Anime: Koutetsujou no Kabaneri

Review
Koutetsujou no Kabaneri (Kabaneri) can be more easily described as Shingeki no Kyojin with zombies and Snowpiercer. For those who don't know Shingeki no Kyojin or Snowpiecer, I could elaborate and call this a survival show with zombies, happening in a world with steampunk trains and technology, and with all the vibes of a typical shounen. Fret not though, Kabaneri is an great rip-off of these ideas, one with amazing production, a simple yet solid plotline, and a cohesive narrative. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but what it does is enough to put many Shingeki no Kyojin rip-offs to shame.

This is a tale of a world overwhelmed by the threat of the kabane, some sort of mindless zombies who attack people in hordes and infect them with their own disease. People survived in this world by gathering in walled cities and traveling through railways, using armored trains and pressure-powered weapons to fight off their enemies. Ikoma is a mechanic in this world, a boy that doesn't fear the kabane but instead focus his life into developing a way to kill them and understand how the virus work. His skill are put to test when his city falls and he turns into a kabaneri: a half-human half-kabane.

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1. Simple
   Kabaneri is simple. It borrows the idea of zombie survival, meaning you never exactly get what triggered the zombie outburst. In fact, it doesn't even matter, what matters is survival alone. It borrows from shounens, meaning you get to see the protagonist grow into a warrior to face the threat. It also gets a deal from steampunk stuff, with amazing armored trains, Last Exile-like weapons, and a society that mixes feudal Japan with technology and post-apocalyptic scenario. You have seen most of these stuff and you know how they work. Kabaneri smartly uses this to skip presenting unnecessary stuff and jumps right into action. It is a show that only has scenes that matters, no fillers, no shounen trash-talk, no stupid explanations.
   
   The protagonist
   Fortunately, Ikoma is not one of the annoying group. Although he still got that young shounen hero behavior, he acts with more intelligence and maturity than most, only failing at times where failing is understandable. He reminded me a lot of Kamille (Gundam Z) with his harsh speech and sense of fighting before being nice, and he grows a good deal for a short show as this one.
   
   A interesting cast
   Not only Ikoma shines here, Kabaneri also manages to explore the shounen tropes with a decent screentime for each. You get the young highlly skilled girl who is easy to influence, a weakling leader who reminded me of Sakura Wars that manages to understand her place and act accordingly as the episodes go on, you also get the samurai ronin default guy that is nicely put to sidelines when he starts to get boring, and then we get the madman villain that is perhaps the most basic and less inspiring of the lot. You see, Kabaneri is not a character-driven experience, it is more about action and popcorn, but for this kind of show its cast is a great achievement and works a lot to make the experience better.
   
   It got style
   Kabaneri looks different. I mean, it looks like a 90's show in its style at many points, and that is awesome. In a time where shows all look the same, seeing Kabaneri's style is a refresher, and see it with such quality as done by Wit Studio makes for a great asset to the show. Combats are also great, the coreography is awesome in some fights, and there is a great deal of action to use it. Unlike their works with Shingeki no Kyojin and Owari no Seraph, the studio put more effort into the animation this time around and rarely resorts to static scenes to narrate chaotic events. The CGs merge decently enough and there is a superb amount of detail to the steampunk scenery and even to the character clothes. This could be perhaps the best work of the studio so far.
   
   And it got music
   If there is another asset Kabaneri has is its sound direction. It offers more than just a solid opening song, it offers a whole soundtrack of epic moments, boosting the scenes to a higher level when needed. For a show that is more about action and pursuit and defeating zombies, this works wonders. Join that with a solid voice-acting with many decibels less than Shingeki no Kyojin or Owari no Seraph, and you have one of the most charming show using the current formula of survival.
   
   The villain and its end
   Sadly though, Kabaneri doesn't explore everything it could. At first you may think this will be a tale where the origins of the kabane will be explored and the heroes may act toward a greater peace, but then you are presented to the one-sided mad villain and the events start to lead to his demise and end there. This works in two different ways: first, it keeps the simple plotline together and deliver a complete experience, starting as Ikoma becomes a kabaneri and ending as the villain threat is thwarted, leaving open room for future arcs without necessarily demanding them; second, the setting is barely explored, you get to see little of the backrgound events and you are left empty of answers to the kabane and everything else.
   

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Comments
People compared Kabaneri with Shingeki no Kyojin. Well, you can't not compare I think. Not only the show is animated by the same guys, but it is also vastly similar in its concept, much like Owari no Seraph. As I mentioned in the review, everything here is simple, direct, and doesn't try to bring stupid mysteries that are never solved. Ikoma is not part of a secret experiment, he becomes a kabaneri through his own knowledge, even if just by accident. There is no large conspiracy in the plot involving the enemies and humans, you instead get a simple-minded villain who wants vengeance and destruction.

