heidenreich.juana - 2015-10-23 16:55:41

Blood Blockade Battlefront(Kekkai Sensen) is one the most enjoyable anime I have seen in recent years. The concept is unique, the setting is insane, and the characters are a joy watch. Bones is back, its been a few years, Noragami and Space Dandy were a signal of their return and with Blood Blockade Battlefront and Snow White with Red-Hair Bones have finally made their return to form.

kohler.frederique - 2015-10-20 08:27:01

Kekkai Sensen was the show of Spring 2015 I was most hyped about. I agree mostly with Grimvor's review but I want to let you know why I still enjoyed this anime.

The animation is stellar - quick, flashy, pretty and detailed at the same time. 

The jazzy songs give this anime a very original and authentic feel.

Now to the story and the characters. One thing that is sometimes criticized about Kekkai Sensen is the weak golden thread. The first half of the season consists of great stand-alone episodes. The world that was created is vibrant and lively and lends itself to many interesting short stories. As witty and flamboyant the episodes are, one might be reminded of Gintama. I would not have been mad if it had stayed this way. 

The second half, however, focuses more on plot development and this is where things start to speed up. So much so, that one might think it's rushed. And it is, this anime could have easily filled 24 episodes with what this world had to offer. And even though the overarching plot was very interesting, a lot of questions were left unanswered. Why is this happening? Why is this character doing that? What is even happening? 

I don't want to excuse this obvious weakness, but I still want to give you another perspective. 

There is one thing you have to understand about Kekkai Sensen: it is about a world where the special is the ordinary. It's something normal for the diner to have to rebuild their shop over and over again because of a catastrophe. They are used to it. 

And this big overarching plot? It's just an especially unusual day in an unusual world. There is no big motive behind the plot. The "villains" are just following their whim, befitting the city where nothing follows common sense. 

If you were looking for a deeper meaning or some kind of in-depth explanation for the latter half of the season, you might want to reconsider your viewpoint.

In my opinion, the goal of this anime never was to build a huge plot with lots of intrigue and explanations. Instead, it aims to show life in York New and the ridiculousness it can reach. And Libra, the home of most of the cast, just happens to be in its epicenter.

So let yourself be dazzled by the jazzy soundtrack and go for a ride in the crazy city of Kekkai Sensen and see what it has to offer.

marisa.dietrich - 2015-10-07 10:59:43

"As long as he's not dead, I'm sure he's alive."
- Zapp Renfro

It's an anime with different kinds of genres in it....

toney21 - 2015-10-07 00:00:19

This Review won't contain any spoilers.
Kekkai Sensen was a show I was really looking forward to, it was one of those anime which took a lot from the west in it's style and setting and shows like that (for example Baccano! Bebop etc) tend to be some of my favourite shows. This show unfortunatley failed to deliver on substance, it had a lot of style, but without character depth and a coherent story line this show ultimatly fell flat.
 
SynopsisThe story centers around a boy named Leornado Watch, a main character who posses the all seeing eyes of God (magic eyes), he visits a part of New York which is sealed in a dome, due to a breach in the never world causing lots of supernatural creatures to apear. His goal for the series is to find some way in this crazy part of city to restore his blind sister's sight.

Story (3/10)Nothing about the premise is bad, the story looks like it can go in interesting directions and the place it is set has a lot of potential, but the story falls flat in the way it is written and presented.

The story never felt coherent, it is always jumping around, cutting here and there which made the show feel very jarring. That unfortunately isn' the only thing wrong with how it is told, it is also badly written with little to no explanation of what's going on and why a characters is doing something, in short the plot is very convoluted . I think this lack of explanation and all the jumping around wouldn't be so bad if the story wasn't important to this show. Some of the episodic stories get along fine because it is self contained and you could just get along with enjoying the action/comedy.

But neither of these aspects where strong enough on their own to make this show very good and towards the end when they try and focus on the story more, it just made the show worse as it just becomes even more blatant how poorly written it was.

Characters (4/10)The characters to this anime all have great design, they all look bad ass with cool clothes and personalities, they are all fun to watch. My main problem is that this anime just gives them style, they are really cool, but there is no substance to them, there is little to no development and only a small amount of characterisation. This is true for all the characters unfortunately, I don't think there is an exception to this.

For a specific example let's take the main protagonist Leornado who was a pretty generic and uninteresting character as he didn't have much too him and he was useless for most of the series. The only thing interesting about him to me was his eyes and not his character, it was the fact that he had his mystical eyes which made him special. My point with this is that of course you can have an average Joe get powers, that in itself could be relatable but this trait defined him too much simply because he had no personality, no depth, no development there wasn't much to him at all, he is completly forgetable and the only thing significant thing is just the fact that he had special eyes.

