STORY: Bizarre, aimless and minimalistic.
Kekkai Sensen & Beyond is a simple case of the week show. There is no overarching plotline, 1.5 episodes of overall story progression is a major letdown. Each episode is concatenation of bizarre events mixed with introduction of Libra members, who did not get attention in the first season. Those small and isolated stories are random to a degree, that you could think anything can happen in this city. In the process the show cannot establish its internal rules or boundaries for the world it is presenting and seems aimless. I mean if there are Vampires and Demons, why not highly advanced space bacteria?
There are numerous attempts to do humor, however most jokes, especially the physical ones, don't land; the whole ep 10 is one ongoing joke, which overstayed its welcome. The show tries to do meta humor with a lot of references of other shows: Inception ep 4, HxH ep 6 and more, however subpar writing transforms it in cheap rip-offs.
CHARACTERS: Wide as a sea, shallow as a puddle.
Kekkai Sensen & Beyond will often dedicate one whole episode to a character, and yet it somehow manages to tell almost nothing about the person in spotlight. Those episodes focus too much on the case and not the character, so that only one or two attributes can be added to a character description, leaving them paper thin. Afterwards their screen time will be reduced to nothing per episode.
There are not many occasions when the whole (or some) cast is in one room and bounces of each other in a snappy dialogue, a setting I would like to see because it actually advances characters and shows relationships. Zapp and Chain got their moments, sadly those are rare and far between.
I don’t remember Leo being this annoying in the first season. He is still a damsel in distress, but now he is mostly targeted by random thugs for his pocket money and not some higher beings for his God’s eyes.
But Sonic is still the best and steals the spotlight in every frame.
ART & ANIMATION: All that glitter is not gold.
Backgrounds are detailed and character models are appealing, although the later ones will be off model from time to time.
The animation of action scenes is somewhat sparse. Those will often consist of stylish freeze frames, most notably in ep 2 or 6. However, from time to time the viewer is spoiled with beautiful sakuga, like in ep 5. All in all, Kekkai Sensen & Beyond draws attention with its high production values, but cannot deliver consistently high quality visuals.
MUSIC: Some big shoes to fill.
The first season had very memorably music, especially the end theme, so that reaching the same quality was a very difficult task. Background music and original voice acting are still amazing.
