Kotetsujou no Kabaneri

Alternative title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, 甲鉄城のカバネリ

Type: Tv

Episodes: 12

Age Limit: R-17+

Tags: action, horror, drama, fantasy, post-apocalyptical, steampunk

In this post-apocalyptical world people live behind walls and travel only with trains because beying outside is extremely dangerous. Unknown virus changed people into monsters which are hard to kill and eat human flesh. 

It sounds like typical zombie thing but it had a lot of nice original touches to it which I liked. The whole steampunkish world, trains, weapons and even Kabane were interesting and I was really hooked by it. Well the whole first half of the story worked pretty well but than it was like someone pressed a button and everything switched to shit. I don't need some very extremely detailed details but every story needs at least a little bit of depth to work properly. Also towards the end there was so much unnecessary drama that it felt very awkward and I facepalmed constaneously.

Animation and art is pretty neat, it was one of those spectacular visual experiences I welcome and any action/fightning scenes were really impressive, they also trully worked on choreography a lot and for me that's big plus.

Music and soundtrack, both OP and ED were nicely fitting, overally soundtrack had very (hollywood) movie feeling to me, simply said it was epic, mood setting and download worthy.

Characters, at the start they were interesting. Ikoma was getting through big change and it was enjoyable, Mumei was mysterious and a lot of side characters had their nice own personality but sadly it didn't go past it much after second half. Actually it got worser. Ikoma was no-name and actually decided to do something about Kabaneri which made him stronger and for small amount of time even badass. But then his determination was degraded, he started to do a lot of stupid decisions and became extremely weak. Mumei had a very developed personality with many twists and she felt like a good example of strong heroine but she became extremely naive and horrendously stupid when her brother appeared. I understood her torment, her grattitude toward Biba but even after she realised he was only using her instead of helping her friends she rather decided to get used again. And that's just not acceptable. Well about Biba, he was the most plain, worst and stupidest villain I encountered in a while and everything about him was highly annoying. I even didn't understand his reasons, he wanted revenge which was kind of understandable but killing as many people as possible to only prove that he is evil while there wasn't any kind of motivation was lazy. But the worst thing was probably common people in cities and towns, they always acted like they don't have any brain so they died of some pretty idiotic reasons. In the end I was surprised that humanity was able to survive for so long when they panicked even over some little things and didn't use any kind of strategy.

Overall. This could be a really great post-apocalyptical anime with nice steampunk touch and some original ideas but the horrible work with characters truly spoiled it.

PS: Ikoma and his punk hairstyle won though

Rating: 7,5/10