Summary
Warning: This contains mild spoilers for Kekkai Sensen and Kekkai Sensen & Beyond, now streaming onCrunchyroll.
It wasn’t so long ago that anime adaptations could go down a very different path from their source material, usually because they started too soon and quickly caught up, meaning filler or a quick death. Anime fans nowadays are used to a new norm by which these endings are far rarer, and where adapting faithfully is of the utmost importance, butKekkai Sensenis a special case.
Also going by the nameBlood Blockade Battlefront,Kekkaibegan airing in 2015, animated by Studio Bones and directed by the fiercely talented Rie Matsumoto,who we’ve written about before. It told the story of Leonardo Watch, a young man who ventures to a transformed New York City - renamed Hellsalem’s Lot - to uncover the mystery of his magical eyes in an effort to save his sister.
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The City That Never Sleeps
Kekkai Sensenwas a peculiar and utterly inspired action series that caught a lot of attention when it began airing, and if it wasn’t for the three-month delay of its season finale, it may have gotten even more attention. The thought ofan anime from a major studio set in New York Citywas wild, and for it to capture the hustle and bustle of such a major metropolis was no short feat.
Granted, there were a lot more aliens and monsters around, but many critics praised the lived-in feel of Hellsalem’s Lot, a vibe that was felt in every frame, every song, and every character. But what truly made the show stand out - for good and bad - was Matsumoto’s directing. Without parroting our previously written spotlight on her work, she packs a lot into each episode.
At times, episodes can throw so much at the viewer that it can be confusing, but there’s an emotionality to the storytelling that can be a gift that keeps on giving. Of course, fans of the original manga are rarely concerned with how Matsumoto breathed life into the world; they take umbrage with howshe created an original storyrather than just adapting the manga.
See,Kekkai Sensenis based on a manga written by Yasuhiro Nightow, author of Trigun. It can be easy to forget that given how much of the creative identity is associated with Matsumoto, althoughthe designs are certainly cool enoughto have come from Nightow. While Matsumoto introduced the world and the characters with great success, the whole first season was wrapped up in a plot focused on two original characters. Some fans considered this a disservice to the original.
Filler vs. A Full Circle
The issue with that complaint is that the manga didn’t really have an end goal in mind. Ask anyone who has read the manga about the plot and the most common response is that there isn’t really a story - more of a series of adventures with the members of Libra saving the city. To that point, when one looks at Rie Matsumoto’s past work, that’s not the kind of story she is best at.
She createsstories about life through the lens of family, love, and growing up, but in a way that is bold, loud, and as full of life as her characters. To some, maybe that makes her an ill-fitting choice to directKekkai, but it arguably makes her perfect. After all, it’s about a young man navigating adolescence in a city where he feels out of place and out of his depth. She couldn’t magically give it an ending, but she could give it just one full circle.
That’s exactly what she did. William and Mary Macbeth - nicknamed “Black” and “White” - are two original characters who both befriend Leonardo and play a huge role in a story that sees the story nearly destroyed. In a way, their struggle mirrors Leo’s, which in turn gives him a stronger arc. Some detractors call this story “filler” because it wasn’t in the manga, but that speaks to an inherentmisunderstanding of what that word really means.
Filler describes narrative content that was added to fill a gap between breaks in the main storyline when there isn’t enough source material to adapt. That’s really it, but people will use filler derisively for anything that wasn’t in the manga. To be fair, it’s because there are a lot of bad filler arcs in anime, especially shōnen. However, Just because something is anime-original doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.
And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t valid criticisms ofKekkai Senseneither. For all of Matsumoto’s kinetic vision and infectious charm,Kekkaican be hard to follow,especially on the first viewing. Additionally, for some, Season 1’s sentimentality can come off as a distraction from the action that the story was sold on and that there could have been more of.
… & Beyond
As luck would have it, there would be more. 2017’sKekkai Sensen & Beyond, directed this time by Shigehito Takayanagi (Dagashi Kashi,Tokyo ESP,The World God Only Knows). People seem to like it and judging by the MyAnimeList scores alone, it ranks just a tad higher than the first season. “Kekkai Sensenbut faithful to the manga” is how the story tends to go, and it’s true that of its 12 episodes, exponentially more of the runtime is adapted straight from the manga.
It’s quite a wonder that the series retains much of the same spirit even without Matsumoto’s directing, and much of that is thanks to Taisei Iwasaki returning to compose the music.The multi-genre onslaught presents a musical atmosphereas diverse as Hellsalem’s Lot itself. Although at times, Matsumoto’s absence is certainly felt, not the least bit whenBeyondseems to repeat a lot of Season 1’s greatest hits.
Just like Season 1’s premiere,Beyondopens with a hectic mission that sees Leo running across town on a desperate assignment. By the end, just like in Season 1, the finale is twice as long as a normal episode, challenges Leo to his core, and ends with a symbolic passing of the torch from Klaus to Leo. It’s a tad iterative, but it doesn’t feel that way when watching, thanks to some impeccable animation talent, especially Bones' very own Yutaka Nakamura.
Depending on one’s viewpoint and relationship with the source material,Kekkai Sensen & Beyondmight hit differently. Maybe it feels likea much-needed improvement over the first season. For others, it might lack that delicate touch that Matsumoto lent to the story that made it a masterpiece. But ultimately, it’s just moreKekkai Sensen, and that’s exactly what it says on the tin: “Beyond”; an encore.
Rie Matsumoto’sKekkai Sensenwas a thesis statement for its story, one which crafted something new to compensate for the lack of an apparent throughline, thus elevating the art to something more. Far from improving upon or detracting from it,Kekkai Sensen & Beyondwas more of what fans loved; a sequel in the simplest ways that one can be. And whether one is better than the other or not, neither one would arguably be complete without the other.
Kekkai Sensen and Kekkai Sensen & Beyond are available to stream onCrunchyroll.
