Review for K - The Complete Series

I guess ‘K’ is a good title for this series as much as anything because that about sums it up. Enjoyable, diverting, colourful, lively but not earth shattering, brilliant or bewitching. Just ‘K’.  Once you get through the slightly baffling first episode, everything falls pretty neatly into place in this anime-by-numbers outing.

There’s a kind of turf war going on between two extraordinary factions; HOMRA (the lairy ones) and Scepter 4, the peacekeepers. HOMRA are hell-bent on avenging the death of one of their members and the evidence all seems to point to High School kid, Yashiro Isana, better known as simply ‘Shiro’. That means he has to clear his name despite video footage putting him exactly at the scene of the crime. Luckily he has a Samurai soldier (Kuro) to help him do just that – as well as a wily cat (Neko) that turns into a purring, large-breasted girl at inconvenient moments throughout his day.

Things take a weird turn when Shiro goes to hang up his coat in his wardrobe only to discover a the blood-soaked gown he was seen wearing in the video. It also transpires that his cat, Neko, not only has the power to transform onto a beautiful girl, she can manipulate people’s memories so he begs her to help him remember that awful night.

In a surreal turn, his memories reveal that he was once the Silver King and his body was once possessed by the new king – White Spirit Fox – who could take over his body and mind but not his powers. Now aware of his powers, the real battle begins.

There’s more than a frisson of ‘something’ between the male leads too though maybe I’m imagining that and it’s something lost in translation. This is a very sassy, up to date  urban fantasy where phones are used to pay for goods which, with its 2012 original airing date in Japan, means that they probably got there first – as usual.

Once it’s set up its narrative conceit, let the chasing, fighting and larking begin because this pretty much what you get with K for its 13 episode run. Though perfectly enjoyable, nothing life-changing to report.

It all looks pretty good – whilst never straying far from anime convention – and the English voice dubs (for that’s how I watched this – sorry Jits!) are fine.

I was pretty surprised to discover that all 13 episodes are put on to a single Blu-Ray disc. I assumed that would mean DVD quality but less storage requirement. However, the quality of the image belies that – it’s really very good; just what I would expect from a Blu-Ray disc, though I am unsure how that’s been achieved as the maths just don’t add up! But the eyes don’t lie and I can assure you this looks far better than your average anime on DVD. Audio is lossless and very ‘sound’ – pardon the pun. So the ‘3 x DVD’s and 1 X Blu-Ray’ pack may appear to be nuts (in the US you get two of each which makes sense) but it sort of works. Don’t ask me how!

Of course this does mean a paucity of extras but generally these comprise of little other than US dubbing artist commentaries and end-caps etc – hardly worth the time and effort as far as I’m concerned so this didn't bother me in the least.

So if you like plenty of action, girls with huge breasts dressed as cats and occasional laugh aloud humour then you could do worse than buying ‘K’. But then you could probably do a lot better too.