Sunday, June 28, 2009

Karas



The story takes place in Tokyo, a city populated by both humans and by ghostly beings. All of them exist in both dimensions, seen and unseen: spirits, demons etc. And the point is that there must be a guy that should maintain some kind of balance between humans and those Harry Potter fans. So that guy is called Karas, some kind of raven guardian of the city. Every city has one. A Karas is created by a female called Yurine. She is some kind of spirit of the city. Every city has a Yurine, and she gives the power of the Karas to some human being. Without her he cannot transform. What we have is another Karas names Eko, actually a former Karas, who attempts to seize power and bring order to the streets through force. So Karas has to battle this Eko dude and save his city. If you see the OVA as 6 episode-pack then you will have no problem in understanding the plot, as the episode succeed one another. However if you download/buy Karas as the 2 movie-set it may be confusing because you don't know which one goes first. There is the first one called The Prophecy, and another one called The Revelation, and those two are considered the released English edition. So make sure you watch them in the correct order, because the story is hard to understand on its own so you really don't want to complicate things with Karas. Karas is great. Confusing, yes. Might give you headache, yes. Might give you a boner from the awesome 2d/3d visuals, yes. You will really need to watch this OVA more than once if you want to truly understand what is going on. So don't be frustrated if by the end of the 2nd movie you don't realize who the fuck is that guy, and what is he doing there. I won't spoil the plot this time, because I really want you to watch this anime. As I have already said the graphics are gorgeous, but also the sound does stand out. It seems they didn't miss anything. The only thing that really pissed me off was, as I already said, the plot. How the main character gets to become Karas. And while you're watching that, you have to understand Eko's plan. Eko and his followers live in the material realm in human form, but to continue doing so they must feed on the fluids of human bodies. Their periodic feasts result in massacres that leave only a single traumatized survivor. And there is a second plot within the main plot that focuses on the human victims that occurred during those feasts. At the end you will find out that someone within the police forces was actually a monster, but again, I am not spoiling who that is, or what role does he play in the final battle between the two Karas warriors. There is nothing much to say about the characters either. We have Eko and his army on one side, on the other side we have Karas and a cool-looking dude with guns, that wants to save his brother from Eko's lair and helps Karas. The dude was some kind of soldier in Eko's army I think. So again, it is really confusing. But you won't mind watching it again just because of all the cool CGI and fight sequences. I promise it makes more sense the second time around.

Graphics 10/10
Sound 9/10
Storyline 7/10
Characters 8/10
Overall 8.5/10

2 comments:

Xaris Mansour said...

karas is awesomen, nicely animated

blur said...

I still remember checking out the graphics and sound effects of my first Karas episode and going
o_0! *drool*