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Perhaps it's fitting that a series about a hapless family stuck in a world of frozen time should work best in singular moments, little bits of satisfying and thrilling storytelling that just don't come together as cleanly as they should. Every week I sit down to watch
, I find myself loving most of the individual beats in the episode, yet I remain frustrated that the overall structure of the show is so sloppy and ill-defined. This fourth episode is no exception, though it does promise some forward momentum to come at least.
Kokkoku: Moment By Moment Review • Anime Uk News
We begin with what is quickly becoming a KOKOKKU tradition, where last week's cliffhanger is immediately revealed to be not that big a deal, as Juri's would-be attacker is quickly teleported away by Grandfather, though the old man finally begins showing signs that all this running and fighting are taking their toll on a fellow of his age. The opening chase sequence is one of the better action beats we've gotten from KOKOKKU so far, ably using Grandfather's powers and the geography of the frozen city to liven up the tension. The best moment of the entire episode is easily when Jiru finally decides she's had enough of these Genuine Love Society assholes constantly threatening to murder and rape her, and she proceeds to put her ability to knock the Specters out of people to good use. The brief montage of Juri and Grandfather combining their efforts to put down a bunch of cult members is fun and satisfying, exactly what I hoped for when Juri first discovered her powers last week.
It also leads us to the expected reveal of why Juri is so familiar with the world of Stasis. Her grandfather took her there once as a child when her dog was at death's door, in an apparent effort to help her cope with the loss. While I appreciate the show continuing to develop a relationship between these two characters, there obviously has to be more too this flashback than that; after all, Shoko's involvement in all this has yet to be explained, and she clearly recognizes Juri from a Stasis-related incident in the past. Still, Grandfather's frantic search for the angry young Juri is a great moment of character development for both of them, showcasing the old man's well-meaning mistakes and the young girl's headstrong personality. Not many anime put adults at the center of their stories, and one of the things that makes
's script so consistent is the attention it pays to the lives of its world-weary men and women, Juri and Grandfather especially.
Pet' Tv Anime Listed With 13 Episodes
Unfortunately, the back half of the episode is marred by the story's insistence on having characters take far too long to learn things the audience has already known for weeks. Juri and Grandfather's discovery of Makoto and Tsubasa's newfound mobility makes sense, but I can't for the life of me understand why KOKOKKU thought it necessary to spend a full third of the episode with the Genuine Love Society figuring out that the Heralds punish anyone seeking to do harm to those outside of Stasis. While these guys obviously have to figure this stuff out sooner or later, the audience has been aware of these details since the second episode, and having Shoko explain things in even more detail to the obnoxious and unlikable Society members sucks the life right out of the pacing. The image of the disembodied head and lungs being lifted out of the Herald's sandy remains is admittedly great, but the whole scene feels like unnecessarily protracted setup for Shoko's backstory that we'll hopefully be getting soon.
I never thought I'd say that a show like KOKOKKU is being dragged down by the crazy cult in its story, but here we are. The Yukawa family are a fascinatingly flawed group of people on their own (except maybe for Juri's dad, who just kind of sucks), and every moment we spend focused on the Genuine Love Society instead feels like it's holding the series back from the horror-flavored character drama it could be. We're only a third of the way through the story though, so it stands to reason that the GLS could become more vital in the coming weeks. At the very least, I'm more eager than ever to see what becomes of Juri and her misbegotten clan. There's a truly awesome story hiding behind
James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.One story that I always hear from people who live, or have lived in Japan, is that they have survived an attempt from a religious cult to indoctrinate them. These attempts seem incredibly common in Japan, so it’s a surprise they aren’t used more often in anime; yet here we have a series which combines a religious cult with ideas on time travel and immortality.
Kokkoku Episode 6: The Plot Thickens As The Brother Gets Thinner
Tells the story of Juri Yukawa and her family’s run-in with the Genuine Love Society, a religious cult attached to a miraculous stone which, when fed someone’s blood, can stop time for them and anyone else touching the stone. With her family being pretty close to rock bottom, her father just having lost his job, her brother being a NEET and her sister being a rushed-off-her-feet single mother trying to support her son, Makoto, Juri is shocked when her brother and nephew are kidnapped and held to a 5-million-yen ransom in an abandoned apartment block. With only 30 minutes to save them and no car available, things look hopeless – until their grandfather pulls out this mystical stone and stops time, pulling Juri, her father Takafumi, and himself into the world of Stasis. While they think it will be an easy rescue, they end up falling into a trap set up for them by the Genuine Love Society; where their leader, Junji Sagawa, plans to steal the stone and utilise the power of Stasis to fulfil his dream of achieving immortality.
