***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Killing Bites. Reader discretion is advised.***
Series Synopsis
Yuya Nomoto (voiced by Wataru Hatano) ends up as an unwitting accomplice during the abduction of a seemingly defenseless high school girl. Out of fear and panic, Yuya tries to think of something to stop the horrific act he has found himself in. But before he can do anything, the kidnapped high school girl effortlessly, and brutally, slaughters the rest of her captors.
If Yuya thought he was in a dangerous spot before, it’s much worse now.
The girl, named Hitomi Uzaki (voiced by Sora Amamiya), tells Yuya that she is a Brute: a person capable of tapping into the fighting prowess of a beast. Hitomi and other Brutes test their strength in vicious battles known as Killing Bites.
Hitomi is a newcomer to the Killing Bites scene and needs a sponsor to take part in an upcoming tournament. And since he happens to be there, Hitomi forces Yuya to take on the role.
The terrified Yuya has just plunged into a world of blood and cruelty as the world’s strongest warriors face off to see who is the best.
Series Positives
When I first heard of Killing Bites, my first thought was: Juuni Taisen.
Does anybody remember that show?
As a refresher: Junni Taisen was an action anime that pitted twelve warriors – one for each animal of the Chinese Zodiac – in a battle royale deathmatch. It also wasn’t very good.
Killing Bites was an action anime which pitted twelve warriors – each possessing the traits of a specific animal – in a team-based battle royale deathmatch. This show, also, wasn’t very good. However, this series was more entertaining than Juuni Taisen.
That, and Killing Bites was a lot, and I mean a lot more fanservice-y.
Long story short, I pretty much got what I expected out of this show.
If you are looking for an anime that will allow you to shut your brain off for a few hours, trust me, you can do much better than Killing Bites. Nevertheless, Killing Bites will get the job done – for the most part.
You need to ask yourself: “How much nonsense am I willing to stomach?” Whatever that answer is, this series may just push your limits. The thing about Killing Bites was, this show was only mindless when it was at its best. At any other point – which was more often than not – this series was a rather rough sit.
That said, Killing Bites wasn’t maddening. Don’t get me wrong, some things happened that pissed me off – we’ll get to those. Overall though, there wasn’t enough here to make this a rage-filled review. Granted, this show was a bit of a waste of time. It’s never great when there are huge chunks of a story that I’m justified in skipping because they are utterly pointless.
So in the end, much like Juuni Taisei, Killing Bites appears destined to fade into the ether.
However, should this series get an unlikely sequel – a sequel the final episode definitely hinted at – I wouldn’t dread it. I can see some fun coming out of a continuation, but only if said continuation really doubles down on what allowed Killing Bites to be somewhat endurable.
For starters, this series embraced its premise. The fighters of Killing Bites, or as they were known in the show, Brutes, were indeed the humanized versions of their respective animals. There was never any doubt what someone was meant to be.
Killing Bites put in a ton of effort establishing the beastly nature of the Brutes – to a fault. This series was incredibly heavy-handed in trying to make everyone sound like a badass; so much so, I honestly can’t decide if this show was trying to be serious or if it was trying to be cheeky. The thing I can say: regardless, of intent, Killing Bites went a tad over-the-top, and not always in a good way.
That notwithstanding, it's not every day an action story’s main character is a honey badger hybrid. I’m not going to lie, I think this was an excellent thing to do. I have my issues with Hitomi Uzaki, the lead of Killing Bites, but something this show nailed was her ability to live up to the beast inside of her. If you do some research on the honey badger, you will find that they are ferocious little bastards capable of chasing off much larger animals – like lions.
That ferocity in battle came out whenever Hitomi was fighting.
I’m no zoologist, so I’m not going to sit here and determine if Killing Bites was accurate in how it described each Brute’s animalistic characteristics. In the context of what this show was doing, I had no problem accepting whatever it was saying. As far as I’m concerned, whenever a tiger, crocodile, hippo, or honey badger was fighting in this series, it felt like it was a tiger, crocodile, hippo, or honey badger fighting.
And since we are on the topic, the fights in this show were the best parts of Killing Bites.
I am not going to pretend I liked most of the characters in this show. In fact, I pretty much hated them all, and thus, it was hard to get invested in one specific character’s struggle against another.
This series powered through this by at least making all the fights loud, flashy, and huge spectacles.
Not only that, the fights of Killing Bites were decently frequent.
Were these moments the greatest things ever? No, not by a long shot. The action scenes in Killing Bites were nothing more than mental junk food. They were a temporary holdover until this series got to something better. Unfortunately, there was nothing better; this was as good as this show got.
Then again, I didn’t go into Killing Bites expecting to be wowed. I was even more confident of that after watching the first episode.
However, there was one thing this series did that, I’ve got to say, was pretty cool. Not to give it away -- despite my opinion that most people should never bother with this show -- there was a move Hitomi pulled off in her fight with a Brute named Takeshi Kido (voiced by Ryokan Koyanagi) that was downright impressive.
Like I mentioned before, Killing Bites really nailed the tenacity of the honey badger residing in Hitomi.
