Time again to watch some anime. I’ve had a pretty offensive gif from the 4chan /a/ era based on the idol dance bit, and since this weekend I felt drained to the bone I watched Kyoukai no Kanata instead of going to the mountains. Not sure if it was worth though. Obviously spoilers galore follows.
It’s Kyoani. It’s pretty. It’s funny (at least I could appreciate its humor). The battles are amazing. But… it feels off. Every now and then I had to rewind, because suddenly I was in a spot that didn’t make sense. How did we get here? What happened to all the unresolved buildup from just five minutes ago? In the end I wasn’t sure if I was lied to by an unreliable narrator or just misunderstood everything. It felt like everything was getting constantly retconned on the fly.
Wasn’t the whole point of the idol episode that the pink stench from the fruit monster wouldn’t disappear from Mitsuki until it was defeated? The episode ends with them failing, but then the next episode starts as if nothing was wrong. I don’t know if it’s explained in the novels (I’d sure hope so), but even a 10 second post-credits scene showing someone swooping in to save the day (or whatever). Also the premise was that the monster loves human females (big idol fan props), but then they charm it with two dudes and a youmu?
The ending is an absolute disaster. Literally nothing is resolved. The whole conspiracy to kill the Kyoukai no Kanata (a cataclysmic youmu) is just conveniently forgotten.
Everyone acts all shocked when the Big Bad says Izumi has a youmu in her (and it’s not even proven or shown in any way), but why? Were we supposed to be prejudiced against that? Nothing along those lines was shown anywhere in the story. On the contrary, our MC is a half-youmu and there’s Ayaka and Ai who are constantly portrayed as loyal and lovable, and Mirai’s first (negative) reaction to them as inappropriate.
Mirai being a conscious assassin instead of a cute klutz? But then she’s still poor and still had trouble killing even the most basic youmu?
And in the end after we shed a tear over her just disappearing—which didn’t make sense in itself as that space was in the physical world, as shown by Ayaka and Ai (and Akihito) being there, so she should still have had a physical body. Anyway we cry for her and after a Very Deep And Philosophical monologue from the protagonist she just reappears without any explanation whatsoever.
It feels like things just happen because they have to for the next scene, but to me that just feels like sketchy writing. Why not make them have an extremely tough fight with the Kyoukai no Kanata, maybe protag or Mirai loses an arm or something but they win, happy end. It’d have even made sense. This though?
To say some good things too: I liked the character interactions there were (way too much was missing though). The development of Sakura for example was well executed.
Overall, Kyoukai no Kanata left a bad aftertaste. Even though it’s pretty and funny and exciting, the plot holes just keep exploding like sinkholes in the Siberian taiga. Maybe I should’ve watched it drunk. Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me so much then. Of course it’s still way better than an absolute disaster like Rings of Power, but that’s a pretty low standard. In the meanwhile I’ll go back to waiting for the next JJK and Mushoku Tensei episodes…