This is certainly one bizarre plot that combines a range of time-related science fiction concepts with a cat-and-mouse drama that sees Juri and her grandfather trying to rescue her family. All the while, the mystery around what Stasis is, how it works and how it came to be unravels in the background. While it has some fascinating concepts, I often found it to be a bit messy and confusing in its execution, showing a lack of focus and jumping around between its different plot threads a lot. As a result, it gave me the impression that it had a lot of things to tell, but not enough time to tell them.
It front-loaded a lot of its core concepts into the first episode, where it had to handle introducing all of the main characters and the villains, as well as setting up several different elements of Stasis. This left it with a few episodes that were particularly light on content; for example, where the two groups are chasing each other around town in Episodes 3 and 4, where instead they could have been used to space out some of the more detailed explorations of the science fiction elements.
Kokkoku Collectors Edition Blu Ray New Sealed Uk Edition Anime
The most important of these elements is the Heralds, or Handlers as they are also called: giant floating titans made out of dust that act as the protectors of the Stalled, the ordinary people who are not able to move in Stasis, and are at the mercy of those who can. A lot of the show’s big reveals involve just what these things are and where they come from, as they form the main distraction from the show’s main plotline of Juri rescuing her family from the cult.
The Heralds are very enigmatic beings, often being treated as gods by the cult and they work really well early on in the story as it’s not clear what they are, and as a viewer you’re trying to work it out at the same time as the characters. As well as giving us some more gory moments when they rip people’s heads off, they offer some more poignant ones as well, building up one of the side characters, Shoko Majima, as perhaps the strongest of the cast, as her story and her relation to the Heralds is revealed.
While a lot of the cast aren’t likeable at first, one of the show’s strengths is that it can develop them into something more, with most of them going through some major changes as the series goes on. While there is a major focus on Juri and Majima, it also allows side characters, like Juri’s father and brother, to show different sides of themselves, with the former proving himself strong in a fight, and the latter finding some new motivation in his life in guiding his nephew down the right path. This is in stark contrast to their uselessness at the beginning of the series, where
Prime Video: Kokkoku
Tells the story of Juri Yukawa and her family’s run-in with the Genuine Love Society, a religious cult attached to a miraculous stone which, when fed someone’s blood, can stop time for them and anyone else touching the stone. With her family being pretty close to rock bottom, her father just having lost his job, her brother being a NEET and her sister being a rushed-off-her-feet single mother trying to support her son, Makoto, Juri is shocked when her brother and nephew are kidnapped and held to a 5-million-yen ransom in an abandoned apartment block. With only 30 minutes to save them and no car available, things look hopeless – until their grandfather pulls out this mystical stone and stops time, pulling Juri, her father Takafumi, and himself into the world of Stasis. While they think it will be an easy rescue, they end up falling into a trap set up for them by the Genuine Love Society; where their leader, Junji Sagawa, plans to steal the stone and utilise the power of Stasis to fulfil his dream of achieving immortality.
This is certainly one bizarre plot that combines a range of time-related science fiction concepts with a cat-and-mouse drama that sees Juri and her grandfather trying to rescue her family. All the while, the mystery around what Stasis is, how it works and how it came to be unravels in the background. While it has some fascinating concepts, I often found it to be a bit messy and confusing in its execution, showing a lack of focus and jumping around between its different plot threads a lot. As a result, it gave me the impression that it had a lot of things to tell, but not enough time to tell them.
It front-loaded a lot of its core concepts into the first episode, where it had to handle introducing all of the main characters and the villains, as well as setting up several different elements of Stasis. This left it with a few episodes that were particularly light on content; for example, where the two groups are chasing each other around town in Episodes 3 and 4, where instead they could have been used to space out some of the more detailed explorations of the science fiction elements.
Kokkoku Collectors Edition Blu Ray New Sealed Uk Edition Anime
The most important of these elements is the Heralds, or Handlers as they are also called: giant floating titans made out of dust that act as the protectors of the Stalled, the ordinary people who are not able to move in Stasis, and are at the mercy of those who can. A lot of the show’s big reveals involve just what these things are and where they come from, as they form the main distraction from the show’s main plotline of Juri rescuing her family from the cult.
The Heralds are very enigmatic beings, often being treated as gods by the cult and they work really well early on in the story as it’s not clear what they are, and as a viewer you’re trying to work it out at the same time as the characters. As well as giving us some more gory moments when they rip people’s heads off, they offer some more poignant ones as well, building up one of the side characters, Shoko Majima, as perhaps the strongest of the cast, as her story and her relation to the Heralds is revealed.
While a lot of the cast aren’t likeable at first, one of the show’s strengths is that it can develop them into something more, with most of them going through some major changes as the series goes on. While there is a major focus on Juri and Majima, it also allows side characters, like Juri’s father and brother, to show different sides of themselves, with the former proving himself strong in a fight, and the latter finding some new motivation in his life in guiding his nephew down the right path. This is in stark contrast to their uselessness at the beginning of the series, where
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