I feel this is the same case with the rest of the cast, they have a bit more energy and life to them than the MC, but the show didn't do anything with them. They felt stagnant and had little to them for the whole show and they were defined by only a few personality traits.

Sound/Animation (8/10, 7.5/10)The show has a brilliant opening and ending, in fact the ending to this anime is probably one of my favourites, I very rarely even sit through an ending let alone look forward to when it's played. The OST for the show was really good aswell, it plays a huge variety of classic and iconic songs aswell as its own orignals, and it all fitted with the scenes for the most part and I felt they did add to the experience making what was going on screen better because of the music. The sound track to me was the most well done part of the series.

The Animation looked very good aswell, it was one of the better animated series in the spring season. On a more general basis I wouldn't rank the animation as a amazing as I wouldn't say the animation ranks with the top animated series I have seen, but the animation was top notch and as far as I can tell pretty consistent (I am bad at noticing quality drops though).

Enjoyment (4/10)It has a lot of cool and crazy action and an awesome sound track but the mess which is the plot did ruin my enjoyment of the series. This series also did have a few comedy moments, but not many, i only remember laughing to the pizza scene in episode 2, the rest of the time it tried to pull comedic moments wasn't that great and I felt it took me out of the moment, especially in the last episode where the MC was supposed to be trying to save the city, yet they would pull some comedic scenes which would ruin the mood.
I did enjoy watching this at times but it had too many things dragging it down for me to really enjoy it, it had its moments, but they where just moments, I didn't enjoy the majority of the show.

Conclusion (5/10)As said in the description this is a style no substance show, it has awesome designs, settings and sound, but a messy plot with no character depth. Which is a shame as with all the style this show had I wish it could of done more with it. In my opinion I would skip this show, it just isn't worth your time, it had potential but it turned out to be mediocre.

orlando.stehr - 2015-10-06 23:26:48

A mesmerizing plot with character's who are absolutely amazing.

cummerata.hailie - 2015-08-19 13:11:20

O ambiente no Blood Blockade Battlefront  é o que mais me fascina, cheio de estilo desde a animação de qualidade da Bones com o seu estilo de desenho à mão que se adapta perfeitamente com os fundos (felizmente usaram muito pouco 3D), à forma como decidem mostrar cada cena, que combina com a boa musica Jazz criando uma atmosfera positiva que me fez lembrar Baccano. São episódio energizados onde tudo acontece muito depressa sem tempo a perder a um elenco cheio de personalidade numa cidade imprevisível.

A breach between Earth and the netherworlds has opened up over the city of New York, trapping New Yorkers and creatures from other dimensions in an impenetrable bubble. They've lived together for years, in a world of crazy crime sci-fi sensibilities. Now someone is threatening to sever the bubble, and a group of stylish superhumans is working to keep it from happening.

Cada episódio parece não ter nada a ver com o anterior e que apenas está a mostrar o mundo os seus habitantes e dilemas, mas não é verdade, todos os episódios revelam pequenas informações sobre a história, mas temos que estar atentos para ir apanhando as migalhas de informação que nos são dadas para montar o puzzle. Seguimos o Leonard Watch que adquiriu os Olhos de Deus e por isso consegue ver coisas que mais ninguém consegue e juntou-se à organização Libra um grupo de superhumanos cheios de estilo para ajudar a manter o balanço entre criaturas de outras dimensões e os humanos resolvendo crimes e situações delicadas , mas agora alguém está a ameaçar esse balanço, adivinha a quem toca impedir isso.

O anime tem um ar leve e divertido apesar de muitas vezes estar a lidar com o passado não tão feliz do elenco, que por falar neles demonstram muita personalidade e com designs interessantes que os distinguem uns dos outros, infelizmente a maior parte do elenco não é assim muito desenvolvido. Durante a temporada vários personagens vão sendo introduzidos mantendo assim a equipa fresca e imprevisível. há também uma macaco super sónico fofinho.

Este foi para mim um dos melhores animes da temporada da Primavera de 2015 e recomendo basicamente a todos, tem comédia, estilo distinto e jazzy, personagens, história, boa animação e musica.

Logingamer // videojogos e cenas geek

borer.elody - 2015-06-21 10:51:43

I have to go very much out of my usual formula to review Kekkai Sensen, because it is a rather complicated case… This is also going to be a very quick review, seeing as the shows “flaws” are huge, and can be summarised quickly.

