The Betrayal Knows My Name

The Zweilt Guardians are a bunch of hot males, plus one female, who have supernatural powers. Their purpose is to defeat these powerful, sexy demons called Duras who wish to destroy mankind. The innocent and oblivious main protagonist, Yuki, is approached by the Zweilts because he is their light and hope in this never-ending battle. Granted, this is just your basic good vs. evil story with pretty boys on the screen, but this by all means ISN'T a bad anime. STORY & CHARACTERS Uraboku gets off to a serious start, delving into heavy subject matter such as: orphans, troubled pasts, parental abuse, death threats, and world destruction.What an impressive way to begin things. It makes you wonder why everything is so dark and sinister around the most innocent person in the world, Yuki. Yuki is a soft-spoken and mature boy who helps to take care of children in an orphanage that he had grown up in, and he often hangs out with his childhood friend. The peaceful days don’t last forever though as the Duras begin to stir activities nearby while his friend engages in more odd, secretive behavior. Furthermore, Yuki has these powers that suddenly awaken and cause problems. After a series of odd events, he meets a mysterious, sexy beast named Luka who claims to be his protector, followed by members of the Zweilt, and the head of the Giou Clan who tells Yuki that he is his half-brother and would like to take him away. So they end up taking him to the Twilight Mansion, and he comes to learn all about the Zweilt Guardians and their shared destiny. Luka is a powerful duras fighting on the protagonist’s side, and it’s obvious that he is very attracted to Yuki and vice versa. Most of the time, he is standing around quietly with a deadpan expression and wearing ridiculous outfits. While he doesn’t seem to be that great initially, he gradually gets more involved with the other characters. In addition to that, he has an ancient love story that he is hiding from Yuki, and it eventually becomes a concern and interest to him. The Zweilt Guardians are strong, courageous fighters who have a detailed history behind their group. Most of them look to be Yuki’s age, and they each have a close partner that they fight with. In fact, they’re almost always seen in pairs and act like a big family. Their characterizations are very well done, for they have distinct personalities, fully developed backgrounds, and a strong fighting morale. Seriously, they rarely ever hesitate in battle and emphasize on working as a team. Their close relationships give off a certain charm as they grow into very likeable characters. However, their main drawback is that they can be too sentimental and melodramatic at times, and they constantly worry about Yuki every darn minute. Let the poor feminine boy breathe! The Duras are the big weakness of the show. None of them can be taken that seriously except for one that appears in a very late episode. The main bad guy turns out to be a horrible cliché (I’m sure you can guess who it is), and his henchmen consist of a pair of evil twins, a giggly girl who collects hot guys, a sexy woman who wants Luka, etc. Some of them easily get obliterated, but the higher-grade demons do receive a bit more characterization. There are a few side characters who also reside in the Twilight Mansion, such as the doctor, the maid, etc. They are annoying, clichéd, and their comedy doesn't even beat Luka's bizarre outfits. But don’t worry; they don’t actually get a lot of screen time. I nearly dropped this series when they were introduced too. SHOUNEN-AI This anime is classified as shounen-ai, meaning boy-love. But if you’re coming into this expecting something along the lines of Gravitation or Junjou Romantica, you will be disappointed. You will never see any obvious indication of shounen-ai, like 'kissing' for example. Some of the male characters are rather close, but they could also just pass off as best friends. They're left up to your interpretation. Personally, I am not a big shounen-ai fan, so I appreciate how the gay tones are handled in this. SOUNDTRACK Epic, just epic! This is undoubtedly the best OST that I have heard all year. The music is done by Shōgo Kaida whom I have not quite heard of before. During major battles, the tunes are orchestral, enchanting, and dark, such as “Zweilt Imashime no Te” and “Me wa Yaiba Kami wa Yoru.” Another great track that has a soothing, ghostly choir in the background is called “Bloody†Cross”. During slow scenes, the music is usually airy, melodic, and sweet such as “Kaeranu Hibi Shiroki Ashita.” You can easily find these on YT for streaming. There are two OP songs, “Till the World without Betrayals” and “Inishie” by Rayflower. They’re decent Jrock at best, but they’re not my favorite, and I probably won’t listen to them again after the series ends. OVERALL Uraboku has a lot of things going for itself, such as a likeable, well-developed cast of visually-appealing characters, colorful action, dark undertones, and an epic OST. Plus, the shounen-ai tones are very subtle much to my pleasure. However, the plot really does lack originality, and the villains are clichéd and can’t be taken seriously.

