The anime's story takes place in Japari Park, a "gigantic
integrated zoo." In the zoo, due to the mysterious "sand
star" substance, the animals start turning into human-shaped
creatures called Animal Girls. Japari Park is a place where
many people visit and have fun at, but one day a lost child
wanders into the park. The lost child starts a journey to
return, but because so many Animal Girls join in on the
quest it becomes an unexpected grand adventure.
(Source: Anime News Network)
___Kemono Friends is an anime I never really thought I would
enjoy and watch fully from the first episode to the last,
but after seeing all of the episodes, I’m glad I did. It’s
now one of my favorite anime for many reasons._ __
____- Story: 10/10____ The story is surprisingly good. There
is a girl that wakes up in a Savannah and doesn’t recall
anything. She meets a Serval named Serval (naming scheme
throughout anime). Serval calls the girl Kaban (Japanese for
Bag) because of the bag she brought. She finds out that she
is in Japari Park, and island filled with animals. Serval
wants to help Kaban find out what type of animal she is by
going to the library. Along the way, they meet many other
anthropomorphic animals that help solve the mystery. This
story is very good. It’s easy to digest and simple. It makes
the anime a lot better than other anime. One small personal
criticism however is their decision to use the name Kaban.
It was a weird choice to name a character after a bag, but
it’s not like other anime names are well thought out either.
Ceruleans are very good antagonists because they always try
to create trouble to the characters in interesting ways.
They also present the audience with the question of, “What
are they and how are they created?” throughout the story.
__- Visuals: 6/10__ This part of the anime is not good. They
used CGI-type animation for this anime but because of the
lack of a big budget, it wasn’t very good. They use 2D
backgrounds on 3D animation, which looks a bit weird but you
can get used to it after a while. The 2D backgrounds do look
very good though. The first episode is where it really falls
short, especially during the first few minutes of it.
img220(https://media.giphy.com/media/9rcjqh586oTfUqNiiJ/giphy.gif)
The first episode of any anime is what the audience uses to
judge the anime, similar to a cover of a book, and if they
don’t enjoy the first episode, they won’t watch it anymore,
which is what happened. It does get better throughout the
next few episodes because of the attention it received after
episode 4. Some advice is that you shouldn’t judge an anime
by your early impressions of it. It won’t open you up to an
anime that you might actually love in the end. __- Audio:
8/10__ The audio is decent. The character’s voices are
leveled and are easy to hear and comprehend. However, the
educational parts of the anime (explained later in this
review) don’t have the best audio. Some of them are actually
recorded professionally (for example the Serval part in
episode 1 and some of them are recorded from a phone call or
in an area with some noise. You might find an issue with it
in the anime music albums, but it isn’t an issue here.
Lip-syncing is also less than decent as it doesn’t fit
together with the voices. Thankfully it isn’t extremely out
of order, but it looks very weird in the end. Going back to
the voices, the voice actors portray the characters very
well. Whenever they are supposed to be in shock or in
sadness, they do it very well, making the anime seem very
real. A criticism I have is with the background music.
Whenever something dramatic happens, they play this song
(Cerulean) and play it until the drop comes. It stops and
something big happens to replace the drop of the song. I
personally don’t like it as they do it every time. There is
a lot of background music I love, but to cut it short my
favorite one is Kawaii Nihiki since it has a good beat and
sounds cute. __- Characters: 10/10__ In each episode, they
introduce at least one new character, and explain them in
the educational segments. Whenever there is a new character
announced, the audience learns something about them. It’s
unique and a cool addition to the anime. These character’s
purpose is to help Kaban figure out what type of animal she
is and to progress the story. These characters are all
different types of animals. They are what makes Japari Park
just that. They act like what an animal would, unaware of
what many of the things there are in the park. They each
have a different personality and it really makes the anime
better. Kaban is a smart character in the anime. She usually
solves situations, which helps them figure out what animal
she is. Serval is a clumsy character that helps Kaban. Lucky
Beast is another major character that adds a lot to the
anime. __- Enjoyment: 10/10__ This anime is on my top 5 best
anime list. Why? This anime does a lot of things well, like
the story and character. The things it doesn’t do well
honestly makes it more memorable. What adds on to the
anime’s greatness is the Reddit (aka the fan-base) and the
album music. Kemono Friends has a very good fan-base on
places like Reddit. It makes it better because they do a lot
of things related to the anime like art. The albums the
anime has (Japari Cafe, OST, etc) sound very good and add
more content to the anime. However, like I explained in the
Sound section of this review, the audio is not oftenly good
(i.e. moved away from the mic too much). It’s doesn’t affect
the experience though.
