Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

Indeed, for some inexplicable reason I didn’t catch Kurozuka as it came out. But I had a bit of time and marathoned it. From the moment the first episode started, I knew we had a winner. Madhouse does it again! Think beautifully gory sword battles, creepy dark Japanese horror, post apocalyptic scifi, all jumbled into one adrenaline-pumping GLORY BOMB!!! WOOOO!!

Kurozuka is about a skilful young man from the 12th century who’s on the run after losing his battle with his older brother for the right to rule. Mind you it’s set in ancient Japan, so he and his attendant flee from ninja/samurai hybrid assassins. They flee skillfully too, with lots of cool fighting that’s smoother than even Samurai Champloo. Kuro, the young man, meets a girl in the forest who’s hauntingly creepy and beautiful. Turns out she loves to suck blood, but they fall in love but the attendant betrays Kuro and leads the enemies to their hut. The enemies chop up Kuro and the girl, Kuromitsu (Black Honey), but the girl somehow regenerates and kills off the assailants. Kuro gets a blood transfusion and gains immortality, but while he was in the process of gaining it, the attendant shows up and lopes his freakin head off.

Kuro awakens to find that he’s wearing jeans and Kuromitsu is missing. He steps out of the forest only to find himself looking at a post-apocalyptic futuristic Japan, where the evil dudes who kidnapped Kuromitsu have gained power via technology, large monsters and a berserker army who kills people on sight.

It’s hinted that he was awake prior to this, since he’s wearing jeans and knows how to use a gun. He also had a flashback where he and Kuromitsu were talking atop a ruined building.

Anyway, it’s such an intense show that even the likes of Garei Zero episode 1 pales in comparison. The only show I can think of that has a similar level of intensity is Shigurui (also by Madhouse) and that was a fantastically underrated series.

There are similarities to Muugen no Juunin aka Blade of the Immortal in the first two episodes, but Kurozuka is about a trillion times better. Bee-train made a rubbish anime version of BotI anyway but Madhouse, being the good old arty studio, probably won’t make the same mistakes.

This season is fucking fantastic and yet nothing comes close to Kurozuka, especially since Ga-rei Zero episode 4 was laughable.

I recommend this show to all anime fans, and if you don’t like it, you must be a weakling or just into moe. If that’s the case, you must DIEEEEEEE. Or read yaoi, whichever is worse.