'Betrayal Knows My Name' seemed like a promising anime with my interest lying in the central plot (or what I originally thought was the central plot prior to completing the anime) of Yuki and Luka. In Yuki's past life he and Luka fell deeply, and madly, in love. Luka finds Yuki again in his next life (reincarnated as a male) and stays by his side for the entire 24 episode run. Up front that seems like a promising romance story. You have Luka who is madly in love with Yuki and will protect him as well as do anything for him. Butthen you have Yuki, the main character, who has no memories of his previous life with Luka or the love that they shared. Through more than obvious hints and comments from the side characters of the story, Yuki does in fact have a good idea that he and Luka were past lovers. But through the 24 episodes all he seems to do is have a complete and utter lack of interest in it. I can't say that he was 'avoiding' the subject because the subject never came up! In fact, BKMN seems to focus ten thousand times more on the relationship between Yuki and his childhood best friend, Kanata. There are more flashbacks, memories, and emotions tied between the two of them. And Yuki is shown having much more feelings for Kanata than Luka, in my opinion, throughout the 24 episodes of the series. By the end of the anime Yuki and Luka's relationship has not progressed one single step forward. Yuki uses him as a means of protection and comfort and takes him for granted more or less. For example in Episode 4 Yuki first tends to Tsukumo who is wounded by a slash on his shoulder, then he goes to speak with his school acquaintance who is emotionally scarred and depressed, then he goes to the orphan children to untie and comfort them only to be upset himself as they react very negatively to his presence and tell him not to touch them. Yuki then has his own moment of feeling sorry for himself and cries to Luka about how pitififul he feels. Luka who has been standing by his side watching him tend to everyone and everything with a deadpan expression on his face and a gaping hole in his abdomen. Luka, out of everyone there, was the one most severly injured and the ONLY ONE who Yuki ignored. In fact it isn't until the next day, in the afternoon, in Episode 5, that Yuki turns to Luka and asks him if he would like him to heal his wound as well. Whoops, guess Yuki forgot that he had been stabbed. Everyone else was on his mind, apparently, and everyone else remains on his mind for the rest of the series. Luka is probably dead last on Yuki's 'my most important people' list. I love Luka's dedication and loyalty as well as his deep, emotional, feelings of undying love... but those traits just turn negative and annoying when they are spent on a character who doesn't deserve them. Luka became a mindless drone in many of the scenes where he literally has no reaction to anything. He literally means that he will do anything for Yuki, let Yuki do anything, and never 'betray' him even if Yuki puts him last on his list and treats him like the dog he's acting to be. Aside from his obvious mistreatment of Luka, there are an onslought of additional things I despise about Yuki. For starters I cannot stand how utterly useless and worthless he is. For the entirety of the 24 episodes he literally stands around and does NOTHING. He mopes in his own self-misery and only has fleeting moments of happiness --- which only surface when the entire side character cast is surrounding him and gushing words of love, admiration, and need. He is constantly putting his 'team' in danger as he recklessly rushes off to be a part of the battle. And by being a 'part of the battle' to Yuki that literally means just standing in the background, wide eyed, and watching everyone get beaten up while he continues his internal monologue of how useless and powerless he is. The cast of other characters in the story could have had potential and could have been likable if they all didn't dive into 'Yuki Worship'. And when I say 'ALL' I mean 'ALL'. Hell, even the main bad guy dives into 'Yuki Worship'. The entire anime is glorifying the main character over and over shoving it down the viewers mouth just how wonderful, brilliant, loving, innocent, sparkly and selfless Yuki is. Well, I don't know where that Yuki is or where he went because the main character I've been watching for the past 24 episodes is nothing but useless, worthless, SELFISH, insensitive, and again SELFISH. Yuki is the most selfish character in the entire anime when it comes to the good guy team. With how pathetic, selfish, and useless he is it's no wonder he and his teammates have been reincarnated over and over for the past thousand years to fight a never ending battle that they keep losing. News flash, guys, it's time to kick God's Light to the curb. He's the one putting you all in danger in the first place because he's constantly inserting himself into danger intentionally and can't seem to comprehend that that, in turn, puts his entire team in danger because now they have to run out and try to save his sorry but AGAIN.

There is so much I want to say about this, I can hardly figure out where to start from. I should perhaps start by noting that if you're in solely for the shounen-ai part, like I was, you might as well want to reconsider as there is literally nothing to satisfy your expectations... Uragiri wa boku no namae wo shitteiru(Betrayal knows my name) - a flashy name and even flashier cover picture, with gorgeous young men, a real feast for the eyes, it makes you want to believe the contents will justify or perhaps correspond to the cover, alas it doesn't. Why is that? If you everthought you know the meaning of the word "cheesy", you're in for a surprise and you will most probably want to laugh, cry, howl and roar at the same time about every 5-10 mins from each episode. PLOT - I believe if you watch this at x2 or x3 speed, you will not make a mistake and you won't miss out on the dialogue as well as it is over simplistic and most often repetitive. The story is virtually non-existent, it starts from nowhere and that's exactly where it finished. CHARACTERS - ethereal, beautiful young men - a whole bunch of them - almost like a confectionery box, you'd want to eat them straight off the screen. And...end of topic. No proper introduction, background, development whatsoever, not even one sensible character. What you get in the end is the utterly annoying ,always whining and crying useless Yuki, sexy demon servant, a bunch of Yuki's congregation who sit in a room and discuss Yuki whenever he's not around to be worshipped and pampered by them and a few unreasonable adults. VAs, BGM - as someone who pays too much attention to the selected VAs I can't help but think this is but a huge wastage of talents. Big names like Sakurai Takahiro, Miki Shinichiro, Kamiya Hiroshi, Fukuyama Jun, Miyano Mamoru, Ishida Akira, just to name a few, spurting utter bullsh*t and ridiculous spells confused me, should I feel good for hearing their voices or feel bad for them having to say something so gross. Overall the sound, VAs and BGM were satisfying, aside for being a waste on this show. There is a lot more to be said about this show but I think I've already given it a fair share of beating so I will conclude this with a piece of advice that I learned the hard way... If you've dropped an anime for being too *insert what you feel* (I'd go with *cheesy* ) once before, do not make the mistake to give it a chance later on, it will only make you suffer. I had dropped Uragiri after 2 episodes but after realising years later it was a shounen-ai I thought I can sacrifice 24 episodes of my lifetime if I can at least see some pretty boys kissing. I knew it will be bad but the damage I caused to myself will last for a while...

I have not read the manga and this review is based only on the anime.... Nothing..... just nothing happens in the anime. From the first episode to the last nothing happens...the story moves at a snails pace.....it bored me to hell.....I hate the character Yuki.... anime has a bunch of beautiful people who all obsess over Yuki, who has done nothing, will do nothing and can do nothing....I dont know why they all obsess over him..in every damn episode all the characters just sit together and obsess about Yuki...and Luka just chants the word Yuki and nothing else........in all of 24 episodes I have seen Yuki donothing except be a wimp... GOD its just a waste of time....