It makes perfect sense, actually.

Think of the city as a living entity. Each city has a Yurine (cat girl) who watches over it. She appoints a Karas to defend the city.

Existing in the same space is the world of the living and the Spirit world. The world of the living is you, me, that kinda stuff, whereas the spirit world is that whole thing with the floating houses and the weird monster people. The two planes coexist, but don't come into contact with each other. Humans can't hang out with the spirits and spirits can't come into the human plane. There's some sort of balance this way. The Yurine and the Karas are supposed to work together to keep this balance from being disrupted by outside forces.

Ekou (the main villain who is shown killing another Karas in the first episode) is the original Karas of the city. He has decided that he is tired of constantly battling to protect the city, when the humans are the ones fucking everything up. He imprisons his own Yurine (the source of a Karas's power) and starts making moves to rule the city and kill all of the humans. He doesn't understand, however, that killing all of the humans would upset the balance of the city, which would also end up causing problems for the spirit world, and eventually destroy the entire city.

In the event of something like this happening, the city can create a new Yurine who can then appoint a new Karas to try and restore order. Ekou was seen killing one in the beginning of the show. The latest Karas is Otoha (the main character of the show).

The Mikura are spirits who, with the help of Ekou, have become machines so that they can exist in the realm of the living.

I really liked Karas, so I'd be happy to explain more if you'd like.

I'd like to know who's defending his city while he's out beating up karate men and little robot girls

The-Excel wrote:

Syd Lexia wrote: Isn't Karas the guy from CvT? The Karas in that game is supposed to be the protagonist of the anime, but for some reason they don't use his real name.

I get the feeling that if they called him otoha nobody would know what the deal was, as karas is fairly new, and most people aren't familiar with it.

it's not technically correct, but it works.

Black Zarak wrote:

Wow, Jew just pretty much cleared up all my questions. Now, does it mention somewhere in there that Ekou used to be that city's Karas? Because I had no idea who that was killing some other random one at the beginning until the end when he actually armors up again. I mean, I suspected but I wasn't sure. And I had no idea that that chick in the bubble was his cat girl, doesn't that rogue demon guy say it's his brother at one point? Overall, I'm iffy on it. It looked cool, but I didn't much care for the mecha demon designs and combat went so fast some times I thought I was watching the Transformers movies.

yeah I actually had to watch it a few times to really enjoy it. It was hard to understand why they used slow motion when they did and stuff, with the time freezing during fights and stuff, until someone explained to me that it was done to show how fast they were fighting compared to normal people moving.

are you watching dubs or subs?

It's been a while, but I get the feeling that the dubs are too literal.

I think when they keep throwing the word "brother" around, they're more or less referring to the differen't Karas's being similar.

And I don't remember if It's directly said if Ekou was the city's first Karas, but it's definitely made known by the things he says when he's onscreen.

I have a theory that he was only included because he was new and trendy, and the designers weren't even familiar with him much.