Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re returning to Masaaki Yuasa’s bold full series debut, as we explore a fresh episode of the dazzling Kemonozume. Maintaining the fluidity of form and sharpness of concept that defines much of his early work, Kemonozume has offered an alternately whimsical and brutal tale of star-crossed lovers, as reluctant hunter Toshihiko and repentant Flesh-Eater Yuka seek a place where their love can bloom.
Each episode so far has offered a vivid procession of angular, evocative compositions, realizing the hopes and fears of our heroes through the ecstatic beauty and shadowy contours of their living world. Upon that grand stage he has laid a narrative rich in implications regarding gender, identity, and familial obligation, complimented by an evocative mythology that turns the eternal journey towards mutual understanding into a life-or-death source of prejudice and paranoia. This world is a powder keg set to blow, and I’m eager to bask in the beauty of its funeral pyre. Let’s get to it!
Episode 4
We open on lush compositions contrasting blooming cherry trees against a blue night sky, the pink petals cast as almost luminescent under the glow of a crescent moon. The occasional drifting petal does not disrupt the stillness; the scene appears charged with repressed energy, poised to strike
Beneath this bright sky, a woman who looks just like Yuka stands across from an older man in priestly garb, who addresses her as “Harumi”
God, Yuasa’s OPs are always so good. Like Shinichiro Watanabe or Sayo Yamamoto, his passion for music informs every aspect of his work, including the crucial task of choosing a song and visual OP concept that best embodies the intended tone of any particular work. And while I imagine this approach makes it a touch harder to fund his works (as they’re not benefitting from the investment of a record label throwing whatever they want to promote in front of his shows), the actual animation of these sequences tends to be quite economical – most of his OPs rely on simplified, repeated imagery, whether it’s the grasping hands of Kaiba or the revolving character art of The Tatami Galaxy
The importance of an OP for setting the tone of an episode is so monumental that it’s frankly bewildering to me how often shows treat it as an afterthought. In terms of relative creative effort, I’m not sure any other single aspect of a show’s production results in such an outsized effect on the audience’s emotional experience
We drop in post-OP at a Kifuuken dojo, bathed in sepia light that seems to imply an idyllic calm, like we are in fond memories of the past
A sixteen-year-old prodigy challenges “Cleaver” Momota Jyuuzou, another bright young warrior
The challenger is Kakinoki Jin, a man defined by his heavy, curved brow. Yuasa’s character designs always tell a story, an animation fundamental presumably inherited from his early work on children’s animation
These two and our apparent narrator became known as the “Kifuuken Triumvirate”
“Trials of the Past.” Alright, there’s our confirmation that this is a flashback of some kind
Elsewhere, Harumi is being pursued by a group of leering men. The threat of attack and bodily invasion is not limited to the Flesh-Eaters – humans can be bloodthirsty flesh eaters themselves, as underlined in the show’s first scene, where traditional misogyny and rape culture assumptions only slowly reveal themselves to have a supplementary cannibalistic tenor
Wonderful fluidity of form as these goons are dispatched by Jyuuzou. These characters embody the spirit of their motions, not the mechanical letter
Hah, neat effect as a couple of those pink cherry petals float across this otherwise wholly yellow composition. When your color design is this stark, you can create a precise cinematic language of color, with specific chromatic intrusions inherently conveying emotions or textual connections. Ikuhara loves to employ tricks like that
Her full name is Kamitsuki Harumi
With no apparent place to call home, she joins the dojo as a live-in worker
“The Kifuuken dojo had become suffocatingly masculine after the director’s wife passed several years ago.” The implication of an inherently “masculine” or “feminine” energy contrasts starkly against the human/Flesh Eater divide, particularly since Toshihiko is defined far more by his sensitivity than his designation as a “masculine warrior.” Through this contrast, the show inherently challenges the idea that we are defined by our gender
The question of our “fundamental” nature versus the masks we wear is pursued further through Jyuuzou’s desire to buy makeup for Harumi. Makeup is technically a “mask” we employ to evoke femininity, but does that make it less authentic, or moreso, because it is a mask we choose? Depending on the biases of the viewer, makeup could be considered either proof of femininity or a trick intended to evoke it – in fact, many misogynists find it easy to hold these two contradictory perspectives at the same time
Late at night, Jin reveals a touch of his anxieties regarding his single-minded pursuit of combat excellence. He isn’t just strong because he purposefully chose such a road; he pursues strength because it is his only talent
After the men return from a bloody battle with their first Flesh Eater, Harumi’s own Flesh Eater instincts are ignited by the sight of an errant claw. However, Jyuuzou shields her incriminating eyes from view and leads her from the scene
“I didn’t want to become a monster, so I ran away from the others…” Are we incapable of escaping our assigned natures? Or are we only truly alive in the moments we defy them?
