Quote:
Originally Posted by Triple_R
Well, that's kind of my point. These gimmicks, or ideas, or whatever you want to call them, aren't what the show is really all about. They have basically two purposes:
1. Spice up the show, and differentiate it from other shows of this type that are just straight-up character dramas.
2. Provide vehicles for character development and character drama.
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See, I think the gimmicks failed in both of these aspects. They failed to spice up and differentiate both the show and characters because of their weak and superficial link to the drama. As I said, they felt more like excuses to show a character and force drama out of them, rather than affect them as an important part of the story (and its very premise after all).
I see it as a problem when you have the potential to be something more and you constantly ignore that. We expect from each story to deliver what it promises to deliver. KC would start an arc great and promising, but always end badly and simplistically. Personally I can't see that as anything but a severe flaw in writing. Well, you do have a point, the signs were there the moment Taichi was given an unnecessary MC role that this show wouldn't do anything really out of the ordinary. I don't think that lets if off the hook though.
Now, KC isn't a bad show by any means, I did look forward to each episode, heck, I even drew a piece of fan-art for it. But it constantly keeps shooting itself in the foot. One of its favorite ways of doing that is by having fake crises. The badly timed Iori's "death" was a prime example of this. We all knew she wasn't going to die, so the whole situation lacked the kind of emotional impact it would otherwise have. However, if she did die, it would've sent a huge chunk of the story in a completely different and irrelevant direction that would just be tiring to watch. It was a no-win situation the story dragged itself into. Heartseed's offer was another example. We knew Iori wouldn't take that offer and we knew why even without her telling us. Iori only had one episode to get from "I want to re-live my life" to accepting herself as it is. As usual, I did like the theme and find it very relatable (I'd take a chance to do my life over in a heartbeat) but its execution was too rushed for me to truly care beyond personal association.
And as we've all mentioned already, the way the conflicts got resolved was almost comically mundane and always came as a stark contrast to the potential felt in the first episodes. The whole issue with an abusive father? Solved with a minute-long conversation and by a character that barely even appeared before the latter half of this episode. To make a finale so ridiculously simple and anti-climatic, that's just bad writing. It seems like the writer messed up the order of the story and put all the significant themes and excitement in the first episodes and then lost the ideas and wrote an excuse to finish the arc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by maximilianjenus
I agree on what seems to be the common view, this show is like a swimmer who is winning most of the race the forget to swim back when the rest of the swimmers do and ends up not even finishing the race.
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This is the best analogy for this show I've seen.