(Disclaimer: I go into spoilers a little at the Favorite Character section, so just skip to the final paragraph if you want to see my overall thoughts. Also, rant warning, sorry.)
Finishing Kiznaiver and Classroom of the Elite on the same day really made for a day full of disappointment, albeit for entirely different reasons. In Classroom of the Elite's case, it was due to the looseness of the adaptation, causing them to really fail to reach Classroom of the Elite's full potential. However, in regards to Kiznaiver, Trigger happened. Before I go any further with that line of thought, I'd better throw out there that I did enjoy Kiznaiver a lot, I just didn't like the direction that it went around episode 9. The sad part was that I saw it coming. I told myself that this was a Trigger work and something bizarre was bound to happen, pushing the show over the line. It just seems like a curse at this point. Anything Trigger touches ends up breaking the bounds of ridiculous after starting off really strong.

Production-wise, Kiznaiver simply exudes that Trigger quality. The animation is smooth and pleasing, especially in the early episodes. As the show goes on, you can tell that the animation quality fades somewhat to 'normal' quality, which works just fine. The character designs are a huge strength in Kiznaiver as well, every single character has a unique design and color scheme to pair with their respective 'sins' or negative quality. It all comes together to really make the characters pop and give each their own unique personality without even having them say a word. As far as the soundtrack goes, none of the OST songs really shine in my opinion, but the opening alone causes me to give the audio an A+ from me. Visually, the ending is great, but the song is just kinda average, which works, since it's carried by its visuals anyway. All in all, Kiznaiver is really solid on the technical side of things, as expected from Trigger, as this is really where most of their works shine. However, up next is where I'll kinda go off on Kiznaiver.

Favorite Character: Yoshiharu Hisomu

Huh? The Masochist? The one who shows up like 3 episodes in and gets the least amount of screen time and development? I mean, yeah. Ironically enough, he is literally the only character that has an ounce of common sense in him. He's probably the only true friend of the seven, as evidenced by the fact that he stuck with Katsuhira even in his darkest time. I think his being my favorite character has more to do with the fact that the other characters really annoyed me at certain points of the show, whereas Masochist was really steady and reliable. Despite that, there was a point in the show as it was waning that I realized that Masochist had grown a lot. No longer was he the loner who cared only for his own self-pleasure, he had become quite the caring friend. Even though it was subtle, I definitely noticed that he grew. So, call it lack of development or a strong character, it really doesn't matter.

Chidori was a hair away from taking favorite character from Masochist, but I decided against it due to the fact that even she annoyed me at a certain point. It was brief, but enough to not choose her. On a more ranty note, I am really kind of pissed with the way that Kiznaiver used Chidori and every other Kiznaiver that wasn't the main character. To start with Chidori, she was just shafted the entire show. Whether it was being cockblocked by Noriko or her Kiznaiver friends, she had the most rotten treatment of the entire cast, which was really painful for me, because she was my favorite character for the majority of the show. Not to mention that the show kind of forced her into submission as the number 2 girl and settle for the 'other guy' for no reason other than the writers had a hard-on for Noriko. Yes, I am salty, but what's new?

That kind of leads me into my two big issues with Kiznaiver. The first being that the ending sucked and the second being that fact that they basically sideline the Kiznaivers for Noriko in the last third of the show. These two complaints kind of go hand-in-hand, so I'll discuss them together, along with complaints about specific characters. First, is the Noriko problem. Why is she important? Because. Because why? Because she shares a past with MC-kun! I'm being a little dramatic with this complaint, but that's kind of the theme of Kiznaiver, so I'll go along with it. My big issue with Noriko is that she becomes the main character at the conclusion and that causes all seven of the Kiznaivers to be shoved to the side. The very same characters that you spent 9 episodes getting attached to, thrown away for a character that really wasn't given any real importance other than being the Kiznaiver initiation mom. I get it. It was foreshadowed from the beginning scene that she was important, but at least make her part of the story for the middle half of the show. Obviously, I'm being really salty about this, but it just baffles me that the show took such a hard turn and became all about her in the end. And yes, this also has to do with the fact that my Chidori ship didn't sail.

Honestly, I don't even really need to go into too much detail with the ending because of what I've laid out already. Basically, Noriko, the emotionless doll girl, has an extremely emotional response over a threat on the Kizuna system, which is her everything and tries prove that it works by converting everyone into Kiznaivers. And this is after 10 or so episodes showing the seven main characters learning empathy, how to talk about their emotions and secrets, and developing trust in each other through the Kizuna system. Tell me where an ending like I described above fits into that kind of small scale story? I could probably just leave it there and I feel like my point would be made. The fact is that a large scale ending was so forced. Kiznaiver up to that point was all about the character's relationships with each other, which was really good, but for some reason, Trigger decided that we needed some conflict for the ending. Why don't we instead go for a smaller scale resolution with, I don't know, our main cast instead of only MC-kun and his emotionless childhood friend that he loves for some reason?

I have way more to complain about, but I'll keep it smaller for these, which deal with the other characters in the main seven Kiznaivers. The biggest annoyance for me was Hajime the dumb, strong guy. At first, I kinda liked him, but then somewhere down the line, he just became a white knight justice warrior kind of a character and began acting in the most irritating way. I just didn't understand where he got off berating MC-kun, who was a moron to be fair, when he himself was doing the exact same thing to poor Nico. Who was, by the way, also a great character. I have no real complaints about her, except how she had was that she was almost completely used a tool to unite the Kiznaivers and give friendship speeches. It just would have been nice to see some individuality from her. On the topic of low-key development, pretty boy Tsuguhito got a lot of background development, as he grew up while he supported Glasses-san through her tragic past. Thinking back on it, Tsugihito's growth may actually have been as good as Masochist's low key development, but it was just so understated that he was so easy to look over. Glasses-san, Honoka, got pretty good screen time, enough to have her own arc. Her arc dragged on a little long in my opinion, but it was nice to see real development occur among the Kiznaivers. Lastly, we have MC-kun, Katsuhira, who's name I just had to look up because I forget it all the time. His development was actually really satisfying to watch unfold. Each episode, he was slightly more expressive and caring towards his friends, except for Chidori cause screw her, right? I'm kidding, of course, his treatment of Chidori wasn't really his fault. He tried his best, but Noriko always ended up messing everything up between them, which was annoying to watch, but such is anime, I suppose.

As I glance up at my lines of ranting above, I have to wonder if that means that Trigger actually won. Clearly, I ended up caring enough about their characters to write so much on how I wished they had gotten more screen time and development. I do want to restate that I enjoyed watching Kiznaiver, especially early on. It was just so full of melodrama and love triangle shenanigans that it almost ruined it for me. I'd also like to apologize for ranting so much, but I only did it because I truly think that Kiznaiver could have been amazing if it had just stayed more grounded and not tried to shoot for the moon. Even though Trigger didn't work on it too much, I got Darling in the FranXX flashbacks as I was watching. All that potential early on, wasted with a overly ambitious ending. Hopefully Trigger learns from these shows and SSSS.Gridman and Promare finally break the Trigger mold and succeed!