The Kifuuken Triumvirate choose to believe in the hope of a Flesh Eater living as a human. In this cruel world, choosing hope is often the only thing we can control
The director then announces that the next leader of the Kifuuken will be chosen from among the three of them via an exhibition match
Jin states he wishes to learn the Kemonozume, to which the director replies that it is a “cursed skill that allows one to absorb the life force of a Flesh Eater.” A true union of the two natures – a form of violence that is actually adjacent to intercourse
The technique involves severing the precious arms of a Flesh Eater and taking them as your own
“Once attached, they will bond with the host.” Implying humans and Flesh Eaters have always been compatible life forms, two sides of the same coin
As you’d expect, the wielder must vie with the consciousness of the Kemonozume to claim it rather than become a monster. In this melding of natures, either can prove dominant
Apparently none have succeeded in mastering the Kemonozume arms. But of course, prior attempts would have been between bitter enemies – what if such a union was attempted willingly, between lovers?
Torches roar and flags flutter in the breeze as we reach the day of the exhibition match. Each flag is marked with its own insignia, presumably speaking of all the Kifuuken branches that have gathered here
Interesting how Jin and Jyuuzou each wear animal skulls for this ceremony, as if they are embracing their underlying bestial nature. Combat draws us closer to the nature of the Flesh-Eaters – once again, violence and sexual intimacy treated as parallel unions
Jin wins, but is infuriated by Jyuuzou seemingly throwing the match. A betrayal of their own intimate bond
Jyuuzou reveals that Harumi is bearing his child, and thus he cannot serve as the leader of the Kifuuken
“You threw away your sword for a woman!? Is the way of the sword worth so little to you?” A critique that frames romance and swordsmanship as two incompatible paths. Though we opened this series with male Flesh-Eaters discussing how they’d consume women, the journey since has consistently framed them as a feminine “Other,” a force that must either be loved or destroyed. Kifuuken members seclude themselves in an almost homoerotic male brotherhood, an intimacy of violence that echoes any number of prior martial orders. Whether attacked or desired, the female Flesh-Eater presents a threat to the sanctity of this order, robbing men of the phallic “sword” in deference to the love of a woman. An exceedingly charged and multilayered metaphor, one that plays on classic patriarchal societies’ fears of “feminine corruption”
While Jin plays with his sword alone, Jyuuzou sends for the child he bore with his previous wife, making a new family with Harumi
Jin eventually marries Akemi, the daughter of the old director, and has a daughter named Rie. However, he remains a cold man, brushing off his daughter in favor of continuing to study the blade
Meanwhile, Kyuutarou settles into desk work as a leader of their new information bureau. Harumi bears a son, while Jyuuzou’s prior son and Rie grow close
When Jin hears of a village populated by Flesh-Eaters, he leaps at the chance to attempt the Kemonozume. A desire clearly borne in part due to his inability to form human attachments in this world
“He said he would gain the power of Kemonozume and surpass you!” Jyuuzou’s refusal to truly fight him left him without purpose or fulfillment. Jyuuzou was his ideal, and without that shadow to chase, he ended up destroying himself. The rancid fruit borne of a life dedicated to combat rather than connection
Thus Jyuuzou is forced to ask Harumi for her arms – a willing union, an act of love
And so Jin gets the fight he always wanted, having sacrificed everything in his pursuit of a rival who dared to seek ordinary, familial happiness
Appropriately, the musical accompaniment is not operatic or triumphant, but wistful and nostalgic
Jyuuzou and his children survive, but Harumi is lost in the destruction of the dojo. Thus we return to the present, with an elderly Jyuuzou seeing a vision of Harumi on the forest’s edge, only to be killed by Yuka as the cherry blossoms softly fall
And Done
Whew, what an episode! Pulling back from the immediate concerns of Yuka and Toshihiko allowed us to really dig into the metaphors at the heart of this show, from its frequent equating of violence and romance to its troubled reflections on how our gendering of various behaviors results in misunderstanding and ultimate calamity. The Kifuuken seem to exist as wardens against true coexistence, framing Flesh-Eaters as an unknowable Other that must remain unknown, lest they threaten the sanctity of a martial prowess-based and inherently masculine society. And of course, the violent power of the Flesh-Eaters adds an undertone of desperation to their enemies’ quest, as if they are protesting that men must maintain a monopoly on power through violence, or the insatiable urges of the flesh. It’s a rich stew of variables with no clear moral takeaway, which is ultimately the great strength of thematically driven art: challenging the higher questions of coexistence in the context of imperfect individual lives, thus revealing that no single philosophy can account for the complexity of human experience. Kemonozume continues to impress!
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