This series is animated by studio Trigger, the studio behind the animation of the famous anime, Cyberpunk : Edgerunners which became the 2022 anime of the year.
If you're here for my opinion on this anime, then the answer is... For me, this anime was neither good nor bad. It was weird. It was probably going for a gritty feeling. That's my guess, but to me it wasn't very good. So yeah, my rating of this anime is 6/10.
Now, if you want a summary or overview of the anime, it's given down below.
Kiznaiver starts off with a small prologue in which a girl is saying that the boy isn't same as them and is assuring him that he will get his "pain" back. The animation of the prologue was really good.
Then we see a girl named Chidori Takashiro and a boy named Agata Katsuhira on their way to school. In that scene we get to know that Katsuhira is getting bullied by his classmates over money. Surprisingly, Katsuhira does not have any problem with this as they go away when they're paid, or he gets beaten by them when he doesn't pay which in turn doesn't affect him because he's apparently immune to pain as we later get to know in the episode.
When we get to a scene where Katsuhira is getting beaten by the bullies, at that time we see that a guy who goes to the same school as him comes to save him. His name is Haijme Tenga. Tenga fought the bullies and warned them to never come near Katsuhira and pay him back whatever they took from him. After they're gone though, Tenga is surprised to learn that Katsuhira does not feel any pain and knocks him unconcious while testing it.
After Katsuhira opens his eyes, he sees a girl in front of him. He comically scoots away from her. Her name is Noriko Sonozaki. On Katsuhira's waking up, she starts discussing lot of philosophical viewpoints and associating some of the students with the seven sins. Few minutes later, Sonozaki pushes Katsuhira over the stairs knocking him unconcious, again. This guy literally got knocked unconscious two times in a single episode.
Katsuhira then wakes up to Sonozaki giving him a bouquet of flowers. Following that we see that five of his classmates were kidnapped along with him for the purpose of running an experiment on them. Then Sonozaki goes on to explain that the city they live in, Sugomori City, was created for a colossal experiment, knows as the Kizna System. And Katsuhira and his friends are the ones on whom the experiment will be conducted upon.
Sugomori goes on to explain the experiment which aims to connect everyone for the purpose of understanding pain and avoiding conflicts. The setup consists of a device that is implanted in the bodies of Katsuhira and his friends which transfers pain to all six of them in an event of any one or more of them getting hurt or experiencing pain. Of course, Katsuhira's friends did not belive this, but soon realised that it was not any kind of prank and was real. Thinking it was a meaningless prank, all of his friends left the room, Chidori included. But soon they realised when Tenga hot slapped by Niko, that the situation they were in was not a prank. It was real. They could share each others pain. After their realization, they were given a mission by Sonozaki, which was to give their own introductions. At first it may have sounded simple but after few introductions, they understood that it wasn't just a normal introduction. The actual mission was to convey the thing each of them were most insecure about.
So, along the second episode and beginning of the third, everyone gave their introductions including Chidori, who confessed to Katsuhira that she once loved him. This concluded their mission of introductions which they passed.
In the third episode, there was a new mission. To find the seventh Kiznaiver. All of the 6 Kiznaivers started to look for the seventh one, very desperately at that, because the seventh Kiznaiver was repeatedly causing pain to the other six. So, by the time seventh was found, everyone knew he was a weird one. He took pleasure from pain. Though, when the 6 Kiznaivers approached him, he ran away. At the end, Katsuhira inflicted a drastic amount of damage on himself which caused the seventh to stop running. The mission was accomplished. At the end of the third episode though, Sonozaki gave a speech to a council of members about obtaining true connection. That definitely seemed suspicious.
In the fourth episode though, we see that the seventh, Hisomu, was studying in the same school as the other Kiznaivers. After that, they were met with Sonozaki who gave a task to complete a bowl of rice within 30 minutes. While she was explaining the task, she also said, countering Maki's argument, that if the Kiznaivers participated in the training camp, they would be told a secret about the Kiznaivers. This sparked an interest within the Kiznaivers. They agreed to go to the training camp. While they were on the bus to the training camp, Sonozaki told them the secret she was talking about. In short, the secret is that there are Kizna community members who comprise most of the Sugomori city and are working "behind closed doors". On reaching their destination, Katsuhira was very eager to help Sonozaki carry her luggage and seeing which Chidori got very jealous.
On seeing this, Tenga offered a hand to Chidori to help her get together with Katsuhira. In the following episode though, it took a weird turn. The school faculty of Katsuhira and his friends put the bullies of Katsuhira against him and his friends under the disguise of a mission. Apparently the goal of the mission was to connect the Kiznaivers at the core of their hearts, their feelings. Well, they succeeded. When Chidori emotionally erupted, by the pressure of the mission, the six other Kiznaivers felt the gloomy and sad mood felt by Chidori as well. After the completion of the mission though, the two faculties and Sonozaki left the place in a car and appointed the Kiznaivers to clean their waste. Nice faculty.
After this event in the training camp, probably to strengthen the working ofthe Kizna system at the feeling level, the Kizna community set Maki up against her permission and her past; due to which a TV cast came to interview her which made Maki very uncomfortable. After setting her up, the Kiznaivers were given the mission to "Save Maki". Following this, the Kiznaivers went to school and stood up against the reporters and "Saved Maki".
Well... That was that. After being saved Maki just went back to her straight face character. But the Kiznaivers didn't give up. They went screamed outside her house that they want to be friends with her. She denied it, of course. But then when she left the house for a walk, she saw Yuta who pulled her out of her misery. And we got to see Maki laughing and accepting the others as Kiznaivers, which is more than friends or lovers to her.
But unfortunately the next episode, as usual, the Kizna committed dumped another mission on the Kiznaivers. To get home safe while a typhoon. During which their love and friendship emotions were manipulated. And in this episode we also got know some new stuff like who likes who and that Katsuhira exists inside Sonozaki. Also this the episode which I liked the most.
Following this, lot of love loops were discovered among the Kiznaiver which ultimately broke the whole group after a fight. Although there was no point in having that group since they were not Kiznaivers anymore.
Now it's time to get into the backstory. Everyone was living their lives after being experimented on by the Kizna committee, but suddenly, one day, Katsuhira felt a terrible pain even though he wasn't a Kiznaiver anymore. The answer was clear. It was Sonozaki. She tried to commit suicide but was unsuccessful in doing so. When Katsuhira, Hisomu and Nico snuck into the experimentation facility, they were caught by Urushii. Then she told them the history about the whole Kizna experiment and how Sonozaki and Katsuhira became as were. After listening to this, when Katsuhira visited few of his old friends and saw their condition, he broke. He was crying. This episode along with the backstory reveal was pretty good. Good stuff.
Then came the other two episodes which I like the most. The episodes were kinds weird ngl but also not terrible. The way Sonozaki and Katsuhira resonated with each other regarding their past was good. And what was up with the part where all the dark mode Gomorins came into existence? That was weird.
Anyways, in the end everyone got together. Maki and Yuta. Sonozaki and Katsuhira. Chidori and Tenga probably.
So yeah. That's it.... For me this anime is a 6/10. Not that good. But also not that bad.
Thanks for reading till the end though. I appreciate you giving some time to read this. Thank you.
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