Cover Art

Credits

Directora Keiichi Sato, Akira Takata Starring: Keith Burgess, Melissa Fahn, Jay Hernandez, Kate Higgins, Steve Staley, Matthew Lillard, Piper Perabo Screenplay: Masaya Honda, Shin Yoshida Music: Prague Philharmonic Orchestra Country: Japan

The worlds of humans and the supernatural have always coexisted. In Karas, the world of demons continuously overlaps into the human's world and, as such, a balance between the two must be maintained by the Karas, a mechanised demon slayer who dispatches evil spirits running rampant in the human world, and Yuri, the Karas' spiritual overseer. However, humans have become complacent thanks to the Karas' vigilance and he quickly becomes disenchanted with his role as their defender. Taking the name Lord Ekou, the former Karas plan to attack the human world with an army of Mikura, rogue demons who have also mechanised and must now feed off human blood in order to survive [Anime fans will notice the 'uncanny similarity' (ie: rip-off) to Bleach]. From here on the plot follows three main characters; Otoha is chosen as the new Karas and is proving his capabilities to Yuri, but he's still rough around the edges. Nue is a Mikura who has turned his back on Ekou's army and is trying to dispose of as many former comrades as possible – the only problem is he still needs a supply of human blood in order to survive. Finally, there is Kure, a police officer investigating paranormal phenomenon in the human world; he has his work cut out for him attempting to investigate things he can't even see, and for most of the series he wanders around trying to piece together a growing puzzle of vicious murders by demons.

The animation team of Tatsunoko have really pulled out all the stops for Karas; the credit sequence alone is so action packed it could induce epilepsy, and the fight scenes are choreographed around a mixture of 2D/3D animation that really brings the sequences to life thanks to the computer-rendering. It's not the best thing I've seen (that honour goes to Ergo Proxy), but it's still convincing. That said, I was disappointed by the lack of blood and gore: the show's meant to be about demon-vampires, so you'd think that gore was essential!

If all this sounds promising, then your disappointment will be all the more profound. The narrative is a blatant rip-off of Bleach, and the plot is barely discernable thanks to the overly-jumpy editing that is loath to focus on one character for more than two minutes. Characters aren't even introduced properly, and for most of the series you'll struggle to figure out what the hell is going on as yet another jump prevents you from gaining any information whatsoever. Furthermore, some aspects of the show are just plain ridiculous; mechanised demons is one thing, but having them turn into robots, cars and planes is silly – kind of like Transformers meets Technoman. This seems to highlight Karas' overwhelming emphasis of style over substance. Super-slick fight sequences are an important asset to these shows, but they should not be a substitute for an actual narrative: the effect is really like you're watching the cut-scenes from a videogame spliced together.

Behind the Scenes: a montage of people working at computers. No commentary, no information, no insight, no interviews, nothing.

Japanese Voice-Actors Interviews: Japanese girls are hot. Otherwise, this is a totally pointless waste of time.

Conceptual Animation: A pretty cool look at how 3D images get formed.