Kurozuka opens with violence and beauty colliding so hard you forget to breathe, then spends the rest of its runtime warping time and reality until you can't tell if you're watching a love story or a curse eating itself alive. The animation doesn't just support the story, it becomes the story, pulling you through dreamscape and flashback with such deliberate strangeness that confusion starts feeling like the point. By episode six you're lost, by episode twelve you understand that being lost was always the destination, a man and woman trapped in cycles of love and monstrosity that no resolution could ever satisfy.

In 12th-century Japan, the swordsman Kurou flees into the mountains with his servant Benkei after losing to his brother. The two take shelter in the isolated home of Kuromitsu, a beautiful and mysterious woman who welcomes them but forbids them from entering her room. Kurou falls in love with her, then learns she is an immortal vampire, and he becomes one himself to stay with her forever. Benkei, working with a secretive group called the Red Army, betrays him. Centuries later, Kurou wakes in a ruined future Japan with no memories, searching for the woman he cannot forget and for the reason he cannot die. The series is a dark supernatural romance that mixes action, horror and science fiction across a thousand years.