Kuzu no Honkai review/analysis
6.5/10. A masterpiece of a first half let down by an absolutely atrocious final third.
I'll get why I loved the show in the first part out of the way. Kuzu no Honkai is to the teenage romance triangle genre what School Days was to the harem genre. While most other shows take a real life scenario to its most fantastical extreme, Kuzu no Honkai goes the complete opposite direction and takes it to its most logical extreme. I feel that my enjoyment of it is more due to the sad state of the industry rather than anything it did exceptionally well. It's main drawing point is that it is a rather realistic romance show, in an industry where romance is portrayed as anything but realistic.
While most romance series go through its entire run without the characters ever confessing their feelings for each other, or if we are lucky, a kiss in the final episode, Kuzu no Honkai goes straight off the bat in the first episode to the characters making out with each other. In that sense, the potential for development in this series is already in an entire league than the conventional romance anime. Not to mention that saying that the show is a love triangle is a complete understatement. In fact, it is more of a love octogon. Everybody is in some sort of twisted relationship with a multitude of other characters. Of course, there are far worst scenarios in hentai, but in that case I view the characters as just fap material for someoneâs weird fetish. In this case, I approach anime seriously and view these characters as very real human beings with real personalities. Unless you are the type that is unable to separate porn from other forms of visual entertainment, it is impossible not to feel for the characters.
I felt the a sense of unbearable nausea when watching the show, something akin to the feeling I had when watching Aku no Hana or Shinsekai Yori. It is so much till the extent that when I watch the sex scenes, I donât feel turned on, but rather I am on the verge of crying and screaming at the screen for the characters to please just fucking stop. It was so emotionally exhausting to watch. I had originally intended to marathon the whole series in one or two days, but it was simply too depressing and painful that I couldnât watch more than one or two episodes in a day without needing to take a break to recover some of my emotional sanity. I spend hours upon hours after each episode ended thinking of each of the characterâs emotional state and motivations. The show succeeded brilliantly in this regard. Coupled with the phenomenal OP and ED, I truly felt that Kuzu no Honkai had the potential to be one of the most revolutionary genre-defining shows of the decade.
I have to question how much of âtrue loveâ Hanabiâs feelings for Kanai, and Mugiâs feelings for Akane were. To the showâs credit, they never force a definite viewpoint on the audience, and mainly just show the relationships through Hanabiâs and Mugiâs perception, leaving the viewers to make up their own minds about it.
Since Hanabi has known Kanai from way back in her childhood, even before she had any sexual awareness, it is much easier to view her feelings as genuine. Yet, there is the sense that Kanai is just her idealization of the absent father figure in her life, which is poignant irony given that the entire reason why Kanai chooses Akane over Hanabi in the end is arguably because of his Oedipus complex (more on that later). Also, as much as I try to put myself in her shoes, there is no way that closing her eyes while making out with Mugi and imagining that Mugi is Kanai is an accurate reflection of âtrue loveâ. That is the very epitome of sexual desire. It would be interesting to have an analysis from a female viewerâs point of view about it.
If anything, Iâm a male, so I should be sympathetic of the male characters and spiteful of the female characters, but in fact I find it the other way around. While I can see why a lot of people would hate Akane, honestly itâs not as if she forced anybody to have sex with her at gunpoint. Everybody willingly fucked with her completely of their own accord and their own sexual desire. You could say that she âusedâ them, but everybody knew they were being used and still chose to go along with it.
I can give the females some benefit of the doubt, but I'm a guy and I know when Mugi is completely talking out of his ass. Bottom line is, he puts his sexual desire first and foremost. Which is nothing wrong, and you can put on a facade for the other characters as much as you want, but it's utterly disgusting how he even lies to himself in his internal monologues. At least Hanabi openly admits that she cannot tell the difference between love and lust anymore. Akane, while easily being the most morally empty character, has never pretended from the start that she was anything more than a slut that uses men. We never have any sort of moment like this from Mugi. Regarding Mugiâs feelings for Akane, I have no doubt in my mind that it was almost completely sexual attraction. Their only previous interactions are that of student and tutor, and coming from someone that has gone through a lot of tuition classes in my life, I simply do not see how any kind of meaningful interaction can comes about from that. Just look at how many times Mugi had sex with Akane before even thinking to go on a date with her. And this is his behaviour towards a person he claims he has âtrue loveâ for. How much worst would his behaviour be towards a female he views only as a sex object? To see Mugi trying to explain away his sexual desires for Akane to himself as some kind of true love is particularly revolting, and it really makes me question how much of his internal psyche is reliable as a narrator. If he lies to himself about Akane, then how can the audience trust his internal monologues regarding Hanabi or Moka?
I genuinely felt that Hanabi, while being addicted to sexual pleasure and massively confused regarding the boundaries between love and lust, was undeniably yearning for something more in her relationship with Mugi. Mugi on the other hand, had a dick in place of brains. Heâs not content with just fucking Hanabi, also goes out of his way to call his childhood friend to fuck and takes advantage of Mokaâs infatuation with him to make out with her. Again, sexual desire is a perfectly normal thing for a human being, but what repulses me is Mugiâs complete pretentiousness about it.