Too bad if we only consider the action and fight scenes, I can think of so many other shows which were much stronger in these two regards. Not only that, the shows that tend to have the best, more memorable action moments also tend to have a lot of other positive qualities to them – story, characters, general development, purpose; those kind of things.
Through and through, Killing Bites dropped the ball in all of those other areas.
Series Negatives
Let’s test the waters, shall we?
How many of you have ever wondered what an anime’s depiction of cobra penises look like?
How many of you are still reading this review?
By the way, there was only one cobra in this show.
I want to get this out of the way at the start of this section: Killing Bites was an ecchi anime. Not only did this series have fanservice, it reveled in fanservice. Any and all chances this show had to put its characters – mostly its female characters – in revealing clothes, suggestive positions, or have them straight-up nude, this show took it.
And do you want to know something? If everything else about Killing Bites was, at a minimum, decent, and the only thing left was the fanservice, I wouldn’t even be mad.
The fanservice of Killing Bites was by no means great or well-implemented, but for the most part, the fanservice that was in this show wasn’t that ridiculous. That said, I want to emphasize the phrase “for the most part” in that last sentence because, no matter how you look at it, this entire series was nothing except an excuse to have its characters in animal cosplay at pretty much all times.
Also, this show found a way to put Hitomi and her rival, Eruza Nakanishi (voiced by Maaya Uchida), into a passionate make-out session while in their animal forms; which for these two meant only ears and a tail.
Yeah, that was a little much. But on the whole, I’ve seen way worse. And truth be told, the fanservice was point ten on the list of things wrong with Killing Bites. Much higher on that list were the characters.
This was an uninteresting collection of people. The only reason why half of this cast stuck out to me while I was writing this review was because I’ve been to a zoo before. If someone was just an average human in this show, there was nothing remarkable about them.
Nowhere can I explain this better than with Killing Bites main character, Hitomi.
When Hitomi was fighting, that was when she was an okay character because that was when she could actually be tough instead of just act tough. Outside of battle, Hitomi was painful to listen to. Whenever she was engaged in normal dialogue, she never once sounded intimidating despite her best efforts.
And holy Christ, if I have to hear her stupid catchphrase one more goddamn time, I’m going to lose my mind.
Also, I’m not blaming Hitomi’s voice actress, Sora Amamiya, for this problem. In fact, screw this show for making Ms. Amamiya say these cringe-y as hell lines. This annoys me because I know Ms. Amamiya can do badass.
For those who are not aware, Ms. Amamiya was the voice of Akame from Akame ga Kill and Touka Kirishima from Tokyo Ghoul. Both of those characters exuded intimidation, and it was Ms. Amamiya who gave them their voices.
Killing Bites absolutely wasted a talented actress.
All that aside, why am I only focusing on Hitomi? Believe it or not, even with all her problems, Hitomi was still the best character in this show. Everyone was either lower than her, or they were Yuya Nomoto, the main male character of Killing Bites.
Yuya was a bafflingly useless character. He added nothing to this show; why was he in this show? The only purpose he served was being the walking definition of the word “spineless.”
When we first met Yuya in episode one, I immediately pegged him as expendable – he was going to be dead within minutes. Then my heart sank when I saw him be a prominent presence in Killing Bites’ opening theme.
From there, Yuya never got any better, but boy did this show try to make him seem cool to no avail.
Most of the time when this series cut to Yuya, I wanted to bash my head against the wall. Not only because Yuya was terrible, but because he was a major part of Killing Bites’ biggest problem.
This show was always attempting to add backstory, intrigue, and depth to its story. The issue was, all of this extra stuff was boring as hell, had nothing to do with anything that was going on, and these moments ALWAYS came during the middle of a fight.
Show, I do not care about anyone’s history. Most of the characters you are detailing are going to be dead in five minutes. Why are you even bothering?
Plus, it wasn’t as if these attempts at development were good attempts – they were lazy and hollow. And this became crystal clear in episode twelve.
If you do want to check this show out, fine – be my guest. But I urge you, do not waste your time with episode twelve. Let your viewing of Killing Bites end at episode eleven. Yes, doing this will leave you with an incomplete finale. Trust me, though, it will be a lot better than the actual one.
The main thing I got out of Killing Bites episode twelve was that episodes one through eleven were pointless. Twelve was where this series decided to info-dump as much as it could in an attempt to clean up all the loose ends. This was strange since these loose ends only became loose ends in episode twelve.
Almost from the start, I knew I was never going to recommend Killing Bites. However, I’m not too keen on receiving a giant middle finger right at the end of anything – bad show or not.
Final Thoughts
What happened in this series again?
That is one-hundred-percent going to be the thing I say if the sequel teased at the end of this show come to fruition. And should that sequel ever come: why? What about this series would warrant a continuation?
Although the action scenes in this show were serviceable, they were surrounded by complete nonsense – forgettable fanservice, boring characters, and misguided story development.
This series, on the surface, may appear attractive. I assure you, though, Killing Bites will only be a waste of your time.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Have you seen this show? What would be your advice concerning Killing Bites? Leave a comment down below because I would love to hear what you have to say.
And if you liked what you read, be sure to follow me on my social media sites so that you never miss a post or update. Also, please share this review across the internet to help add to the discussion.
I’m LofZOdyssey, and I’ll see you next time.
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