For starters, the show looks AMAZING, and is in my opinion the best looker of spring 2015. What truly sells the visuals is the directing. It gives of a sense of uncontrollable energy and fun, which upped the overall score for visuals quite the bit. The soundtrack is also pretty sweet. I actually found myself listening through the opening, instead of skipping through it, just because how amazing the song is. Same goes for the ending. Simply put, very listenable. As for the rest of the soundtrack, your usual mediocre background tracks sprinkled with some great standout tracks in-between for good measure ^_^

Talking about the story is the hardest part. After watching each episode, I had myself thinking; “Man, that was a great episode!”. The comedy is on point, the plot was amusing, the characters were entertaining, the shows structure was original (see recap episode 10.5), etc.. Overall a great show! And this worked out very well for the first 7 or so episodes, but after that point, one thing in particular became very apparent. Every episode feels like a separate work on its own, with only the main cast and the location to tie them together. There is no semblance of a story at all. One episode ends with the main cast looking over an army of demons, the next has our main character bribing a mushroom with hamburgers. What little there is of a story is basicly, New York is surrounded by a fog that has connected the demon world to the "human world". How? We're never told... In this new New York, monsters and humans have to co-exist. In the midsts of all this, our main protagonist has decided to move to New York, where after a series of coincidences, begins working for Libra, an organisation centered around keeping threats at bay. Aaand thats about it... There is hinted towards a story from time to another; the world is threatened by vampires, Leonard has self-doubt issues, Libra is a group of misfits trying to make a living, etc. but it is all so very subtile, until it is slapped straight in our face like a plot twist. The thing is, it is not a plot twist, just a speedy plot point. My major gripe here, is that it feels like the story is being sidetracked for comedy, or rather filler episodes, which have no place in a 12ep show. It could have been along the lines of character centric episodes, but the aforementioned "filler episodes" are merely arbitrary comedy skeets...

You could make the argument that Kekkai Sensen is a ”slice of nothing ever happens” comedy, and should be judged accordingly, but the show occasionally, tries hard to get its story across the board, and thus has to be judged as so. If Kekkai Sensen had been something along the lines of Kara no Kyoukai or Haruhi Suzumiya, where the episodes were not released chronologically, then the aforementioned ridiculously bad pacing and poorly tied together story could have been due to me just not understanding the plot due to unconventional conveying, but I can’t even put the blame on such  a scenario.

As for the characters, there are just too many of them. But they all have two things in common. They are all based on character tropes, and they are all ridiculously two dimensional. I could go in depth (or as far as possible with the rather limited personality each and everyone were given) about each and every character, but instead il just list a few of the main. You hardly need anything more than this before you know everything about the characters. You have your run of the mill easygoing main character (Leonard Watch), the asshole (Zapp), the tough but straight guy (Klaus), deluded villain (Femt), obligatory love interest (Mary/White) and the whimp (William/Black). To the shows credit, episode 11 is pure characterisation, telling about the past of some of the main characters, but it is very much a "too little, too late" scenario. Instead, they should have put this episode closer to the mid-point. Indeed, it could take some of the suspense away from the anime, but at least the story would have been a tiny bit less non-sensical.

To summarise, Kekkai Sensen is a show that had a lot of potential. Every episode in and of itself were great, but the episodes themselves had no semblance of connection. The show falls flat on its face due to horrible pacing, limited character characterisation, little to none character development and a too short of a runtime. Say, if Kekkai Sensen had received a 26 episode runtime, the MABY the characters and the story would have had the time to be fully fletched out, instead of being the rushed mess that it is. The shows main selling points are definitively the animation, music and comedy, and with the exception of the aforementioned being great, there is very little to talk about... Kekkai Sensen could have been great, but ultimately is a rushed mess, and the final episode being posponed indefinitely further underlines that statement

rcrona - 2015-04-30 00:46:52

At this point (4 ep. in) I love this show. It is so fast paced that you have to stay focused for every second. I feel like it would benefit from a dub but I am loving it so much that I can't wait for one to be released.

The characters are interesting and likable, and while they have not had much time to develop thus far I have faith that they will continue to be intriguing.

This show is kind of like Durarara on steroids. The ed. for this show is also fantastic. Dancing with fedoras? Whats not to like?

Another stand out aspect is the brilliant soundtrack that is reminiscent of Baccano's jazzy melodies. Animation is also excellent and the way its directed helps make it feel unique and conveys a sense of momentum.

I would definitely recommend this show as I consider it to be one of the high points of this season.

gene95 - 2015-04-20 13:56:01

Fantastic combination of likable characters, refreshing plot, amazing music tracks. I watched the first episode and immediately I knew it's my favourite anime this season. Action + Supernatural + Comedy = RECOMMENDED! 

mathew.reilly - 2015-04-05 14:59:17

Very good first episode. I am excited to see the next episode. The only problem for me was that the animation was all over the place.I think that was part of the style of the animation though. Because some of the scenes were really good.I maybe be biased because I watched this after marathoning Fate Stay Night. it is just that there were a lot of details in one scene and on another, just some lines. But the story and the characters made up for that. This is going to be one of the many weekend anime that I will be looking forward to watching every week.