The series arguably reached its high point midway through when Hanabi effectively becomes no different from Akane, trying to possess everyone who desires Akane. That is a very interesting direction I would loved the show to have taken. That everyone has the potential to become complete scum if pushed far enough. It would have been beautiful; a girl who has her âtrue loveâ taken away by a conniving slut incapable of love, eventually transforms into the very being which she hates, becoming yet another conniving slut incapable of love, and the whole cycle repeats once again.
However, the last third is when all previously established characterization flies out of the window. There was a huge tonal shift from that moment onwards and the whole show went downhill till the point that I couldnât even believe it was the same series I was watching before.
There was the extremely odd decision to suddenly ditch Hanabi as the main character and put the focus on Akane. If the ultimate aim of the series was to showcase some kind of transformation from the previously unredeemable Akane, then make her the main character in the first place! Maybe then they could have crafted enough justification for the viewers to swallow her so-called âtransformationâ. Why do you spend 8 whole episodes developing Hanabi and Mugiâs relationship only to shaft it to the side and focus on something else for the remaining 4 episodes?
So Akane, who has spent her whole life sleeping with countless men and using them for her own amusement, suddenly falls in love with Kanai because he does not mind being cucked? WTF? I think this could have been a really poignant development if only they took the time to really develop it, say gradually over the course of the entire series. Instead, we get a whole lifetime of characterisation undone in the space of a single episode. Hey, the power of love trumps all yeah? Completely out of left field.
Kanai is one of the biggest cucks I've ever seen in any medium. So he is fine with marrying Akane despite her, in her exact own words, being a slut and fine with her sleeping with other men despite their relationship? This works if he is in it just for the sex, but since the show chooses not to portray his motivations that way, then what is it? The show tries to portray his love as some kind of âselfless unconditional loveâ, but is it really like that? If he was even in love with her personality in the first place, then why would he still be in love with her given that her façade has been exposed to be nothing but a fraud? And if heâs not in it for the sexual aspect, what is he in it for? Why does he love Akane? The answer is then obviously because she is nothing but an idealization in his eyes.
This brings about the disturbing implication is that Kanai is in love with Akane solely because she resembles his dead mother. Being âin loveâ for the sole sake of sexual gratification is tragic and all, but because of his Oedipus complex? Fucking hell. The fact that their relationship was the only one that, at least of a surface level, worked out in the end out of the many others that failed in the series is particularly horrific. Out of all the relationships in the show, this is ultimately the most hollow and superficial one. If the show could spend a ridiculous amount of screentime on the shallow Mugi, whoâs entire psyche can be summed up in three words âI was hornyâ, then why does it neglect the most important motivation begging to be explored; that of Kanai and his Oedipus complex? I think instead of casting their relationship as âthe power of true loveâ, it would be much more effective if the series had explored this particular disturbing aspect, that ultimately the only successful relationship in the whole show is the biggest sham of all.
Hanabiâs âdevelopmentâ from sleeping around unable to control her sexual urges to suddenly deciding to wait for true love is again completely out of left field. If anything, I thought her rejection by Kanai, coupled together with Mugi sleeping together with Akane, would completely drive her off the deep end. She was already sleeping around with multiple people, why does she decide to stop all of a sudden? There is no logical explanation for this. So when the possibility of a relationship with Kanai still exists, she sleeps around with Mugi, with her lesbian friend, with some random guy she bumps into at the train station, but the moment Kanai has concretely rejected her, she stops doing so anymore? Why? The entire point of her sexual relationships in the first place was to try and fill a void that was left in her by Kanai. The void is still there. For a character that was crying and one step away from a complete emotional breakdown every single episode at the start, it is unnatural how she reverts back to relative normalcy in the closing episodes for no particular reason at all. Characterâs emotional states arenât something for the writers to conveniently use and change at the flick of a switch if the plot so happens to call for it. Emotional hurt is something long lasting and if there is a change in the psyche of a character, there better damn well be a good explanation for it, something this show completely fails to provide.
Ecchanâs willingness to let go of Hanabi was a complete farce too. So when Hanabi was still in a relationship with Mugi, and still had the possibility of being accepted by Kanai, Ecchan had no problem with having sex with her (even touching her while in the school library for fuckâs sake) and openly telling Mugiâs about Hanabiâs infidelity in a fit of possessiveness. But now that Hanabi has been rejected by Kanai, and is no longer seeing Mugi, Ecchan suddenly decides that she is not going to have sexual relations with Hanabi anymore? Utterly ridiculous. If anything, Ecchanâs relationship with Hanabi was easily the most toxic and possessive of all, so for her to give it up with absolutely zero justification is all the more confusing.
There is nothing that the show to warrant the characters to make such changes. The show has the audacity to attempt to fool the viewers that these characters had developed in some way, namely that they were able to overcome their sexual desires in the pursuit of true love. Rubbish. In the final episode, if Mugi had tried to kiss Hanabi, or vice versa, or if Ecchan had tried to kiss Hanabi, or vice versa, it would have delved into a full blown make-out session, as has been the case throughout the entire series. Itâs fine not to have development over the course of a series, real life is like that, people donât change sometimes. But what I hate the most the forced fake development that is thrown in for the sake of it just because it is the finale.
