Anime Forecaster: So I started watching Kyoukai no Kanata

So Kyoto Animation released this new series called Kyoukai no Kanata. They usually do slice of life stuff like K-On or Hyouka nothing too intense, but Kyoukai no Kanata is pretty over the top. Just a lot of really good animation and directing going on, all the scenes are really cool to watch and its really a different feel from the usual pattern that Kyoto Animation has its great. The story of Kyoukai no Kanata comes from a light novel by Nagomu Torii, which btw Kyoto Animation is also the publisher of said novel. Currently there are three volumes for the light novel and the third volume was released very recenntly, October 2nd I believe.

This is the cover to the light novel

Kyoukai no Kanata

The show is about Akihito Kanbara who notices that a student at his school is trying to commit suicide and rushes to the roof to save her. The person in question is a megane bishoujo named Mirai Kuriyama who looks really nice in glasses and wears glasses. When Kanbara tries to stop her from killing herself she suddenly stabs Kanbara right through his heart with a sword made from her own blood and to her shock discovers that Kanbara is a immortal "half-youmu". Youmu refer to creatures regular humans cannot see and are comparable to youkai or something more dangerous. Kanbaru learns that Mirai is a Youmu hunter and the last surviving member of her Youmu hunting clan, from there their lives become intertwined as Kanbara seeks to help Mirai gain the confidence to kill Youmu so that she may stop attempting to kill him as practice.

So far there are only 4 episodes and I don't have much to say yet about the story as a whole, but each episode so far has been really exciting. First the fighting scenes, there are a lot of awesome martial artsy what is going on!? kind of fighting going on which is just really cool to look at. Second there is this mystery element to it where your not fully aware of the situation at hand but grasp whats happening as it goes along which is nice in my opinion because I start to want to know more things and keep watching to get my questions answered. Overall the animation is amazing and really pushed to the front compared to the other works Kyoto Animation has done, you get to see more of what their animation skills are like so in a way its like seeing what this studio has to offer when they show off a little. Most importantly one of the main characters is wearing glasses. Most importantly one of the main characters is wearing glasses. It's important so I said it twice, banzai for clumsy expert Youmu warrior with glasses!

Since there isn't a lot of content yet as there are only 4 episodes I haven't really had the chance to think about the story as a whole yet. So far I think its really interesting and there seem to be a lot of background details to the whole thing that you have to take into consideration. Each character seems to be a lot of work in general, but some people don't like that. I guess because it might seem like the story is beating around the bush before reaching an important point. Another thing is there are actually too many things to ask questions about which could also not work for some people. There are too many characters who are too mysterious and we were just introduced too many of them to keep track of their damn names @_@. Other than that I can't really find anything bad to say about the show, then again its really hard to say negative things about something you like a lot :s overall I would recommend it to anyone who is after a story content heavy series this season.

Here is some fan art and GIF I found online to give you a look at what its like