On a beautiful day at school, Akihito Kanbara rushes to the aid of a fellow
classmate, who looks like she’s about to commit suicide. What neither realize at that moment is,
nothing is as it seems. Now Akihito, an
immortal half human/half Yoummu, finds himself the constant target of this
girl, Mirai Kuriyama, who is the last of a special line of Spirit World Warrior
with the ability to make swords from her own blood. Akihito is warned to stay away from this
girl, but finds himself more intrigued by this shy warrior who has never killed
a Yoummu in her life. What destiny
awaits when these two join forces to track down Yoummu and get Kuriyama the
confidence she needs so she can stop using Akihito for stabbing practice?
So…boy sees girl about to jump. Boy rushes to girls aid. Girl does a backflip and stabs him in the
heart with a sword. Boy doesn’t die. Girl is shocked. Roll opening credits.
I gotta admit, that’s a pretty interesting way to open
things. However, as the episode
progressed, I found myself wondering why Beyond the Boundary gets as much hype
as it does. Granted the first half of
the first episode is spent with Akihito and his fellow student, Mitsuki, and
both are really, really, boring. Like I
was yawning even at the attempts at humor.
If I was to guess the rest of the show would be a lot like this segment,
I’d stop watching right now.
And then Kuriyama got back into the picture. Gone was the bad ass who did a back flip and
stabbed a kid for seemingly no reason.
Not that the bad ass in her is gone, but there’s more entertainment to
be gained from the fact that she’s cute, shy and so unsure of herself and a
pretty huge clutz. She also has some of
the best reactions in the series. When
chasing Akihito and slicing away at his impromptu projectiles, she screams, “You
made me kill the bucket”. Do we really
need other characters in this series and can we focus squarely on
Kuriyama? I’m guessing there’s bound to
be (no pun intended) a huge amount of drama that comes along. But for now, Kuriyama’s levity in just being
herself was a welcome breath of fresh air after a very slow first half of the
episode.
Not a lot is put out there about how this world works,
why some can see Yomuu and others cant, why there are Spirit World Warriors-one
of whom looks like a sexy teacher I wish I could have seen more of in the first
episode. We get a pretty bare bones
explanation as to the mission of the Spirit World Warriors but not much
else. As to Akihito’s situation…I really
don’t care. He makes immortality more
boring than interesting. Hell even the
MacLeoud’s in Highlander had to grapple with loss of loved ones over a period
of time, making for great drama and character study. Akihito is just there to give Kuriyama
someone to bounce good humor off of. I
mean does he even have any powers besides not being able to die? As we saw Kuriyama get her bad ass on in the
last few moments against the Youmuu in her apartment, I was wondering if
Akihito was going to do more than step out of the way of attacks.
There’s plenty to love just out of Kuriyama alone. Though I’m not sure I’m set to commit to
Beyond the Boundary on her cuteness, clumsiness and bad assery. The world around her seems more dull than
fascinating and it doesn’t help that her co star isn’t the least bit
interesting, same with the company he keeps.
I might try to give this one a couple more episodes to change my mind on
some things. But don’t think im putting
this show down completely. Kuriyama
steals every scene she’s in and when the camera is focused on other things, her
lack of presence, even for a single second, is felt.
We’ll see how this goes.
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