuhira & Noriko is just so beautifully animated. Whats more, there’s something symbolic about this shot: they are all together, and they’ve all changed a little.
As I’ve noted in previous posts and video, the art direction in Kiznaiver makes a very pronounced point of using colors and clothing to express ideas. When the series began, all of the Kiznaivers wore different colored clothes and even had different colored hair, this was obviously to show the contrast between all of their personalities. In the above picture, they have all taken up a new wardrobe. Their new outfits symbolize their matured and experienced attitudes after going through that crucible of a summer.
As for the other photos, I’m so happy that all of these ships have sailed!
- Yuta & Maki finally give in and accept another. Maki reveals that she wants to fatten Yuta up so that girls quit swarming around him. To me, all of her previous passes at Yuta were genuine, it was just that she was still so unsure of herself that she could never properly express it. Obviously, Yuta is overjoyed here to finally get her affection, and somebody who loves the real him.
- Chidori & Tenga are now dating? Or at least past their quarrel? I’m honestly unsure here – they sure look like they’ve gotten together but evident from the hospital scene, Chidori doesn’t exactly enjoy the fact that Katsuhira is now dating Nori. Whats clear though, is that Tenga is enamored by her presence, and at the very least the budding of a new relationship is going on.
- Nico is finally mature! Her identity crisis of being kawaii-as-hell versus true to herself is over. She accepts that Tenga loves someone else, and values friendship over covetousness. Of course, she’d still fight Chidori for Tenga’s honor.
- And as for Yoshiharu? Well… I guess he’s been happy all along? Nothing really changed about him, and excuse me for this overstretch of analysis, but maybe he’s been true to himself and his emotions all along, as portrayed by his ‘interests’ and attitude.
The Narrative
As mentioned before, I think the intended message for this show is that people, especially adolescents, need to acknowledge their emotions and personality rather than fight against it. In doing so, we watch characters find true comfort and satisfaction by the end of the series, versus the muddled facades we saw at the start.
Most series’ have a message, and a device to deliver it with. The message is a classic that’s been told millions of times in every format; you may call it coming of age. The device used to deliver this story is what made Kiznaiver the wild ride it is, a Sci-fi drama about high school age teens. Connecting 7 teens by their pain is a pretty blunt way of forcing a friendship, but for the sake of the story it worked well because it was always prevalent until the very end where they learned to accept their feelings on their own. The beauty of this was that the production team had the freedom to script pretty much anything they saw fit for their cast of characters to do, and because of the already established wound connection, both themes of personal growth and fantasy science would coincide nicely.
One more thing I’d like to touch upon is the conflict of the plot, which was resolving Noriko’s trauma. After looking at it from many angles, at first I thought she was nothing more than a dull female character who’s muted emotions defined her character. After all, she’s just like a walking trope for most of the series – no emotions, looks down on others, mysterious, only focused on one thing. But it was only at the end of all of this I realized how well thought out a character she was. We know that Noriko’s emotions and pain were lost because of the failed Kiznaiver experiment from her childhood, and ever since she’s been unable to function in society, kept under the care of the experiments benefactor and scientists. Pretty typical anime sob story, except for one point. She isn’t truly void of feeling, because of her undying desire to get her emotions back, as well as the emotions of the children left as husks from the experiment.
So how does this justify her crazy terrorist actions in the end of the show? It doesn’t, that was for the sake of having a climax, but it brings up something to wrap up the message and device once again. Noriko was robbed of the chance to discover herself and understand her emotions, which is why she chose a destructive path in her life. In the end, everyone else who had choices came to a rocky resolution, but one that didn’t lead to self destruction. Noriko is saved just in time by her loverboy, and she does get her feelings back little by little, as shown by the final scene in the series: she can smile on her own now.
That, I think, is the message Kiznaiver wanted to share. As a young adult, this series filled me with memories both happy and bittersweet of when I was finding out who I was. If I watched this show as a teen, I’d probably get some pretentious idea about my identity, but hey this is anime 😛 !
Final Thoughts
Are love triangles kind of cliche? Yeah, kind of, but for the sake of this show it worked. Was this series rushed? Some outcry online suggests so, and with only 12 episodes some may even come to that conclusion – but i think not, because the narrative was delivered completely in the end. This series was a blast to watch and review, and thank you Trigger for saving anime one series at a time. Until next animation… Goodbye!
