Friday, September 16, 2016

FIF#21-Beyond the Boundary


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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