I'm having a hard time deciding how I felt about this premiere.
Kicking off the new season (on LoQ, at least), comes KyoAni's newest offering,
Kyoukai no Kanata, one of the studio's rare fantasy entries. Based on a novel of the same name, the plot is supposed to be a darker one; this is the story of a world where creatures known as
youmu possess humans and are then
hunted down by people with special spiritual abilities. At the center of the mythos, we have our two protagonists, Kanbara Akihito (
Kenn), an immortal youmu/human hybrid who lives the normal life of a high school boy, and Kuriyama Mirai (
Taneda Risa, one of my recent favorites thanks to her work in
Shinsekai Yori), a girl who can manipulate blood into weapons. The story so far goes that Kuriyama has transfered into Akihito's school, where he meets her after he
assumes she's about to commit suicide. After she stabs him, she finds out that he's an immortal and decides to use him as her training doll, much to his chagrin, and follows him around in order to fight him.
That's all well and good, but a series like this is the type that depends on atmosphere, and that's not something I'm seeing pulled off in the right way to make this work. It's not that the execution is
bad, or even unpleasant, but it's hardly something I can take completely seriously. There's
too much of KyoAni's signature nonchalance in the quieter, more comedic moments to feel urgent, nor does this feel smooth enough a transition to ease from one tone to the next without feeling off. It's not that the lighthearted stuff isn't funny or cute, but that it meshes a little awkwardly with the execution in the more serious portions. One minute Mirai is being adorably clumsy in that KyoAni style, and the next
someone gets stabbed through the heart. It's not that that sort of juxtaposition can't work, but it isn't working here, and I think that might be the fault of the studio's tone, though I have no idea if the novel is equally unbalanced.
As to the characters, they're amusing all right, but I can't find them particularly empathetic yet. Mirai seems like she has a dark past she's yet to come clean about, and I'd love to know more about
Akihito's circumstances, but their everyday lives, other than the blood weapons and immortality, feel somewhat banal and moe, which are definitely pandering to the usual studio audience. Unlike
Hyouka, which is without a doubt my favorite KyoAni show, there's not quite as much grace here, but in exchange, we get
superb action the like of which only Kyoto Animation could afford, and beautiful scenery to go along with it. That I
do like quite a bit, and the fight scenes are quite gorgeous. I just wish the show would find a comfortable middle ground in tone and stick to it, because if it does, it could turn out to be really great. Right now though, I'm very unlikely to blog this, though I'll definitely be watching every week.
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