Kekkaishi

Yoshimura Sumimura comes from a long line of "Kekkaishi," individuals who have supernatural abilities and are able to destroy evil creatures called Ayakashi that venture into the human realm from time to time. The Ayakashi are demons that look to feast on the power emanating from the land of Karasumori, which also happens to be where Yoshimura's high school is located. Now, Yoshimura must fight to protect his beloved school and hometown. Although, if it were up to him, he would rather be baking cakes than fighting off the ugly characters that show up at night.

Thankfully, Yoshimura isn't the only one helping to keep the baddies at bay. His childhood friend and neighbor, Tokine Yukimura, joins him in this righteous battle. Despite the fact that they are from rival clans, these two make a fantastic team. And teamwork is something vital to fighting the evil that is closing in, as the Ayakashi attack in waves, looking to claim the land as their own, and a shadowy organization looks on, ready to pounce when the time is right...

Sumimura, Yoshimori Main

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Yukimura, Tokine Main

Saitou, Rie Japanese

Shishio, Gen Supporting

Miyashita, Eiji Japanese

Madarao Supporting

Onishi, Takeharu Japanese

Sumimura, Masamori Supporting

Miyauchi, Atsushi Japanese

Kaguro Supporting

Hirata, Hiroaki Japanese

Sumimura, Sumiko Supporting

Konno, Keiko Japanese

Hakubi Supporting

Ishii, Masanori Japanese

Kagemiya, Sen Supporting

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Kanda, Yurina Supporting

Kazuki, Saya Japanese

Ogata, Naohiro Producer

Nagai, Kouji Producer

Kodama, Kenji Director, Storyboard

Kimura, Eriko Sound Director

Reviews

Mar 22, 2008

Beatnik

Recommended

Kekkaishi is basically one epic siege story. The very fact that its based around protecting one piece of land (conveniently the main protagonists' school) only at night time, is the show's main hook, and it fulfils its interesting potential throughout.

Yoshimori and Tokine, our plucky teens, are charged with the seemingly life-long mission to protect a mystical piece of land with their barrier technique. The ability to create barriers of all shapes and sizes by pointing their fingers and shouting "Ketsu!" and destroying the contents of their CGI boxes with "Metsu!" It's a very cool and unusual technique and the animation remains consistently ... good throughout the series, so it never gets old watching the two develop their skills, or to watch Tokine take liberties and use her kekkai to smack Yoshimori in the face.

The manga is written by a female so you can expect some good characterization for Tokine. The two heroes are on an even level for most of the anime, and being that it's written by a female, the relationship and romance has a more deft touch to it. Sexist observation? Maybe, but I can tell you that I didn't really roll my eyes or get bored with any of the lovey dovey moments sprinkled throughout Kekkaishi.

Populated by interesting and amusing characters, an epically memorable Taku Iwasaki score, refreshing pacing, and creative action, Kekkaishi is the definition of how a shonen genre anime is meant to be made. It does get a tad derivative towards the end, being unable to escape the tropes of the genre, but its still good fun. Each episode also ends with a great Photoshop-like montage of characters, basically summing up the climax of the last 20 minutes.

The producers even had the grace to just end the adaptation at the end of an arc, rather than overtake the manga or descend into filler hell. It's a bittersweet compromise but one we should accept and respect. For a show sponsored by McDonalds, you'd think greed would compel them to milk everything out of this show, but they knew when to stop. Whether it was due to Kekkaishi not being as sell-able as Naruto or One Piece for example, I don't know, but I don't care when what they leave us with is an anime as excellent as this.

So like I said, Kekkaishi is a kind of siege story, a staple of the action-thriller genre that live-action films occasionally excel at, but anime rarely ever touches. Kekkaishi greets the genre head on with shonen enthusiasm and ends up an entertaining show worth watching.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Feb 25, 2011

_Hanamaru_

Mixed Feelings

What is it that sets Kekkaishi apart from other shounen anime? Well, nothing really. Kekkaishi had a fairly original premise of two young kekkai users battling ayakashi (youkai) in order to protect a powerful piece of land. In order to protect the land, their rivaling families have lived next to each other for 400 years. Growing up together from a young age, Yoshimori and Tokine knew that their families were "frienemies" and that they should not maintain a close relationship. So the story begins...

Unfortunately, all the unique and interesting parts of the anime had little development, and the anime ... focused on the run-of-the-mill shounen fodder. It would have been interesting if they had addressed Yoshimori's unrequited love for Tokine and what makes Yoshimori's powers so unique, but sadly it was mostly ignored. Another disturbing characteristic was the seeming lack of emotion over death. Without going into too much detail, usually people have a strong emotional reaction to death. Well, in this case, the next episode was back to usual and the death was rather unemotionally brought up only when convenient.

