結界師/Barrier Master/Kekkaishi

I’ve said much of this before, but I am honestly surprised how little impact Kekkaishi seems to have made, at least on the Western anime crowd. In Japan, it has every sign of a big success. Yellow Tanabe’s manga netted her some high-profile awards, and is still continuing strong. The anime began with great fanfare in Japan and ran in the ‘golden time’ slot of 7pm, and even had Happy Meal tie-in offers with McDonalds. Its ratings there are sensational, behind only institutions like Sazae-San and One Piece, consistently getting into the top 10 most highly-rated anime shows in Japan and outdoing the likes of Naruto and Bleach by several million weekly viewers – and those are two of the most successful anime in history. It has been translated into English and is being aired. Yet Kekkaishi seems almost unknown in the English-speaking fandom. The problem, I suppose, is that it didn’t strike a chord with the three main demographics over here – the brainless action fans who only ever come to the party very late, the snobs who want sexy little girls getting naked transformation sequences and the yaoi fangirls who need their homoeroticism immediately apparent, not slow-boiling and with a quirky sense of prettiness.

Yet there is much to love about Kekkaishi. Its characters are subtle and likeable. As with Fullmetal Alchemist, one can tell the writer is a woman, which puts a different slant on home life, responsibility and the need for violence than you might get in typical shounen. It is not beautifully animated, but it is good-looking and fluid, Sunrise as usual adept without being stunning.

The problem, I suppose, is that it took too long to get into a meaty plot. Too many episodes at the beginning are given to establishing characters, telling little side-stories and emphasising comedy with a dead pastry chef (which was totally ripped off by Bleach, leading to viewers of both shows feeling they were watching a rehashed story). But Bleach took much longer to get going, and was far from gripping for a long time. Yoshimori is odd in that he is described as not being particularly attractive, and having a big dream totally at odds with his fights and his powers, and I suppose people who don’t take the time to see him for the likeable, quirky boy he is could find him unappealing. And yes, the series, like Fairy Tail or HunterxHunter, does suffer from not having a goal at the end of the series, no return to original bodies or confrontation with Sasuke drawing you on, only a mysterious mother and a shady group of powerful figures, and even those barely make it into the anime.

I want to rationalise why Kekkaishi was not a success, but the fact was that it was, it was a huge success in Japan. It just didn’t manage to cross over to a world where, perhaps, gratification must be more instant, or more challenging work must be obviously challenging. I just wish that it was an ongoing series; 52 episodes only just reached the parts where it gets good.

(originally written 16.3.2010)