Kurenai - Initial Thoughts

The Spring Season is already upon us, and despite the vast amount of series there is available, i've only started on two. Of course my enjoyment of Code Geass in its first season led me to carry on with its second series this season, but the other series i had no idea about, and i'm glad i decided to start it, is Kurenai.

Basically Kurenai is about a 16 year old high school student named Shinkurou Kurenai who takes on jobs which specialise in dealing with small fights and other squabbles, when one day a woman named Juusawa Benika brings a seven year old girl, named Kuhouin Murasaki from a noble family to his appartment and asks him to be her bodyguard.

The first thing that really struck me after both reading the synopsis for it and watching the first episode was, that it reminded me straight off of the somewhat unknown 2007 series, Seirei no Moribito, where a female bodyguard named Balsa was asked by the emperess of japan to act as a bodyguard to the son of the emperor, Prince Chagum, as he has the egg of the water spirit within him and the emperor, in fear of going into a season of drought, was to sacrfice him. The main difference though is that, up to episode 2 at least, Kurenai does not know who he is protecting Murasaki from or why he is protecting her.

Am i the only one that find's this looks like paper mario a little?

Straight into the episode, the animation and artwork is stunning, its extremely colourful and gives it a more mature feel to the show. That also goes for the opening and ending sequences as well. If you where walking in blind, you may wonder what to expect if you saw the opening, as the artstyle itself differs a lot from the artwork used throughout the episode, asides from that its nice and colourful again, and it remindes me ever so slightly of paper mario, as to why i'm not sure.

The characters themselves look to have a lot of depth to them, Kurenai for example has a traumatic past of which he lost both his Mother and Father, and he also has a 'unique' body due to its ability to heal at an unhuman speed. Murasaki as well, has to now come to terms with living as someone who is poor, instead of being in a noble family with servants to work for her. This does lead to a few arguments between Murasaki and Kurenai, which are both interesting and a little funny. Again, Murasaki reminds me a little of Chagum in Seirei no Moribito, as he has to deal with living outside of royalty, and instead as someone who has next to no money. As little as we see of them in the first two episodes, i can guess that the supporting roles within the story, like for example Yuuno Houzuki, who looks to be Kurenai's girlfriend or someone who is at least close to him, have a fair bit of depth to them and a story to tell themselves, of which i look forward to watching.

Overall though i have to say that Kurenai is indeed enjoyable, and the story itself is enough to keep me engrossed in the show throughout. If i where you, i'd go out and take a look into this as soon as you can, its something that shouldn't be missed.