Kyoukai no Kanata – First Impression

I’m honestly disappointed at the hype this series had but ending up not exactly impressing me aside from KyoAni’s usual beautiful animation.

The premise of the show is that akameganekko is a spirit hunter and she’s practicing her courage and awesome blood sword power to this half-demon guy who turned out to be immortal whom she met when she was attempting to suicide. On another side, half-demon guy is a member of the Literature Club together with lollipop girl who’s also a member of a spirit hunter family. Later on in the episode, she tells half-demon guy that he must not associate himself with akameganekko but being the typical KyoAni protagonists, he sticks with this problem girl and will probably help her get herself together. And some drama-drama-shiz will probably follow up later.

The first episode honestly didn’t impress me as an episode introduction and as a KyoAni series in general. But I guess they probably have this style of starting out slow like how Hyouka started off. But seeing this as something more inclined to the style of Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, I’d say that in comparison this one didn’t have so much impact aside from the fact that that animation was damn amazing and those girls were so damn catchy.

I don’t want to start off a shit among fans who actually like this right off the bat. I’m not saying that it’s bad, I’m just not exactly impressed or my expectations from that long hype was just not given justice after this first episode. I’d like to see how the series will go from here although I have some small idea as to what route this will follow.

The characters are catchy (I don’t know if that’s the right word. haha) but maybe I’m just referring to the two girls introduced this episode. Kuriyama Mirai (Taneda Risa) aka akameganekko (red glasses girl) is a really cute girl most especially with that weak-type of character and those red glasses! (I knew I should have gotten a red framed glasses instead >_<). Then there’s Nase Mitsuki (Chihara Minori) aka lollipop girl who also came from a spirit hunting family who seems to be quite strong. Her character, she’s like a serious-comedy type but yeah, that’s obviously a side-part of her awesome character. She’ll obvious play a bigger role later on given her background. Maybe she’s like an equalizer or something. Then finally we have Kanbara Akihito (KENN) who walks the typical KyoAni protagonist path with that helping the heroine-shiz and those nicely written monologues which I always love from KyoAni. He gives off that Yuuta-vibes from Chuu2 but the series itself doesn’t exactly have much of those Chuu2 funny moments (most especially comparing this episode to Chuu2’s first episode which was epic funny).

Aside from these three, Nase Hiroomi was also given a sneak pick. He’ll obviously be introduced next episode and on the obvious side of things he’ll be the serious guy on the MCs.  But-but he’s being voiced by Suzuki Tatsuhisa (seriously my reaction). Despite how much I’d like to hear Tatsuhisa in a comedy-type of guy, Hiroomi is obviously the antagonist-like type of MC but I’m not actually saying that he is the antagonist.

Art and animation is really great as expected from KyoAni. Those beautiful sceneries and that animation whenever Akihito and Mirai are on battle-mode are really breathtaking. At some point, I’m really counting on some action scenes in here – Chuu2 stuff if you know what I mean. But yeah, I can already see those things coming in :3 Camera angles are as stunning as usual. But my problem about the art is the sudden shift to some Nichijou-like scenes (or maybe that was just once?) whenever Akihito will pull some stupid straight comedy guy comeback. They can seriously do something better than that. I don’t really see it fitting to the style of Kyoukai no Kanata at this point. Characters designs are really great (most especially Mirai, IMO). Mirai’s red-framed glasses immediately caught my attention first thing in the series. As for Mitsuki, she looks a bit generic in terms of character design so I’m glad that her personality took over there :3 Akihito, on the other hand, looks like some generic KyoAni guy, nothing special as usual.

The episode’s BGM is very relaxing. It’s beautiful and pleasant to hear. It feels okay for the atmosphere for the series. The voice acting, on the other hand, didn’t feel quite right for me although I’m pretty positive that most viewers don’t really care about my complaint. Well my main (and probably only) issue in here is the voice of Akihito which didn’t seem right to me. Don’t get me wrong KENN is a pretty decent voice actor and I absolutely like him as Nanba Hibito in Uchuu Kyoudai but KENN voicing a generic-monologue-highschool guy who does occasional straight guy comedy just doesn’t seem right. They could have gotten Fukuyama Jun or Eguchi Takuya or Kamiya Hiroshi or Nakamura Yuuichi here. Or someone else out there that I failed to mention. But anyway, forget that. I’ll probably get used to his voice sooner or later -__- orr not? Whenever I hear his voice in the episode I'm always reminded of Tsukishima Jinbei from Mushibugyou. LOL. sucks if it's like that.

In an overall look on this episode, I’d say that it presented itself well but it didn’t have much impact. The premise and possible flow of the story is shown nicely. The characters are very likable and easy to remember. The art and animation is smooth and very is very pleasant to see. BGM is very soothing to the ears. Voice Acting is so-so as I had my complaints. I’m quite eager to see the next episode already to know whether it will take the path I think it will.