First Impression: Kyoukai no Kanata

KYOUKAI NO KANATA: The animation is amazing! So far, that’s about it.

Kyoukai no Kanata follows Akihito Kanbara, a high school sophomore and a half-demon. One day, he notices that a freshman is about to jump off the school rooftop. As soon as he stops her from committing suicide, she stabs him with a sword made from her blood. It turns out that the girl, Mirai Kuriyama, is a demon hunter. And that is the beginning of their unusual friendship.

            From the very start, what really captures my attention is the animation. It doesn’t take an expert eye to realize that the art is just gorgeous. The colours are very vibrant and the details are very intricate. However, this is the only department that I could praise in solid.

The story is not that entrancing. It lacks a hook that would attach the viewers to the show. Aside from that, the exposition is just poorly written. The establishing of the world is composed of seemingly random interactions between the characters. These interactions become even more annoying because of the fact that the characters are generic.

            Akihito Kanbara is just the usual passive student with a little touch of comedy. This character archetype is very generic in Slice of Life titles. But there’s nothing more generic than a MOE klutz, which is exactly what Mirai Kuriyama is. She’s not even the kind of MOE that I could sympathize with. She’s the annoying kind, much like Fuko Ibuki from Clannad.

The music is nothing special either. There is no soundtrack that I particularly like. But what I really like are the action sequences. They are very well-made, almost to the point that they are eye candy. If anything, they are the redeeming factor of Kyoukai no Kanata.

            The pilot episode should immediately introduce a trigger that would break the stasis point. Sure, Kyoukai no Kanata has done this through the demon in Mirai Kuriyama’s apartment, but it is not a strong enough trigger to grasp the overall story. The story is just not expounded enough for the viewers to actually care, and this makes the pilot episode a complete failure. This does not mean that the story will be bad. I just think that the pilot episode is very crucial to gain the interest of the viewers. The viewers assume that the quality of the pilot episode will be the quality of the entire series.

To be honest, the concept of demons and demon hunters in Kyoukai no Kanata still has the potential to be interesting. It is just a matter of execution. I will give this anime a few more episodes to see if it will improve in storytelling and characterization. How could I not give it a chance, when its animation and art style is just amazing?