__TL;DR__ Kemono Friends is an anime that gets a lot right
and does the best it can with what it has. It’s story is in
some ways unique and makes the anime great. The
art/animation is cheap, seen from the first episode, but it
does get better over time. The voice acting in the anime is
good, but in other audio aspects its lacking. The characters
in the anime are great as well because of how different they
all are. In the end, If you like anime with some great
story, mystery, and animals, this might be in your lane. You
won’t be disappointed. My Overall Review: 8.8/10 - Thanks
for reading my review! Here's your reward:
youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1noDWHHirI)
Despite the subpar animation, this is definitely one of the most interesting anime I've seen. I would be spoiling if I talked about what the story actually is since it isn't apparent from the beginning, but the whole way it plays out is very well written. It's hard to tell what direction it's going in based on the first episode. The story is clearly the most important part of the series. It's one of those kinds of anime where "as long as you can put up with the animation you'll be able to enjoy a great story". It's a genre that you see a lot of in American film and television and not much in anime, which is part of what makes it so great. It also adds a great bit of spice to the genre that I haven't seen before. It also tries to be cute, which may turn some people off but also lulls you into a false sense of security, which really works for its whole concept. Once you realize what where it's going it's interesting to see the story unravel and you'll be glad it didn't look dark at the beginning. The art really gives that "poor quality computer graphics animation" feel. It's like it was animated in the early 2000s. For a typical anime this might seem like a deal breaker or might make you think about dropping your score a few points as studios who can't even afford decent animation generally don't have a good writing team either, but I don't think this is the case here. In fact, although at first the animation may strike you as being awfully produced, after some time you might not mind it or may even begin to like it. When all of the animation looks bad it also has the benefit of minor animation errors not looking out of place, which I consider to be a good thing. If you're watching for enjoyment it can be better for animation to be uniformly awful than to be mostly good with random spikes of bad animation. Nonetheless, although the animation itself looks eccentric, the characters are all well designed and are fairly representative of the animals they're meant to be, with a few exceptions. The machinery, the park, and the antagonists are also well designed. Even if it isn't a world you would want to live in if you could it's still an interesting place and enough attractions to keep you engaged for its 12 episodes. Some adventure anime have repetetive set designs, so it's a good thing they did their best to keep the world fresh so there was always more to look forward to. In addition to all looking cute and different, the characters' personalities were all different and well written. Even if with the handful of characters introduced every episode you don't find yourself a new favourite character I doubt any of them will disappoint you. Each of them is based on a different animal species and they have characteristics of that species along with their own characteristics. There are many different species of cat and penguin which all look and act distinct. They act exactly how you expect an animal human hybrid to act in real life, which is rare for anime. In most anime kemonomimi just do some gestures and add a word related to their animal at the end of their sentences, but in Kemono Friends all of the characters actually feel like they're meant to be the animal they're meant to be, but this doesn't mean they don't have any personality outside of their "spirit animal". Most of what we're shown to know what animal they are is their clothing, which isn't the best way as the giraffe character is actually below average height, but it works to introduce them and tell them apart easily and isn't hard to get used to. All of the characters, even the robot who might not want to have a personality, are easy to get attached to even though most of them have minimal screen time. Along with the theme, the characters’ voices are also meant to reflect the anime they are, which I think is well done. The alpaca character sounds very soft and cute, just like real alpaca are. The opening theme song sounds beautiful yet simplistic, which perfectly represents what the show is. It gives the sense that the show is just a childish cartoon, which is a perfect light to show it in. The ending theme is fairly boring, but no anime can be perfect. The background music is surprisingly well done. There’s dubstep during some of the fights against the cerubelum, which makes them feel a bit more epic and is just a good song in general. You don’t hear much dubstep in anime, so I appreciate hearing it here. Even if it was just what the sound guy happened to be able to mix up I think it adds a nice touch to the series. Some of the other background tunes are also stick out rather than just being there to fill in the silence. This received some very mixed reviews when it was airing, but when watching it after it aired and hearing it was a masterpiece I did enjoy it a lot. I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed it any less if I had watched it more slowly, but as one whole story it is a very enjoyable anime. I know some people get a lot of their enjoyment from how an anime is animated and although this does have cute girls and fights they aren’t animated as well as most anime are, but this doesn’t actually matter that much to me. After all, most cuteness comes from personality and most of the impact from a fight comes from how the characters react to it so I feel the need to put much weight on the animation itself. Being one of the best stories I’ve seen in any anime I can’t help but enjoy it. Unlike other short anime with large casts like The iDOLM@STER that gives each main cast member an episode to themselves and them leaves in the background for the rest of it and Girlfriend (Kari) that has an even larger cast and doesn’t bother expending the energy to develop any of them, Kemono Friends works like a cast building anime such as Love Live or Nanatsu no Taizai, but characters don’t stick around any longer than they need to. In a way you could call this style an “introductory anime”, although some of the characters they meet along the way do show up later or are at least talked about. There are also some multiple episode arcs, which are interesting. The whole way the anime is set up makes the show very enjoyable for me. At no point did I find myself bored, which is something not too many anime are able to pull off. Overall the entire experience was very postive for me. Although on the surface it might not seem like it would be anything special or might even appear to be below average, but the longer you watch for the more you get attached to the characters and the world the live in. It’s a very unique anime and should not be looked down on just because of the CGI. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes cute anime, adventure anime, or anime about animal girls. It has an odd combination of elements and like Gakkougurashi it does a really good job at combining them and makes it feel very natural.
____This review contains spoilers, please don't eat the
spoilers, because it won't eat you.____ If there was an
anime that was low budget but it's good, It'll go to Kemono
Friends. The story about a girl who meets up with a serval
cat friend from the Japari Park. With many animal girls
helping them throughout the journey. # ____THE STORY:
10/10____ Like I said, it's a journey with many animal
friends. Each episode has new animal friends that Serval and
Kaban must help out together, whenever it's having to
rebuild the Japari Bus or helping the PPP for their next
concert. There's also a side story about the adventures of
Racoon and Fennec trying to catch up to our heroes too.
Every episode has variety in it depending on where the
protagonists go, from the desert to the snowy mountains,
there is a lot of helping to do before the next destination.