I could easily call it a lesser version of Shingeki no Kyojin because it is smaller and copies many of its elements, but that would be a terrible mistake. Kabaneri is greater than Shingeki no Kyojin in many aspects: it is far less annoying with its cast, never try your intelligence with shounen trash-talk, never resort to horribly slow narrative or fillers, and puts a good amount of content for a 12-episode long shounen show. Yes, it doesn't break new grounds with impressive twists, it doesn't bring the shocking deaths, and it never even tries to make you feel as if this would be a survival with zero chance of victory. No, it jumps to action right away and goes down a railway in a steady but fast pace.

If you want an action shounen that is not lost to the superpower shounen genre, there you have it. If you felt Shingeki no Kyojin and Owari no Seraph were too childish or perhaps too full of fillers and annoying characters, there you have it. Kabaneri is not massive, not full of complex intrigues nor a tale about a grand picture, but exactly because of that it manages to be a solid and enjoyable experience on par with Shingeki no Kyojin and even superior depending on what you are looking for.

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, also known as Attack on Trains, is WIT Studio cashing in on the trend it personally initiated for the third time, after Empire of Corpses and Seraph of the End. If it works, why change it? It’s just going to sell on name and superficial similarities alone.

And it’s not like it’s the exact same thing. Unlike Attack on Titan, which desperately tries to pass as psychological and mysterious, Kabaneri is a straightforward zombie apocalypse where everybody is constantly afraid of someone being infected, thus easily turning against each other. It’s also what makes them complete retards that shoot before they think and kill more people than they save.

If you watched my first impressions of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58m7PZ4ePrU) you already know it’s not a series which gives a shit about science or common sense, it’s simply trying to be as violent and loud as it can, in an attempt to replace writing with mindless rule of cool. If you are fine with watching stupid shit, you will enjoy it.

Unfortunately, even if you approach it this way, the series is becoming progressively more ludicrous as it goes on, by constantly introducing more improbable physics and muddled character motivations. It’s like it doesn’t want you to like it as a mindless zombie flick, and does its best to make you question its integrity. This leads to immersion breaking and the realization that you are indeed watching garbage. Here are a few examples:
Episode 1: BS science; you cannot stop a virus from spreading by strangling yourself
Episode 2: A little girl is enough to wipe out dozens of zombies, making the main threat of the show no longer scary
Episode 3: Humans are afraid of Kabaneri and send a mob against them, even though they are their only hope and can easily overpower them all
Episode 4: Samurai zombies, lol
Episode 5: Mumei changes personality every 5 minutes
Episode 6: Titan zombie, made of smaller zombies, lol
Episode 7: Biba is introduced and his motivations make no sense
Episode 8: Mumei and a hundred others support the genocidal Biba for no logical reason
Episode 9: Steampunk motorcycles, lol
Episode 10: Brainwashing magic makes Mumei even more of a plot device than she already was
Episode 11: Biba kills thousands of innocent people because he was butthurt; and manages to do that with a plan based purely on lucky guessing
Episode 12: Ikoma gets a power up out of nowhere, which despite being lethal, he survives with an antidote given by the very genocidal villain who wanted to kill everyone

Just because you know you are watching mindless action does not mean that there should be no effort placed on the script. There should be some sort of consistency and internal logic. But that’s the thing with the writer of this abomination; he knows nothing about that and just throws random shit on the screen, rewrites personalities every 5 minutes, asspulls stuff for the sake of shock, makes characters dumb as rocks so they will be doing the most basic oversights, and calls it a day. He is easily the worst in his field (Code Geass s2, Guilty Crown, Valvrave) and yet is still constantly given high budget series to screenplay.

Do you know why? Because the damn shit he makes sell a lot. The colors are pretty, there is a guy who speaks engrish, and Mumei is waifu bait, thus 11/10. The tasteless masses are buying them without giving a damn about what the hell they are watching. And it’s not just the sales, there are still thousands out there who loved Kabaneri, even though it’s so obviously bad in everything besides the pretty colors. This can only mean one thing for the industry: They will keep making this shit because the tasteless casuals love them. That’s what happens when the audience doesn’t want to be critical.

Now enjoy this diversion until the second season of Attack on Titan arrives and disappoints everybody, while at the same time outselling everything else.

This anime started promising and interesting. The story is good, but after 3 or 4 episodes, everything starts to fall.
bored episodes that contribute nothing, a plot that gradually changed from the beginning and turning it into boring.
The characters are not very charismatic, the OST is normal, few short scenes fighting and not much quality, passable animation ...
In short, it is an anime to hang out if you have nothing better to do or see.
As a personal opinion, I would expect better, honestly. Or that the anime would have at least maintained the quality of the first 3 episodes.

I'm a little dissatisfied with the end result.

PS: Sorry for my English. I hope you understand me.

Greetings.

:roll: