Summary:

A young lord known as Minamoto Kurou runs into the distance as an army of soldiers clad in red chase him deep into the forest. Just as he is on the verge of being beheaded by his opposition, Benkei arrives to rescue him. Once the warrior is easily defeated, his soul disperses into the air in a blue luminous spark. The surviving pair look further into the darkness, taking notice of a stationary campfire. After identifying the pursuers as not of the Kamakura family, both of them make haste towards the torch in the night. Upon arriving, a beautiful, mysterious woman appears and introduces herself as Kuromitsu, owner of this building. She allows them to remain the night and for as long as they want in exchange for a promise to never look into the last room down the hall. Kurou collapses onto his knees as Benkei learns his companion has a high fever.

The next morning, Benkei returns to the village in order to purchase medicine for his ill friend while Kuromitsu takes care of Kurou. Kurou explains that as soon as Benkei returns, he will depart at once but Kuromitsu coerces him to stay here with her. She plants a delicate kiss on him and the couple are later seen admiring the ancient trees in the forest. Consumed by madness and temptation, Kurou leans in and kisses Kuromitsu. He’s about to go further until he realizes his mistake and stops himself. After apologizing, Kuromitsu explains that though they both desire each other, fate has made it certain that the two of them can never be together. Elsewhere, Benkei journeys through the forest and comes across a field of blossoming red flowers. His expression changes into fear, as if the red fauna hold of some significance.

At home again, Kurou wakes up and senses a dangerous presence. He gets up and glances into the room which Kuromitsu had forbidden him to look into and watches her as she sucks the blood out of a naked man. Kuromitsu notices Kurou is staring and tries to explain herself when all of a sudden her hand comes off. An assassin standing behind her had cut her arm off completely. When Kuromitsu is about to be stabbed to death, Kurou immediately unsheathes his sword and fights the intruders head-on. Kurou and Kuromitsu manage to escape into the forest when he begs her to leave him here and run away to safety. Kuromitsu then invites him to be with her until the end of the time and the episode ends with Benkei siding with Kurou’s enemies.

Thoughts:

Hynavian knows better than anyone else in the aniblogosphere that I detest the vampire folklore simply because I know too much of it already, but since bateszi recommended KUROZUKA, I thought I should at least give it a try. After all, I sort of liked the last series he recommended. I downloaded the first episode of KUROZUKA when the subbed version was first released, but never bothered watching it until about an hour ago when I had nothing better to do. I would have liked to have seen this sooner because it was really impressive, and now I’m staying up late typing this up lest I forget this excitement by tomorrow. I mean, this certain and extremely mysterious vampire can withstand sunlight.

This episode was definitely enjoyable, especially near the beginning and towards the end when people’s limbs were being sliced off with such ease by the main character, Kurou, that I couldn’t help squealing in delight. A few parts were confusing, such as the very beginning when a man/priest/monk was chanting or praying, and another bemusing part was when Benkei cringed at the sight of the red flowers. What I also like about KUROZUKA so far is that the characters use Old Language: they communicated to each other with such formality that I was instantly reminded of the good ol’ days when The Lord of the Rings was “big”. The action scenes were brilliantly choreographed, and this episode moved at a nice and even tempo. The second episode is already subbed by SHS-YuS, so I guess I’ll check that out soon!