Kokkoku Archives | Page 2 of 2

Review:

Kokkoku is a very odd show (just check out it’s opening theme) but it is the kind of odd that potentially could be quite good. That is ‘potentially’. Despite being three episodes in I’m still struggling just to remember character names and so far very few of them have any kind of distinctive personality.

There’s clearly some kind of backstory going on between the woman with the kidnappers/killers/cultists and the family but the few glimpses we’ve gotten don’t paint much of a picture. I was also kind of hoping the kid waking up would be more of a plot development but instead it just gave us a scene of him dancing around in stasis which I somehow don’t think is going to contribute much to the overall story.

I really do want to like this because the overall idea is pretty cool and yet so far the execution isn’t quite doing it justice. It isn’t bad, but without investing in any of the characters essentially nothing has happened in over an episode of any consequence.

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Thanks,

Karandi James.

Overview:

Juri isn’t happy with her family, her unemployed father and brother and single parent sister. She’s also not happy about her own life as she tries to pass an interview for a job. Still, everything changes when she gets a phone call telling her that her brother and nephew have been kidnapped and her grandfather uses a strange stone to stop time.

Review:

This is one of those stories where I’m going to have to watch to find out the explanation but I’m not entirely certain I’ll end up happy with the explanation. I’m already annoyed two episodes in at the number of times the grandfather has explained something and then said he isn’t sure but it was something his grandfather told him. That’s all well and good but it means the audience has been told practically nothing that we can rely on being true.

Despite that concern, these first two episodes are kind of tense once the story kicks in and there’s a constant feeling that things are about to get worse. While the characters haven’t really had a chance to do much other by the end of the second episode we’re starting to get a feel for them.

There’s also the added intrigue of the strange power in the stone and the family’s connection to it. I love a good intrigue and I really do want an explanation that is satisfying.

While these first two episodes are interesting enough there’s also a lot of down time and there hasn’t really been much effort made to make you care about the characters. While the mystery itself is probably compelling enough it feels like they wasted some opportunities here. Still, I’m probably going to watch this through because I want to know what happens.

Thanks for reading.

If you enjoyed this post and like the blog, consider becoming a patron to support further growth and future content.

Thanks,

Karandi James.