Kiznaiver - Anime Review

When people connected with each other, people can feel empathy towards others. 

"I know how you feel..."

"I understand that situation..."

Those kind of lines often spoken when you try to empathize with each other. 

If two people or more are emotionally connected, or in other words, in one wave-length. that'd make them understand each other even better. 

So, today I'm going to review an anime that used that concept and turned it into science-fictional setting. Let's just dive right into it!

Story
Kiznaiver takes place in a not-so-far future city named Sugomori. Enter the main character, Katsuhira Agata, he is a calm, collected, reserved and not so expressive person who can't feel any physical pain.

Katsuhira Agata

He is a loner but he has a childhood friend named Chidori Takashiro who always tagged along with him. (if you are familiar with childhood friend love interest, well you know how it will end lol).

Chidori Takashiro

Both of them are new students and classmates along with 6 other characters.
they are:

Red Haired Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann  Hajime Tenga, a delinquent kind of guy.

Tsuguhito Yuta, a ladies man

Honoka Maki,an ice cold megane girl,

Nico Niiyama, Mako from Kill La Kill an eccentric genki girl,

Yoshiharu Hisomu, a masochistic pretty boy

and lastly Noriko Sonozaki, a mysterious expressionless girl.

All these characters hardly know each other since they have their own social circles, except for Nico, she's too eccentric to have friends at school. Right after the school announces that they will have Summer Break, Sonozaki kidnapped the other 7 characters and implant a device into each of them to carry on the city's secret experiment, the Kizna system. This system allows them to feel each other member's pain. The system itself is not meant to achieve something evil, it is meant to bring world's peace by letting people feel what other's feel so they can understand each other even better. The person who used this system is called Kiznaiver. How does this system works? For example, if someone in the group got hit by a Road Roller, Everybody in the group would feel the physical pain that the person got.

okay, I think Road Roller would be too painful.....

The physical pain is split equally to the group. For instance, this road roller won't kill that person since the pain is split into several people. (but I think Road Roller would kill him instantly, logically speaking)

So after given the explanation by Sonozaki about Kizna System (Road Roller's explanation was MY explanation, not hers, just to make sure lol), of course the group reacted negatively and asks to be released from this experiment since they don't like it to be treated as a guinea pig. Sonozaki gave them tasks and challenges throughout the summer. All of them must work together by overcoming their egos and putting aside their differences in other to finish a certain tasks or challenges from Sonozaki. So that's their bond right now. Or in other words, they are BOUNDED by their WOUND. (Kizna is a word play from Kizuna. which has two meanings, which is Wound and Bond). Thankfully the challenge is not for them to murder each other (welp if that's the case, that'd be contradicting with the system's goals hahaha). So what will happen to the group? Will they overcome their challenges and tasks together?

My overall thoughts on this series

1. This anime has a very unique concept and premise. I must say that this anime is one of the 2016 Spring Anime that you should check it out. The scriptwriter of this anime is Mari Okada, she is the one who also wrote script for Hanasaku Iroha (one of my favorite "soap opera" anime) and AnoHana. If you loved both of those series, I think you will love it as well. 
2. TRIGGER's animation is really really good in this series. The quality of the animation is consistent throughout the episodes. I won't compare it to their last work *cough* Ninja Slayer *cough*. Most of the people would think that this anime would be an action heavy series just like Kill La Kill or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. But nope, this is a sci-fi drama with some psychological elements on it. I heard that most of the people dropped this series because they hope that this series is an action like Kill La Kill. I also noticed a lot of callbacks to their previous works like TTGL (Tenga's character design), KLK (Nico's character design) and many more. 
3. The soundtrack doesn't really stand out to me. except for the OP. The opening song is "Lay your hands on me" by Boom Boom Satelites. And the animation fits in perfectly with the song in my opinion. I think it is one of the best opening in 2016 Anime so far (competing with Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town, JJBA part 4 OP, in my opinion)

The problem that I had with this series

1. They have a lot of interesting and standing out characters in this series. But unfortunately, some of the characters are not well developed. And I wished that I see a lot of their background stories. Not all of the characters have it. I want to know more about them!  
2. The last two episodes kinda bugged me, but don't worry, it's not as WTF as Gakkou Gurashi's ending (you can check it out for my thoughts on that series here), it's still in "okay" for an ending for this kind of anime. No, I won't get into spoiler area. hahaha

So here comes the final verdict. Should you watch Kiznaiver? If you loved sci-fi mixed with drama and psychological element in it, you should watch this anime.

That's it from me guys, I hope you find this review useful! This is Reikichi, signing out! XD