Beyond The Boundary is the story of Akihito Kanbara and Mirai Kuriyama, as well as a few others. In this show, there are youmu (spirits) and spirit world warriors. Basically, Akihito is a half-youmu (he was born to a youmu and a spirit world warrior). Kuriyama happens to be a spirit world warrior. The show opens up with her attempting to kill him. Multiple times. It's later revealed that in an injured state Akihito basically goes full youmu. That's a problem. Outside of that, the plot has little direction until the last four episodes, where it's revealed that there WAS a point and that this WAS worth the time investment.
Frankly, the side characters are of little importance. I actually do like both of the main characters presented. Kuriyama’s character design is actually what attracted me to the show the begin with, and I was quite satisfied with it from a visual standpoint. Actually, I take back what I said earlier to note one exception: if all you care about in a show is high animation quality and fairly good comedy, then stop reading this and go watch Beyond The Boundary. Animation is top-notch; it’s actually some of the best of seen. Of course, that’s not all that makes the show pretty to look it; the art and design are great too. Kuriyama’s blood power is super cool and… oddly beautiful. I will say her power reminds me of Deadman Wonderland, but originality is tough these days. Additionally, I found her to be quite a compelling character. Her backstory is interesting, as well as somewhat tragic. As far as emotional impact goes in this show, she’s at the heart of all of it. Akihito, while also a visually well designed character, falls flat comparatively. This isn’t to say I don’t like him, but I honestly just didn’t find there was all much to him when digging into the meat of the show.
Unfortunately, the same holds true for pretty much every other character, of which there are quite a few. I have difficulty remembering a lot of the names in the show just because there’s so little to identify anyone by. I mean, I remember the Nase family, and their role in getting Kuriyama to try to kill Akihito, but other than that I’m drawing a blank on anyone’s name. Normally, I would go on the wiki and just get their names for the sake of this review, but I feel, in this case, the fact that I don’t remember their names (and don’t care enough to try) illustrates just how bland and lifeless this show is.
Then there’s the issues I have with the show just from a plot structure standpoint. The first few episodes were solid. They set up the world we’re looking at, set up the youmu vs. spirit warrior stuff, and set up the main characters. I will say the ideas presented in the first half of the show are inconsistent with those presented later (money is illustrated as an idea in the first half in a way it just isn’t later). Then there’s this god awful filler episode (where they fucking dance as IDOLS for fucks sake). Then the show drops any pretense of really focusing on anyone other than our two mains and just barrels to the finish. That being said, I didn’t really have a problem with this; I felt the show was finding it’s footing and focusing on the truly interesting parts of the world it was focusing on, as well as the central character relationship. We find out that the youmu in Akihito is Beyond The Boundary, which is a dangerous youmu with no physical body. Kuriyama dies to destroy Beyond The Boundary without killing Akihito, and it was honestly pretty touching. Actually, had this show ended on around episode 10, where Akihito receives a text from the dead Kuriyama, I would have given this show a fairly high score. I mean, at least that would be tragic. At least it would mean something. It’d be like a 5 Centimeters Per Second or Steins;Gate type ending; he found love and then lost it. Also, I think “I don’t feel unpleasant” was a wonderfully touching last line for Kuriyama to have. It turns this phrase that she uses for comedy and general disdain and uses it to show she’s finally happy. THIS part made me shed a tear or two. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t end there, and has two and a half episodes left. After this, it just goes off the rails. Kuriyama is still alive on an alternate dimension that also happens to be in the sky and she is part of Beyond The Boundary and… wait, what? I watched the 11th episode twice because so much damn shit happens so fucking fast. Also, I was really trying to see if the main villain has any clear motive, but nah, he’s pretty irrelevant. I questioned if he even need to be there (I’m not really clear on his role in the show. I think he doesn’t have one). Basically, what ends up happening is Akihito ends up reabsorbing Beyond The Boundary, and then because Kuriyama is part of Beyond The Boundary she dies. And yeah, that was sad. But I wouldn’t say it was any sadder than when Akihito got that text from her (if anything it was less sad because it was somewhat more intimate). Then Akihito goes on the most fake-deep ending monologue I’ve heard in a long time (it made me laugh, honestly), and then KURIYAMA IS FUCKING ALIVE. There is no explanation. Did they forget which character they made immortal? Because that was Akihito. I mean, what the fuck is this? That character died and came back to life twice in like three episodes. That’s just poor writing.
Here, I’ll make a list of things that would have made this show good.
-cut out the filler (episode 6)
-replace it with an episode or two fleshing out the supplementary characters
-cut off the last two episodes
-remove the spirit warrior villain; Beyond The Boundary is enough to have as a villain
-end the show when Akihito receives a text from Kuriyama
That would have been a great show. But that's not what we have here. This isn’t the worst show I’ve seen, but it sure did disappoint me. I give it a 4/10, maybe a 5 on a good day. I wouldn’t really say it’s worth your time.
