Kokkoku

One of the things I hate most about anime is when I finally get around to watching one I've been putting off for a long time, only to have mixed feelings about it. You might be wondering why I put it away. The answer is that I was storing it away for a time when I might need it.

It was one of those miserable days when I couldn't find anything to watch, despite the fact that I had a large number of anime saved in my watch list across a You will get what I mean by this if you subscribe to more than one streaming service, if you use your parents' or someone else's streaming service, or if you pay for multiple streaming services yourself. You will understand what I mean by this.

I took this anime off the shelf to see if it would live up to my expectations or at least satisfy my need for entertainment. Whether or not it did either of those things for me, or if my expectations were not met at all, is what we are going to discover in this article.

Kokkoku: Moment by Moment is the brainchild of mangaka Seita Horio. His manga creation was picked up by Geno Studios (Golden Kamuy) under the direction of Yoshimitsu Ohashi. Yoshimitsu Ohashi's career seems to focus on key animation and storyboard work, with a few directing jobs here and there. He has been involved with some great projects, including Blast of Tempest, Gangsta, and Monster, to name a few. Series composition fell to Noboru Kimura, who also did series composition work for Solo Leveling and one of my favorite underrated animes, Kemono Jihen.

To say that there were a lot of people involved in this process would be an understatement. In fact, there are three scriptwriters working on different parts of this anime, which only has a total of twelve episodes. In the back of my mind, that should serve as a warning sign; after all, why do you need three different people to explain an anime that only lasts for 12 episodes, which amounts to about 4.8 hours of viewing time?

Why do you need so many screenwriters? I mean, of course, there are anime that have multiple screenwriters, and those anime turn out well; I'm not sure that that was the case here. This was a disjointed anime, and I'm saying it off the cuff; it's not to say that I didn't enjoy it, which I did, but it may leave a sour taste in the mouth of some viewers. There's a reason why the saying "too many cooks spoil the broth" exists.

Kokkoku follows our protagonist, who finds herself having failed 19 job interviews. To top that off, her family life leaves much to be desired; her brother is a recluse. Her father is a drunk and unemployed, and the only people in the household with any sense seem to be the grandfather and the nephew, the son of her sister.

The story opens with Juri Yukawa’s dream of flying her parents' nest at an impasse. After all, what 22-year-old wants to live in their parents' house with all of their relatives? Most likely all of them, but for the sake of this story, Juri didn't. The responsibility of picking up her nephew from school falls on Juri, who is feeling down about herself and her family; she compels her NEET brother Tsubasa to do so.

If you think this is some slice-of-life anime, be warned: this is where this anime immediately sucks you in and you see Yoshimitsu Ohashi's past experience with anime like Monster and “Gangsta” pay off. In a kidnapping gone south, Juri’s brother and her nephew Makoto are kidnapped by unknown assailants, who we later discover are part of a religious cult known as the "Genuine Love Society.”

When he hears about the kidnapping, Juri's grandfather, who is sometimes called Jiisan, which means "old man" in Japanese, moves in a methodical way. In an attempt to get their loved ones back, he activates a stone that allows the wielder to step into a world beyond time and space.

Juri, her grandfather, and her father enter the world of Stasis. When the user goes into "Stasis," time stops and they are free to move around. There are rules regarding Stasis but I’ll touch on them shortly. As the action unfolds, the family rushes to save their loved ones, discovering in the process that they are not alone in Stasis and that others can do it as well.

So in summary, there was going to come a point in your grandfather's life when that stone he possessed was not going to remain a secret and someone was going to come looking for it, so if that meant hijacking your family and holding them in exchange for the stone, that's what was going to happen, and that's where the story takes off, or rather where it should have.

For the majority of the series, we learn a lot about Stasis, how it works, and what it was. For starters, Stasis as stated earlier, is a world outside of our world where those who enter it are unaffected by time and space. Those who are outside of Stasis are known as the "Stalled" and according to the rules we learn in this anime, if you were to kill a stalled person, then beings who look like trees would appear in this world. They are referred to as “Heralds." The Heralds take away the life of the assailant.

The ironic part about Stasis is that if you kill a Stalled a Herald appears, but if you harm them or rob them, there is no retribution. I guess that was left in to keep the shock value up and keep viewers interested. But interest can only last so long, especially when you have to explain who the other individuals are in Stasis and this is where things begin to get dicey.

The Genuine Love Society, also known as the True Love Society, is a group of cultists who worship the stone used to enter Stasis. They aren't the March of Dimes, as their ambitions ranged from noble to questionably noble, with the bottom of the scale being just a band of thieves.

It's not that the Genuine Love Society lacked ambition; it's just that the main antagonist, who is hardly worth mentioning, wasn't much of a villain; his drive for knowledge for its own sake and his obsession with Stasis didn't really add much to the anime.

The fact is, they could have left it as a supernatural action anime in another dimension. Junji Sagawa could have followed the usual "I'm a villain and I just want to take over the world" trope, and that would have been more palatable. Seiko Takagi's influence from working on Ergo Proxy may be at play here. I enjoyed Ergo Proxy, but it was occasionally perplexing.

The other supporting side antagonists actually outperform him. Shoko Majima, who is Junji Sagawa’s resource on all things otherworldly, has an interesting backstory that not only explains the Herald but also how one becomes a Herald. It is worth mentioning that her arc is one of the events that kept me interested in this anime.

She, along with the other main protagonists, are standouts. If anything, it is the area of character development that holds this ship together. It would be an understatement to say that Grandfather and Juri's relationship is phenomenal. Chika Anzai, Juri Yukawa, and Kazuhiro Yamaji played off of one another very well, making for a delightful performance. On the whole, the voice acting was good.

I wanted Takafumi to get his comeuppance as the series progressed. This is thanks to Kouji Tsujitani, who really brought out the selfishness of Takafumi. On the flip side, I also felt sorry for him, as I saw a man who was hard-headed and had conversely lost his way. It was interesting to see him redeemed at the conclusion of the series.

A few technical details First and foremost, I thought the voice acting and animation were excellent. No, the animation isn't stellar, but I do love the designs and I love the aesthetic. I felt very immersed in the world, and I do know that the studio was limited by a budget that's apparent. But where it shines, it shines, and as I've previously stated, the anime does a stellar job during the kidnapping arc, as well as when Juri is left in stasis on her own.

That was the high point, even though it was near the final episode, because it made the viewer wonder how they would bring this whole thing home, and unfortunately, the way they brought it home was a bit of a letdown.

This anime had a lot of ebb and flow. But I believe it was trying to do too much. This is what I mean by "there were too many cooks in the kitchen" or "too many cooks spoil the broth."

Maybe having Shinichi Inotsume, Seiko Takagi, and Yoshimitsu Ohashi as screenwriters was not a smart move. Too many ideas? A wise man once said, "Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?" and the answer is yes, I can!

Kokkoku is not kegs and eggs; instead, it's beef stew. Beef stew is good when all the flavors blend. Unfortunately, Kokkoku: Moment by Moment was left cooking too long, and it tasted a little burnt. Kokkoku is a recommendation with reservations; leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.