10 Second Anime - Kiznaiver - Episode 3

The Kiznaivers chase and meet their 7th member.

Episode 3 - "Depending on how you look at it, I think we could get through anything... right?"

Heh.

Aw, Maki wimped out on telling us the story of the girl she, at the very least, feels responsible for her death. But that was consistent with her toxic personality we've seen so far.

Noriko said the Kiznaivers' main mission was to survive Summer vacation. But doing what and where? I haven't seen any semblance of superpowers yet, but there is a lot of information exchange happening between the implanted wounds.

I noticed the loud speakers were playing Auld Lang Syne as the kids left the hospital. Say goodbye to the old year and hello to the new one, right?

Tenga - Dense Skull, Big Heart

Every bullied kid needs a friend like Tenga. That's how he met Katsuhira in the first episode. He went after the bullies' money they took from Katsuhira and he made a huge point with Katsuhira about safeguarding his smartphone.

The Muscle-Headed Thug is a character usually paired up with a bullied kid who somehow befriends him through kindness and courage. Here, that step is short circuited with a contrived sci-fi scenario, but Tenga still took it seriously. He can't let Katsuhira get hurt anymore because it would hurt him too. That gets to the heart of the bonds-equals-wounds theme Kiznaiver focuses on.

Tenga's fall also served to illustrate some nuances on the kizna system. Only the initial pain is shared, not his soreness from the subsequent injury.

Tenga is becoming my favorite character in the show, but he has some stiff competition.

Nico's Creative Eccentricity

We learned last episode that Nico's weirdness is a calculated contrivance to forge an identity separate from the expected personality of a gifted girl from a successful family.

Yuta is never going to live that fat kid image down, especially since the same poster hangs in Nico's family's hospital. This was a smart funny way to letting the audience know Nico's background and possibly where her mental gifts will lie.

But let's not forget she is a clever girl.

She's the one who came up with the idea of exploiting the Kiznaiver system in making the missing member flinch. What I didn't see was the kizna system activate all the time with the little damage report. The pain is still shared, but what triggers the notification?

However, that clever rich girl is her most embarrassing secret. She wants to be praised for her weird accessories and odd behavior. Of course it was Tenga who said he was complimenting her for being smart. Seriously, Tenga is a weird kid's best friend.

The other characters' circumstances fit their images very well Even Tenga appreciated how a Goody-Two-Shoes is a childhood friend who still lives next door to the main character type.

Obviously, the main character type has to be the Imbecile. We've seen this so many times before where the narrative guide has to ask a lot of questions, somehow has amnesia, or comes back to his old home after a long absence and then has to ask questions. It's interesting how this show has taken the usual anime-manga character archetypes and given them a veneer of editorial disapproval.

Trigger has chosen to train its subversive eye on the character roles you see in any successful Japanese mass media venture and show how contrived and superficial their relationships really are. But here, the contrivance is that all the "usual suspects" are in the same homeroom class have to be real with each other.

This leads us to including the Villain!

Yoshiharu the Immoral

The always absent student who appears to be a shut-in but spends his days getting off on his self-inflicted masochism is Yoshiharu Hisomu. His 7th Deadly Sin, or Toxic Personality Type, is the Immoral.

I don't know how smart it was to include a guy who gets off on pain into a group that literally shares their pain.

About the only thing I could tell about his brand of masochism is that he really doesn't like inflicting pain on others. The scene where he looked like he was going to throw Katsuhira off the pedestrian walkway showed me that he was tempted by the pain he would enjoy from someone else getting hurt, which was a new sensation for him. That's where his Immoral nature influences his actions in a novel situation.

Tenga put it best: "Your body doesn't belong to just you anymore!" Um, wait. "Your body belongs to us now!" Uh... Actually, that's a pretty good way to illustrate this ridiculously contrived team. They were all kidnapped and forcibly made to share each others' pain. Isn't that what any author does to make "nakama" care for each other?

True to form, our hero type Katsuhira has to bear the most pain, which rocks the socks off of the villain type.

Yeah. Yoshiharu just spurted his enjoyment all over the screen with digital confetti.

So, our nakama band has been brought together, which usually takes several years and a time skip in other stories, apparently for some kind of experiment. The goal is to achieve, this time Noriko says, a true connection.

Lots to unpack in those few words. What are the kids supposed to do during the Summer Break? What happened during a previous attempt which obviously bound Noriko and Katsuhira in some forgotten relationship and why did it fail? And what's up with those weird looking robots or mascots doing all the menial labor? I figure the real story begins next episode. I hope it doesn't devolve into some over-the-top group therapy session, but you never know.