10 Second Anime - Kyoukai no Kanata - Episode 12 [END]

Kyoukai no Kanata - Episode 12 [END]

This show was not unpleasant. The good guys win, but there were some ambiguous endings.

I wish they had taken three episodes to tell the story in the last two episodes. Some things were introduced right at the end, without any signs of foreshadowing, and some things were never explained.

What was done right was Mirai and Akihito fighting the One Beyond the Boundary. Even how Mirai disappeared after the youmu was reintegrated with Akihito was understandable, along with how she came back when a ring used to contain her blood magic disappeared. We didn't get any good explanations, but just knowing they were related to her blood magic is good enough.

What was bad was how Izumi's circumstances were told. First, we have a continuity error with Yayoi Kanbara, talking with Izumi after she had busted into that classroom in the last episode. After changing outfits and switching to a bunny rabbit cutesy mode of speech, we have Hiromi and Mitsuki barging into the room to find their older sister. In the last episode, they were already in that room talking to Kanbara, with Mitsuki complaining how her archaic mode of speech didn't fit her sexy devil outfit. I don't know how to reconcile that.

Then, when they finally confront agent-man, it turns out that he's taken that pink tentacle youmu into his body in some weird attempt to mimic Akihito and the One Beyond the Boundary. Then he proclaims that Izumi has already done something similar but hasn't told her siblings. After the Nase siblings defeat him, before they get a chance to confront Izumi about this youmu inside her, where we have no overt signs that it's true, she poofs out of the scene. What the hell was that? Was agent-man's motivation for this whole strange thing with the youmu eating weapon powering the One Beyond the Boundary just to goad Izumi into admitting she absorbed a youmu? I don't know. He gets killed while laughing maniacally, which I started to do because I was going crazy trying to resolve all the nonsense that got dumped in my lap.

What was nice was seeing Ayaka and Ai safe inside the separate dimension the One Beyond the Boundary created, and help defeat the collection of youmu it had gathered in trying to overcome Mirai. So again, all the parts of this last episode dealing with Mirai and Akihito were consistent enough, and hit the right notes emotionally too with their farewell and reunion. Their story was not unpleasant.

Final Thoughts: this show started out strong, but it looks like they spent a little too much time on the slice of life aspects of the story in the first half of the season, and left too little time to tell the back half of the main story. We could have done without the stink-bomb episode, left that to an extra episode for when the episode disks get sold, and re-timed the rest of the episodes to fill in that gap. From what I understand, the source material did not have Yui's little sister Sakura, so her time may have been filled in with some elements of Izumi dealing with her embedded youmu. Questionable choices in direction here in the middle part of the season left a rushed feeling at the end, with too many unresolved issues, untimely introduced issues, and just a bunch of resolution scenes poured out on top of us. It was a good show until agent-man started acting like a villain for no reason. How Akihito, Mirai, Mitsuki, and Hiromi interacted with each other made Beyond the Boundary enjoyable. The handling of the main story... 不愉快 です (fuyukai desu, it is unpleasant).