Kizuna

Ratings (outta 5) Overall Rating: 3 So-so storyline. You can only do so much with an hour movie based on a 4+ volume manga Yaoi content: 3 Nice tasteful bed scenes... at least after Enjoji manages to drag Ranmaru kicking and screaming into the sack with him

Lemme just say that I was not terribly impressed with the 2 Kizuna animated OVA's. It wasn't the worse anime I've seen but it was nowhere nearly as good as it could have been. If you were considering purchasing the Kizuna videos, I'd say it's not worth the $60 you'd have to pay to get them. I liked the manga a whole lot more and I can't even read Japanese! Of course this is also the first commercially released yaoi anime in America, so if you want to support the company that released it, I'm not about to stop you.

The storyline is incredibly choppy with no central theme and no real purpose. In the span of an hour, we follow Ranmaru, Enjoji, and Kai through a couple days of their lives. The story was done almost in a vignette style with the barest amount of transition between stories. It was fun to watch but I finished the second tape and was left wondering, "Now why did I just watch that?"

For those who don't know, Ranmaru and Enjoji are college students who have been lovers for years. Kai is the son of a Yakuza boss and Enjoji's half brother (same father). Masa, who I haven't mentioned yet is the Yakuza junior boss and Kei's bodyguard. Actually their relationship is a little more complex than that but the anime doesn't get into it at all.

The redeeming points are that Ranmaru is as cute as he is in the manga and Kai manages to look somewhat of legal age in some scenes. I didn't like the way Enjoji was done. He came across as nothing more than a lecherous goofball. Enjoji and Ranmaru still make a cute couple though. There are a couple sex scenes which consist mostly of Enjoji's "Ran-chaaaan" and Ranmaru's "Go away Enjoji!" If you're looking for something on the level of Ai no Kusabi's sex scenes, you aren't gonna find it here.

The first OVA covers Ranmaru's car accident and his professor's attempt to seduce him by drugging him. I think that prof slipped him an aphrodasiac but Kai came to the rescue. What was Kai doing in a male escort bar? I didn't know the son of a Yakuza boss would be allowed to sell himself in some club. Of course I think Enjoji does the same thing at a different club. The anime missed out on a lot of details and I'm obviously confused about some things.

Kai tried to kill Enjoji (outta jealousy because he loves and idolizes Ranmaru), and ended up getting his butt kicked by Enjoji. Then there was this totally random scene of Kai in his home looking for Masa because he took a gun apart and can't figure out how to put it back together. Talk about airhead. After hearing that Masa had gone to Tokyo, he took off on his bike. He showed up at the apartment where Enjoji and Ranmaru live and announced that he's moving in with them. Was that random or what?

The second OVA has a 10-minute long scene of Masa on a plane, Masa in the airport, Masa traveling to the hotel, Masa standing in a hotel lobby... you get the picture. Then there's another 10-minute useless scene of Enjoji and Kai following Ranmaru who's going to meet a woman. Kai's convinced he's going to meet some old girlfriend. Turns out the woman was Ranmaru's sister... surprise, surprise. Couple flashbacks of Masa and Kai, all very very proper, nothing yaoi about it at all. And then back to the present with Kei wandering the streets of Tokyo and running into Masa. The two decide to go home together and ta-da, that's the end!

Yup, you got it! That's all there was to it. If you were hoping for some indication of the relationship between Kei and Masa, nada. If you were looking for some nice plot development, you lucked out. A nice attempt at a short animation but it left a lot to be desired. I guess it's a good choice for the first yaoi anime to be released officially in America but I'm not about to run out and watch it again. I think I'll go look for the manga instead...