Kizuna 1 & 2

A Parent's Guide to Anime
Rated: M

Recommended for Mature Audiences

Reviewed by Chris Cleveland:

Anybody who has ever read Satoshi Urushihara's manga series "Legend of Lemnear" and then watched the anime universally agrees that too much plot compression can be a bad thing. I will strongly say that the same thing goes with the anime of Kodaka Kazuma's masterpiece, "Kizuna".

How much of the story can they try to fit in two half-hour episodes? So much, in fact, that it borders on the incoherent, at parts. Major plot points and character developments were hacked away in the transition from a long-running manga series to a two episode OVA..... Thus turning an intriguing love story into something very shallow and uninteresting.

Take note that despite all of the controversy surrounding the subject matter of this anime, it is, in all actuality, rather tame. It looks as if all of the adult material in the manga (and there was a fair amount of it in there, too) seems to have been toned down to a "PG-13" for the anime.

Well, I wouldn't necesarilly call this an "adults only" anime..... Although I will say that some of the subject matter may offend those who are not open-minded.

Parent's Guide Rating:

red (recommended for mature audiences)

Sex/Nudity: There's a shower scene and a very short and tastefully handled love scene in the first episode..... And there is also a scene where a professer tries to take advantage of one of his students by taking him to a gay club and drugging his drink, with no success (also in the first episode)..... Nothing truly explicit, although a fair amount of it does classify as homoerotica. Take note that although the anime is rather tame in this factor, the manga definitely is not.

Violence: There is a small amount at the end of the first episode, including a small, surprising shot of blood..... Nil in the second episode.