Kekkai Sensen was a show I was really looking forward to, it was one of those anime which took a lot from the west in it's style and setting and shows like that (for example Baccano! Bebop etc) tend to be some of my favourite shows. This show unfortunatley failed to deliver on substance, it had a lot of style, but without character depth and a coherent story line this show ultimatly fell flat.
Story (3/10)
Nothing about the premise is bad, the story looks like it can go in interesting directions and the place it is set has a lot of potential, but the story falls flat in the way it is written and presented.
The story never felt coherent, it is always jumping around, cutting here and there which made the show feel very jarring. That unfortunately isn' the only thing wrong with how it is told, it is also badly written with little to no explanation of what's going on and why a characters is doing something, in short the plot is very convoluted . I think this lack of explanation and all the jumping around wouldn't be so bad if the story wasn't important to this show. Some of the episodic stories get along fine because it is self contained and you could just get along with enjoying the action/comedy.
But neither of these aspects where strong enough on their own to make this show very good and towards the end when they try and focus on the story more, it just made the show worse as it just becomes even more blatant how poorly written it was.
Characters (4/10)
The characters to this anime all have great design, they all look bad ass with cool clothes and personalities, they are all fun to watch. My main problem is that this anime just gives them style, they are really cool, but there is no substance to them, there is little to no development and only a small amount of characterisation. This is true for all the characters unfortunately, I don't think there is an exception to this.
For a specific example let's take the main protagonist Leornado who was a pretty generic and uninteresting character as he didn't have much too him and he was useless for most of the series. The only thing interesting about him to me was his eyes and not his character, it was the fact that he had his mystical eyes which made him special. My point with this is that of course you can have an average Joe get powers, that in itself could be relatable but this trait defined him too much simply because he had no personality, no depth, no development there wasn't much to him at all, he is completly forgetable and the only thing significant thing is just the fact that he had special eyes.
I feel this is the same case with the rest of the cast, they have a bit more energy and life to them than the MC, but the show didn't do anything with them. They felt stagnant and had little to them for the whole show and they were defined by only a few personality traits.
Sound/Animation (8/10, 8/10)
The show has a brilliant opening and ending, in fact the ending to this anime is probably one of my favourites, I very rarely even sit through an ending let alone look forward to when it's played. The OST for the show was really good aswell, it plays a huge variety of classic and iconic songs aswell as its own orignals, and it all fitted with the scenes for the most part and I felt they did add to the experience making what was going on screen better because of the music. The sound track to me was the most well done part of the series.
The Animation looked very good aswell, it was one of the better animated series in the spring season. On a more general basis I wouldn't rank the animation as a amazing as I wouldn't say the animation ranks with the top animated series I have seen, but the animation was top notch and as far as I can tell pretty consistent (I am bad at noticing quality drops though).
Enjoyment (4/10)
It has a lot of cool and crazy action and an awesome sound track but the mess which is the plot did ruin my enjoyment of the series. This series also did have comedy moments, but I wouldn't consider many funny, i only remember laughing to the pizza scene in episode 2, the rest of the time it tried to pull comedic moments wasn't that great and I felt it took me out of the moment, especially in the last episode where the MC was supposed to be trying to save the city, yet they would pull some comedic scenes which would ruin the mood.
I did enjoy watching this at times but it had too many things dragging it down for me to really enjoy it, it had its moments, but they where just moments, I didn't enjoy the majority of the show.
Conclusion (5/10)
As said before this is a style no substance show, it has awesome designs, settings and sound, but a messy plot with no character depth. Which is a shame as with all the style this show had I wish it could of done more with it. In my opinion I would skip this show, it just isn't worth your time, it had potential but it turned out to be mediocre.
