Cute girls use magic powers to fight monsters together with perverts.

Kyoukai no Kanata is beautifully animated. The fight scenes and the character animations are all simply beautiful. It also has a pretty good sense of humor, for the most part. One episode is dedicated to the cast training as an idol group, and it was absolutely hilarious.

However, the problem with Kyoukai no Kanata is that the story is uninspired. Girl and boy fall in love for stupid superficial reasons, sacrifice their lives for another, fight monsters, yada yada, technobabble. We’ve seen this story before. Many, many times. And usually with better characters. For example, the male lead is a Kyon-type, while some of the other characters include an imouto, a brother who’s obsessed with the imouto, a crazy travelling mother, an onee-san type, a psychotic lesbian, and a villain who turns out to be mostly just a pervert. Kyoani did well in trying to make these characters interesting, I would say, by inserting humor and presenting the characters in a visually interesting way. But there’s only so much they could do to hide the underlying problems in the story itself.

I also found the story confusing. I’m not sure if this is because it actually is confusing or if I just zoned out because I wasn’t interested though.

• Storytelling – B – This is the rare case where the storytelling is excellent, but the story itself is awful. It is very well told, still.
• Voice – B – A distinctive style for the battles and some of the characters’ interactions. I mostly hated Mirai’s character, but she did have very distinctive speech patterns.
• Characters – D – One-dimensional and uninteresting.
• Attention Grab – C – The pretty animation certainly caught my attention, but I didn’t pay much attention to what was actually happening.
• Production – A – Gorgeous
• Overall – C

Recommendations – Hyouka, Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai, Angel Beats