The writers use multiple time skips covering entire months within the space of the final episode in an attempt to sell this âdevelopmentâ but it comes across as entirely artificial and contrived. Most series use time skips very carefully and at most once or twice during the entire course of the show. To have it multiple times in just one episode reeks of lazy writing, where they realize that they cannot possibly organically justify the charactersâ transformations, and thus just fast forward the show in a farcical attempt at development.
Another criticism I have for the series is that the writers takes the easy way out; rather than show that all characters are equally detestable, they very conveniently use the sociopathic Akane in order to get the viewers to feel some kind of sympathy to Hanabi and Mugi. Objectively, Hanabi and Mugi are both characters that are rotten to the core, but the writers try to paint them as some kind of sympathetic heroine/hero because there's a character with an even more deplorable moral compass. Akane becomes a scapegoat the viewers can blame all the emotional turmoil the other characters are experiencing on.
This is especially the case in how the show tries to portray Hanabi as some sort of victimised tragic character. She willingly sleeps with multiple people, but hey, she's still "pure" because she never went all the way with them. Oh come on. Sheâs as filthy as all the other characters in the show. It is true that Ecchanâs desire for Hanabi was bordering on forceful and rapey, but if Hanabi truly did not want to have sexual relations with her, she could simply have walked away. She gave in to her lust all the same despite feeling it was wrong. Frankly, thereâs nothing that the characters in the show does that I, or the majority of human being in their position would not do, but thatâs the whole point. Humans will hurt others and trample over others in order to fulfil their own selfish desires. Yes, Hanabi is indeed the victim, but at the same time she is also the aggressor, she also manipulates and toys with others, and it is important to keep that in mind while feeling sorry for her.
Additionally, the series is terrible in the sense that internal monologues plague every single episode. Have the writers ever heard of "show, not tell"? The writersâ idea of characterization is literally having whole minutes on characters babbling on inside their heads. Itâs flogging a dead horse. Why even bother to have proper characterization when you can just have some psycho-babble, right? And itâs not like the show is trying to tell its viewers: "hey, look at these pretentious fucks trying to rationalize their desire for sexual pleasure as something deeper", the show tries to pass of these internal monologues are something legit. Itâs almost like the show is trying to scream: "Look how deep I am! Look at my internal anguish and conflict!" and beat the viewers over the head with it.
I have seen people praising the ending as realistic. Were they even watching the same show as I was? Which particular relationship is realistically resolved? They point to the fact that Hanabi and Mugi donât end up together as some kind of proof that the show had such a âdeepâ âbittersweetâ ending. People praising the ending claim that they avoided the typical happy ending of romance anime. But if you ask me, the ending completely at odds with the tone and characterisation and themes brought up over the course of the series. Yes, itâs a bittersweet ending if you compare with the endings of most other series, but comparing the series with itself, with the tone and emotional turmoil set in the first half, the ending is an unnaturally optimistic one.
The people that want to see Mugi and Hanabi together donât actually mean that they love each other. Well, I wonât deny that there are some people that want some lovey-dovey ending with Hanabi and Mugi finding âtrue loveâ with each other, but those kind of people have missed the entire point of the show in the first place. The show has made it clear that frankly Mugi never saw Hanabi as anything but a sex object. Vice versa, Iâll give Hanabi the benefit of the doubt, but it is undeniable that the vast majority of their so-called relationship was nothing but sexual pleasure.
What I mean, and what I think a lot of other people mean when they say they want an ending with Mugi and Hanabi together is both of them being in a sham relationship, using each other for sexual pleasure and deluding themselves that they have feelings for each other. Which is effectively no different from the start. And thatâs the whole point. An utterly depressing ending, with each of the two leads making absolutely zero progress in finding true love, and in fact being even further away from it than ever because Kanai and Akane are married. For a show whose entire premise in the first place was to take the genre of teenage romance to its logical extreme, why doesnât it choose to go all the way? Why stop short?
The whole show was building up to a tipping point, but when the point came, there was no spectacular collapse, it just kind of fizzled out. They spent 8 whole episodes tearing down the characters only for it to amount to nothing in the end. What exactly are the consequences for the malicious hurtful actions all of the characters have inflicted on others and have been inflicted on themselves throughout the series? Nothing much to be honest.
The showâs entire selling point was that it is not like all the other clichĂ© romance dramas, only to turn that on its head in the end, which is utterly disappointing. The series, which had initially prided itself on its realism, becomes an exercise in suspension of disbelief. It wants to do a different take on the romance genre, but instead of seeing it through to its logical extreme, does a complete 360. Instead of maintaining its direction all the way to the bitter ending, Kuzu no Honkai decides to pussy out and incorporate elements of a typical clichĂ© romance. And weâre left wondering what could have been. Nonetheless, the phenomenal set-up in the first half and itâs refreshing take on the teenage romance genre makes this a must-watch. Itâs such a pity the show did not have the vision and ambition to follow it through to the end.
