Full Review of Beyond the Boundary (Kyoukai no Kanata) (2013)
✭✭✭✭ It was a bit slow and confusing in the middle, but the last four episodes, themselves, were enough to warrant another star. I need to watch this again. I feel like the randomness was on purpose, as things were explained in the end.
In the world, there is the not-so-hidden battle between Youmu--monstrous embodiments of humanity's resentment--and the Spirit World Warriors--those people with special powers and the skills to destroy these monsters. When a Youmu dies, it leaves behind a geode, which can then be sold at a Spirit World shop; this is a common way for Spirit World Warriors to make a living. Enter Mirai Kuriyama, a Spirit World Warrior from a cursed clan, and Akihito Kanabara, the immortal half-youmu. The last thing they should do is join the same Literary Club or become friends, yet that is exactly what they do.
slice of life/high school/supernatural/action/humor/romance/cute girls/sweaters
I’d say this is about TV-13. There's nothing really shocking. Just a little monster gore. The main thing I'd be concerned about when showing this to a younger audience is that there are numerous jokes about people being perverts. And one of the characters has a thing for little-sister characters, which includes his own little sister. But maybe it's subtle enough that it would go over a young audience's head.
12 episodes, an "Episode 0" special, and a 3-episode chibi series called Kyoukai no Kanata: Idol Saiban! Mayoi Nagara mo Kimi wo Sabaku Tami.
No dub that I could find.
Kissanime.com, animehere.com, crunchyroll.com, and hulu.com
There's something heartbreakingly beautiful about this anime and I'll do my best to put it into words.
In my First Look at Beyond the Boundary, I mentioned that, while the first episode opened with the most beautiful scene I had ever seen, the rest of the episode did nothing to attach me to the two main characters. That quickly changed. While Mirai didn't grab me in the first episode, she quickly stole my heart in the next one. Mirai is the ultimate paradoxical character: she is a cute little girl in a sweater and glasses, fluffy hair, and easily upset. Yet she is a warrior from a cursed family, whose power is to bleed and manipulate her own blood into weapons. She comes across as fretting, and yet she is very agile and very skilled, and everyone knows it. If there's a Youmu that the others are worried about beating, they send Mirai after it, because they all know Mirai has the best chance of beating it.
I found myself getting very attached to Mirai, and as the series progressed, I really felt her pain and could put myself in her shoes, imagining how I would deal with being the "cursed" warrior, of trying to sell enough Youmu cores to make ends meet, or having to kill the one I loved in order to save the world. Mirai is a very well-done character and her cuteness doesn't detract from that; it enhances it.
Moving on to the ending: so many layers of love and sacrifice. First Mirai needs to kill Akihito in order to stop his Youmu side from destroying the world, then she finds a way to absorb the Youmu, herself, and disappear, saving Akihito, then Akihito comes after her, then she disappears anyway, then they're reunited...I missed some stuff in there.
But basically, the ending of this show was attempt after attempt to save each other. As soon as one of them had come to terms with losing their life to save the other, then the other found a way to come back and save them and sacrifice themselves, and you just know one of them is going to end up dead, being the one to have finally truly saved the other, and then they end up reunited. It was so touching. Their love for each other, their willingness to die for each other, was so strong and came through so well. It's one of the best high school love stories I've ever heard in an anime: it's tied with Karin, and I consider Karin to be the epitome of high school romance stories, so just let that sink in.
