New Anime Review - Kyoukai no Kanata

Anime Name - Kyoukai no Kanata
Aired - Oct 3, 2013 to Dec 19, 2013
Episodes - 12
Produced By - Kyoto Animation, Sentai Filmworks
Staff - Tachi Ishidate (Director), Nagomu Torii (Original Creator), Chise Kamoi (Original Character Design), Minori Chihara & Stereo Dive Foundation (Theme Song Performance)

This anime is a prime example of how far excellent music can take a mediocre or even boring story. It also has nice animation but music is by far its strongest aspect by a very clear margin. The show is also a prime example of how not to use pointless filler and how a boring and directionless first half of a show can hamper a not-that-bad second half greatly. It has weak characters, quite stale humor, nice animation and excellent music and a story that could have been told in may be 6-8 episodes dragged into 12 episodes of chaos. But as a whole the music alone makes it a have a nice aftertaste somehow.


The story starts as protagonist Akihito Kanbara notices a girl seeming to trying to commit suicide and runs to save her, the girl is Mirai Kuriyama who is a spirit world hunter hunting for youmu, as a matter of fact our hero turns out to be an immortal half youmu and the interaction of these two and their school life turns out to be the setting of the story. The story could have been much better if it was told without its repetitive, boring and quite creepy humor specially focusing of glasses fetish and sister fetish. As a matter of fact the background stories of the characters seemed to have were quite nice but was turned into utter confused and unfocused stuff due to a show having 4-6 filler episodes in its 12 episode run (that might be some kind of record). Due to bad handling in making of the show, the somewhat interesting story lost all its flayer and turned out to be a chaotic endeavor. So it gets 6 out of 10.

The main characters are the aforementioned girl and boy, and their friends and fellow club members the Nase siblings. The hero has so typical back story of being abandoned as a child and also having awesome yet tragic hidden powers, and has little development indeed. And his creepy glass fetish is so annoying that it makes it quite hard to even take him seriously, and liking him is quite impossible. Only Kuriyama seems to have a interesting back story which was again turned into confused stuff by the sudden resolution of her past, yet somehow at the later half of the anime she gets a nice little development and emotional aspect but yet again the resolution of the situation turns all these into somewhat of a disappointment. The other characters are so typical I think wasting words on them would be a crime, specially that sister complex is so awfully creepy. Characters get 5 out of 10.

The animation is one of the best aspects and really is quite eye candy. The fight scenes are so smooth and definitely one of the things I looked forward to each show. Although the character design is so unidirectional having all the characters look too good looking, the smooth animation and overall art takes the show up a few notch and gets 8 out of 10.

The music of this show is quite excellent and unarguably one of the best this season. As a matter of fact the amount of emotion the OP and ED alone conveys, that the whole season of the actual show couldn't do even half of it. The OP is "Kyoukai no Kanata" by Minori Chihara, which is a melodic piece, which is a very emotional song with great lyrics and nice composition, The ED is "Daisy" by Stereo Dive Foundation which is even better with its excellent instrumentation as well as beautiful vocal, and the lyrics is so appropriate for the romantic aspect of the show, as a matter of fact if the actual show had as much romantic emotions executed as nicely as this song it would have been way better than it is now. The in show music is also very good and quite often distracts us in a good way from the lame storyline. The music of the show is top-notch and gets a 9 out of 10 from me.

At the end of my review I would like to say this show might have been so much better if done by other people but sadly the execution by the makers was so poor that the show lost all its good aspect while somehow baring all its flaws. But I would like to also mention that you should at least give this show a try for its excellent music alone as it is one of the best this fall. But the rest is so unoriginal and frustrating, oh,well at least try to get the OST may be.

Overall Score -
                         6 out of 10. 

"Believe ~Eien no Link~ (Believe ～永遠のLink～)" by JAM Project
Read more at http://myanimelist.net/anime/15751/Senyuu./#DyIPv5e7CCR8hMqW.99

If you want more info and other reviews of this show check out it's MAL page -
http://myanimelist.net/anime/18153/Kyoukai_no_Kanata/
   
 

"Believe ~Eien no Link~ (Believe ～永遠のLink～)" by JAM Project
Read more at http://myanimelist.net/anime/15751/Senyuu./#DyIPv5e7CCR8hMqW.9If you want more info and other reviews of this show check out it's MAL page -