Many parallels can been seen between Kekkaishi, Naruto, and Bleach. Yoshimori is basically a pre-Shippuden, less obnoxious Naruto; while Tokine is a slightly more useful and naggy Sakura. One of the enemy ayakashi is a forgery of Rukia from Bleach. It was pretty blatant character stealing.

Story: 5 Mediocre. It had potential, but the beginning of the anime basically had no plot.

Art: 8 Very good. While it was not my preferred style, the art was crisp and clean. The characters were a little above average, but the backgrounds were beautiful. Unfortunately, they use the same background over-and-over again. Definitely the best aspect of the series.

Sound: 3 Poor. Whoever decided on the theme song needs to be fired. It's one of those songs that is maybe ok once, but that screechy harpy voice makes you angry the second time you hear it. All the ending themes but one were lackluster. Sound effects were normal in the episodes. Obviously, something the series fails at.

Characters: 6 This is what kept me coming back for more. No, not Tokine and Yoshimori, but some fairly decent bad guys. It's pretty sad when you want the protagonists to lose and have the antagonists take over the story. Almost all the characters (especially the protagonists) were one-trick-ponies. They had no discernible character development and felt flat.

Enjoyment: 5 Mediocre. Unfortunately, the last 10 or so episodes do not make up for the 40+ bland episodes before it. I would have rated this higher if the first episodes had been less repetitive.

Overall: 6 Fair. Although the the anime wasn't terrible at the every-episode-fight-weak-random-bad-guys scenario, I could have substituted any episode for the other. That said, the anime did show significant improvement after the 40th episode. Kekkaishi could have benefited from compacting the beginning storyline and reducing the episode count. Quantity does not equal quality.

In conclusion: At this time, I would only recommend this anime to people who are new to the shounen genre. Maybe you can enjoy it more if you have nothing to compare it to. If there is a second season, that picks up were the first left off, I might actually recommend it. That being said, you would have to sift through the previous 40 boring episodes. I would recommend Bleach and Naruto over Kekkaishi (as long as you skip the fillers), and less well-known series such as: Sengoku Basara, Soul Eater, Monochrome Factor (manga is better), and Tactics.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 10, 2012

Dflood

Not Recommended

Kekkaishi is one of the worst animes I have ever seen. After completing this anime I felt nothing but betrayal. I know that sounds crazy but bear with me.

I could start off by saying that the beggining was boring and bland, but I hardly remember the earlier episodes because of "blandness". You probrobly wont remember them either. Even bleach's first 10 episodes are more memorable.

The anime does pick itself up really fast once the main plot is.introduced though. Kekkaishi's main strength was its battles. Defeating the bigger and stronger enemies was never done by power ups coming out of nowhere or training in an ... empty space like every other shounen. Instead battles are won by refining techniques, stradegy, and teamwork with a lttle bit of willpower thrown in there. It was actually a breath of fresh air see an anime like this. But it really doesnt last long. These battles were this intresting.because a technique called kekkai. It basically was just the ability to make a cube appear out of thin write in any way you want and then make the box implode on itself and kill whatever is inside. They really pushed the imagination with this and it was a good watch for a while. sadly this gets replaced by a technique called zekkai. Zekkai is the most boring thing to watch.

basically this is what is said when zekkai is used: hey I have a barrier surrounding be that burns whatever it touches. Come on attack me. You know you wanna.

Really zekkai could've been used in better ways like using it at good timings before an attack and used in combination with kekkai. But no, its only one or the other and you have to stand still with zekkai. sadly this leads to an absolute embarrassment of a final battle that had an insane amount of build up to it. Some call it disappointment, I call it betrayal.

All this anime sums up to me is a long wait for some really good action scenes and it jumps the shark in the end anyways.

There isnt much story to speak of other than "they fight monster, then fight big monster, then fight fast monster, then fight regenerative monster, then fight monster with x power, then fight monsters that actually count as characters, then we get new guy, etc". There are other components like romance and family tensions but they never pan out to anything in the end so why bother. Except some very forced revenge plots near the end that make the characters look like total jerks and creeps just so we can see a few battles.

As far as characters, they are acceptable but nothing more. the only bad one to speak of is the main character. It is just so hard to stand how much of a prick he becomes near the end.

Overall dont waste your time with 50+ episodes just to see the most lazy ending ever.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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