The Music

Admit it, the soundtrack of Kekkai Sensen – even if I never heard most of it because I watch my anime on mute – is one of the first things you think of. It’s endlessly full of character, so even if you just watch the OP or ED, you can tell what it’s on about and yet you won’t know what happens next.

An Aside

While I’m mentioning it, I would like to explain why I watch anime on mute (since I’ve gotten flak for it before in someone’s comment section and it still bugs me): I have tinnitus. Not enough to lose my hearing right now, but maybe in the future. The prospect of maybe losing my hearing has scared me so much, I’ve chosen not to take in the audio experience for many anime and try not to use headphones at all.

It also means I mishear some things, particularly things at low volumes in my right ear (which I used to rely on a lot) such as phone calls. The reason for this is I used to use earbuds to listen to a radio station and got so addicted, I didn’t stop until I woke up one day with a sound in my ear that sounded like old TV static. Thanks in no part to loud music at large events (like the ones that occur with some regularity at my food service job), it has since progressed to the point it actually sounds like wind rushing through a tunnel…although sometimes it may just be a blocked ear I’m panicking about too much (having earwax clog your ear magnifies the sound it hears) and you can get stuff from the chemist/doctor to unclog it.Yes, I know having tinnitus is ironic, given I have since fallen in love with Hypnosis Mic, a series which is known for its stellar audio content. However, life plays cruel tricks on you this way. I tried to get it professionally diagnosed in the past, but my parents thought it was a huge waste of money and since it has no cure anyway, only future prevention (such as noise-cancelling earbuds), I can only try to live with the aftereffects.

I bring it up in the Kekkai Sensen post not only to pad for words, but because this has been something that’s affected me since the beginning of the simulcast commentary (so fall 2014) – my anime choices tend to rely on storytelling and visual aspects as a result of the lack of audio evaluation, or they tend to have great audio in spite of the fact they are also visual feasts like Kekkai Sensen is.

Frenetic Energy

Back to Kekkai Sensen: the reason you won’t know what happens next is because the series likes to throw curveballs at the viewer.

I mean, and Beyond starts again from the beginning and then tries again but doesn’t finish. This “second chance” is an opportunity not granted to many anime over the years – Blue Exorcist, for one, goes from roughly where the manga deviates from the anime and keeps going, while Fruits Basket and Fullmetal Alchemist start from the beginning again and then tell the manga’s story to the very end…but the source hasn’t finished yet for Blue Exorcist or Kekkai Sensen, so it remains to be seen what kind of case it will ultimately become.

Infinte Amount of Stories to Tell

Kekkai Sensen tells a multitude of stories within its overarching story. This is because Leonardo, as the possessor of the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods, becomes a witness to the goings-on of the changed New York. Even the OP and the ED tell little stories by themselves and the references Kekkai Sensen makes to Anglophone media make it quite cheeky in ways you don’t expect from most other anime (except maybe Cowboy Bebop or FLCL).

The Place it Holds in Time and Space

Kekkai Sensen, as an anime I watched in 2015 as the first season aired, represents a particular snapshot in time, where I knew and understood less but things were more certain. (I mean, anything post-COVID has a level of uncertainty to it, you could argue.)

Even with how season 1 is structured, that structure was unpredictable back in the day…(yes, even in the day when COVID delays didn’t exist yet – sounds like a bad early warning sign for the huge pile-ups you see in the industry in this day and age)! The recap episode is still a recap episode, but I rank it highly because of the fact I’ve never seen any other recap episode like it since, although turning a recap episode into a radio show is something any old director could think of.

---

I’m sure I could explain more, but I think the reason why I’ve struggled to put out a rewatch post for this series in particular is that other people have said what I’ve said much more eloquently than I have here, plus my take on this series is more of a visceral feeling rather than coherent thoughts I can put into a somewhat-academic blog post.