Kingdom an anime about the warring states era centered around young boys.
Kingdom starts with two slave boys with a dream to be heroes so they can rise above their present circumstances. In order to be heroes they have many matches against each other. Once, while they were having a match, a man from the royal palace stopped to talk with them. He decided to take Hyou with him to the palace to train. Shin had to stay behind, but promised to get to the same level as his friend Hyou on his own. After tragedy strikes, Shin has to go to an outlaw village.
The part of Kingdom where they decide to be heroes does not make much sense. They are looking over the battle with all the carnage and it is supposed to be their first one, so they should be feeling ill. Instead they decide that they want in on all the carnage too. I somehow can’t believe that they would want to join in even if they are slave boys and probably have seen death before.
There is also a tacked-on death scene. There is no point in trying to make a death have a big impact when the character has only been around for one episode. There is no time to get genuinely attached to the character and it just seems overblown and premature to have a big scene for someone’s death that early. If they had drawn it out a bit longer before the death it would have been a better use of time. Even better if they had made it a cliffhanger so people could wonder if the character was really dying.
People dying, but no signs of blood. A real clean battle.
The artstyle for Kingdom is so distracting. The play back and forth between regular animation and CGI is annoying. There is not even a good reason for it most of the time. Since they are doing so much CGI and it is not of a very high quality. All the characters are pretty plain so it is easier to do. The armies in battle don’t even have any insignia or anything so they can be animated more easily. Also I just love how the field the boys fight in looks like a standard Windows background.
The scenery everywhere, but where Hyou and Shin are fighting.
The background for Hyou and Shin's fight. What happened to this place?
Overall this series goes to a lot of trouble developing the characters early on and that is the only positive thing I have to say about this one.
Status: Not Watching
