Beyond the Boundary

Ever since watching the CM, I was looking forward to this show. I was not disappointed, episode one shows great potential for the future. Let's begin with some background: Kanbara, a high school student, is going about his peaceful day when he's suddenly confronted with the sight of a girl ready to jump off the roof. Being the stud he is, he runs up and tries to talk her out of it - proclaiming his great glasses fetish while he's at it. And it works. That is, until she summersault's towards him and stabs him with a sword of blood. Uh-oh! Well, good thing our hero happens to be immortal. That's right, he is half-youmu, and completely invulnerable to brutal stabbings. This show is quick to prove it's not your average high school drama. Throughout the first episode we're briefly hinted at the supernatural second-lives of certain students and a world well outside of the norm. In Beyond the Boundary there's a lot more going on than first meets the eye. As for the animation, it is top-notch. It's just bloody gorgeous. And the action-scenes were so much fun to watch with the dynamic movements and well choreographed camera shots. Overall, this episode starts as a strange blend of light-heartedness and action, promising far greater depths. A likable protagonist with a badass ability, and a quirky heroine (whom I'm still deciding on). It's definitely worth watching, if not solely for animation. I hope it lives up to my expectations!

The show is amazing for visuals, not only are the fights very intricate so is the weapon the MC uses at times. The love story between the two MC is nice as well. The only issues with the show stems from the fact that not much is explained (bad guys, story lines, and main characters). You get a generic story line that seems like there is a lot of history and questions behind it, but none of it is explored. Leading to the question: will there be a second season? If so, my rating will change.

Beyond the Boundary is a beautiful anime that has some some exciting action moments and characters that give you a warm place in your heart. That doesn’t hide the fact that the show has too many questions that need to be answered and a pacing that threw off the entire show. STORY The story revolves around two characters Akihito Kanbara, an immortal half-youmu, and Mirai Kuriyama, a member of the Spirit World Warrior with the ability to manipulate her blood into various forms and abilities. The first 4 episodes set off the show as a fantasy action show with intense action moments and hints of a dark past from both characters. Now this is one of the problems I have with this show is that they executed it in a werid way. The way they show off Mirai’s past with her childhood friend was more than a passing moment to me since I wasn’t emotionally invested with the character yet. They also hint at Akihito’s pass which they refuse to mention at all at throughout the show, which is very disappointing since it did look interesting. Another problem with the story was its pacing. By the end of episode 4 the mood of the show completely takes a 180 degree turn and makes it feel like a slice of life comedy, more than a fantasy action show it made it seem in the first few episodes. It’s a weird transition to go through and it’s something that didn’t set well with me. Eventually it does go back to the whole action feel to it, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth I didn’t really enjoy the final episodes because of it. Also add on that there is little to no explanation to this show at all. We know nothing of the Spirit World Warriors, the Nase family, “Beyond the Boundry”, Akihito’s past and a slew of other factors that play a key role in the story. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but with a show that emphasizes itself on story, it did a terrible job. ANIMATION The animation was done by Kyoto Animation and boy they live up to being the best animator in anime right now. With previous works like Free!, Clannad, K-ON and other shows, I’d had high hopes that this show would look good and man oh man did it look good. The action sequences are the ones that really stand out as “wow this is beautiful”. The flow of everything that happened seemed to be near perfect with nothing ever feeling dull or boring to watch. The color contrasted itself nice with every power being shown from each character. To me, this seemed more like a show to show off their animation on action scence then a show about story and characters. OVERALL Overall I thought Beyond the Boundry had a great start, but started stumbling as it went on as it didn’t know if it wanted to be an Action show or a Slice of Life comedy show. However, beautiful animation and sound design does make this show bearable at the most.