“When things seem beyond help, opening your eyes and taking a good look is a lot better than turning your back and hiding your eyes.”
-Leonardo Watch
Kekkai Sensen, also known as Blood Blockade Battlefront, is a manga by Nightow Yasuhiro, the creator of Trigun. The manga started in 2009 and has received two seasons of anime adaptations to date. I had had Kekkai Sensen on my watch-list for a while, but never really bothered watching it. I watched Season 1 this week after I heard a lot of praise for Season 2. Without further ado, lets get into the review!
Synopsis:
The daily life in New York City transforms after a portal to another world known as “The Otherworld” opens up right in the centre of the city. Fast forward three years, and NYC is now known as Hellsalem’s Lot with a plethora of strange occurrences surrounding the city. Enter Leonardo Watch who has been gifted (or cursed) with a unique power after an encounter with a mysterious being. He joins a secret society called Libra after a chance meeting with one of its members- ever since, his life has been filled with strange encounters with several unknown forces. The story follows Leonardo’s daily life as he tries to get through his newly acquired problems along with his newly acquired friends.
Thoughts On The Plot:
Kekkai Sensen is quite a refreshing anime with its light and comic theme. I do love dark anime with complex expositions and plot lines, but it feels good to watch something that isn’t so edgy once in a while. Of course, it isn’t by far the best anime I’ve ever watched but I wouldn’t mind watching more of it (yay Season 2)!
Produced by Studio Bones, Kekkai Sensen reminds me of another anime produced by the same studio almost a decade ago- Darker Than Black. DTB is one of my all-time favorites, and whereas Darker Than Black has a more serious tone and setting with an amazing world build-up, Kekkai Sensen focuses more on comedy and gives less importance to exposition. The anime is episodic with an anime original arc in the end. Very similar to Darker Than Black. Even the setting is really similar- A portal opening in a city and isolating it from the rest of the world due to a barrier, the appearance of ethereal beings et al.
I really like that Kekkai Sensen takes a different approach to this kind of a story. It focuses more on the comedy and playful interactions between the characters rather than taking a serious approach which every run-of-the-mill anime does. It was quite enjoyable. There are a few problems with the anime though- like the last arc. As I previously said, it is an anime original, but it didn’t really make sense. The ending seemed forced and there wasn’t enough build-up for me to actually get fascinated by it. It made an attempt to wrap up the several on-going plot lines in a mere two episodes; this made it difficult to follow and degraded the overall impression of the anime. Honestly, I’d say that the anime would have been better off with two more episodes showcasing the shenanigans of Libra members.
Also, I didn’t really get the narration style. At the beginning and at the end it is shown that the entire events of Kekkai Sensen were being narrated by Leonardo in a letter which he wrote to his sister, but the anime isn’t really from Leo’s point of view. There are several episodes that focus on different characters and there are scenes where Leo isn’t present at all, or that particular episode (spoiler alert) which Leo should have forgotten completely.
These are the only things that I found to be inconsistent in the anime. If I were to overlook these, then Kekkai Sensen was a great and uplifting watch.
Characters:
The characters are really lovable. I really adored all the Libra members- Zapp, Klaus, Zedd and Chains. The character interactions are great and each of them has a different personality. The character designs are also really well done. Every character has a distinct build and it feels really great to watch them in the anime. That’s that, but I gotta say- Leo is best boy! Yes, I know, he is the main character and me liking him is just so mainstream. But his is a great character. Now, when I first started Kekkai Sensen and read the synopsis, I was expecting Leo to be really overpowered and till the end, I kept telling myself, “Oh yeah, here goes. He’s gonna be really OP any moment now”. But that doesn’t really happen. Of course, his “All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods” are really overpowered in their own defense- so much so that he can see without even opening his eyes, but he isn’t really a regular super-strong character, you know. He’s simply a normal guy who gets involved in a mess he was never supposed to get into. He doesn’t have super-strength or super-speed or anything of the sort. He simply has the powers that he never wanted, and that’s that. I also loved his character design. It looked really cool with the blue eyes and messy hair wearing a blue jumpsuit. It fit into the American setting really well.
Animation and Music:
Studio Bones did another spectacular job with the animation and music yet again. The animation was, well how to put it? Really catchy. It had that New York City vibe- well NYC-overrun-with-aliens vibe but it felt great either way. As I said before, all characters were animated differently and it gave a unique feel to each one of them. There were great camera angles that captured the animated city just as they would capture the original. The attention to detail was noteworthy. Really good style and I really liked it.
The music, again, was really great. Not relying on a particular genre, but taking components from several genre of music made it really invigorating. There was jazz and funk and rock. Every episode had a different score to suit the incidents in that particular episode. The Opening and Ending were ear-candy too! The Opening, “Hello World” really has a funky feeling and is the kind of music I’d never skip. Great, great work.
Final Remarks:
So, was Kekkai Sensen absolutely, mindbogglingly fabulous? Well, not really. It probably isn’t even in the Top 40 of my anime list, but I’ve watched a lot of anime and Kekkai Sensen was, undoubtedly, a good watch. I won’t lie, I didn’t understand several parts of the anime but I still liked it. It’s like the best anime that I’ve watched but never completely understood. I could have the lived without the last anime-original arc, but despite its flaws, it has a really good premise. In my opinion, it is worth a watch- for its lively cast of characters, unique animation and the carefree and joyful story-line! I’ll give Kekkai Sensen a rating of 7 out of 10.
See ya’ll next post!
BingeR. 