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「Don’t forget to Don’t forget me」
What an impressive piece of awesomeness this show is.
My esteem for Kekkai Sensen is growing every week, for the simple reason that there seems to be no limit to the wellspring of creativity at the heart of it. There’s so much talent and passion that goes into making this show – the former is easy to see, but the latter is more subtle. When the creators of an anime really care you san see that play out in the attention to detail – stuff like the "Don’t Forget Me" poster art behind Leonardo and Nej (we’ll get to him), and the crazy beasties walking by on the street behind a window (and in the fact that the previews are not throwaways but fertile ground for the imagination – this time a barbershop quartet take on Vivaldi’s "The Four Seasons").
That sort of commitment is really only seen in series of a very, very high standard in my opinion – stuff like FLCL, Seirei no Moribito and Tsuritama. I’ve mentioned in previous posts some of the shows Blood Blockade Battlefront specifically reminds me of, but I’ll add another to this list – Space Dandy. In the first place this was an extremely Dandy-ish episode – a funny but emotionally resonant standalone story with non-human characters who have very human qualities interacting with the hero. But there’s also the fact that BBB shares something of Dandy’s narrative structure – relentless visual brilliance, a loose running plot that’s tangentially related to weekly events. That was a BONES show too, of course, and some of the many stalwarts who worked on it are also regulars on Kekkai Sensen – so the resemblance is hardly coincidental.
This week’s tale was built around the aforementioned Nej – Amagranoff Luozontam Ouv Lee Nej (Ohtani Ikue). He’s a mushroom (I wasn’t sure at first) who has a serious jones for burgers – burgers from Jack & Rockets, one of the last burger joints left in Midtown and an amalgam of Johnny Rockets and Jack in the box. It’s as he’s rushing after Leo to try and bum a bite that he’s run over by a truck driven by a couple of lowlifes played by Kaji Yuuki and Shioya Kouzou. Being a mushroom he’s fine, but Leo being Leo he springs to the little shroom’s defense, Eventually Nej gets the drivers’ half-eaten burger and all seems settled, but things get kind of dark after that.
The tone of the rest of the episode is really interesting. The friendship between Leonardo and Nej is legitimately heartwarming, and does a lot to cement the impression of Leo as a good kid with an intolerance for injustice. But things get pretty dark, as I said – in the first place, it’s really the first time we’re shown the extent of the discrimination extra-dimensionals face in Hellsalem’s Lot (and not just the "A mushroom walks into a burger joint…" kind). Then there’s he physical abuse Nej faces – first when the two drivers hit him yet again, and the more brutish Roger beats him cruelly, and then later when the more cunning Martin decides to try and recreate what happened after Roger’s beating. It’s brutal to watch, really disturbing – and it’s absolutely meant to be.
Nej is impossible not to like – he’s a fun guy – but he’s got an ability so secret even he doesn’t know about it, and Martin wants it. When he gets stressed he turns bright red and looses his spores, which cause an amnesia event for everyone in the area (Martin witnessed this because he was wearing a gas mask due to Roger pissing himself in the truck’s cab). It’s the reason Nej (who seems to be dressed in a mushroom middle school uniform and is a comics otaku) and his mother can’t remember each other. Leo wasn’t present for that event, but he was the indirect cause of the second – it was after Martin bashed his head open with a baseball bat that Nej really went off big-time. As a result of that, Nej and Leo forget each other of course – but happily, they have another meeting that mirrors their first, and their weird friendship is reborn.
Again, for me that story had Space Dandy written all over it – and I mean that as a compliment. Absurd but relatable. As for the recurring storyline, not atypically it gets focus only in the final moments – this time with Leo walking into White’s hospital room as she’s visiting with her brother. Yes, that part is confirmed – White says he’s her Onii-chan – and the brother says "Call me Black" and claims that he and Leo have never met. Is this a lie, or perhaps the impact of a Nej incident (unlikely) or even a case of multiple personalities for Black? Something doesn’t add up here, that’s a definite.
Preview
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I love the sound effect the use for Leo’s eyes. It sounds so cool.
And what a strange right in the feels episode!
Also, still the best ED of the season.
Yeah this sound is very peculiar, there’s almost the same in Summer Wars Show Spoiler ▼
white a best
https://randomc.net/image/Kekkai%20Sensen/Kekkai%20Sensen%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2036.jpg
Oh, Leon…
Are you surprised on the coincidence that White is talking to a guy you’ve met before;
Or you’re just surprised some guy getting so chummy with your girl?
LOVE & PEACE!
http://i.imgur.com/hazKWFZ.jpg
Way to go Nightow for quoting his own works lol
This episode’s soundtrack was A++
All dat feels!
https://randomc.net/image/Kekkai%20Sensen/Kekkai%20Sensen%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2032.jpg
I didn’t no burgers have a dose of feels in it! I teared up!
Love the trigun reference! and its hard to see but she did the handsign too!
also i saw a sign, it looks like it says Nightow, and another is Kuro,
Actually the closest thing to Kekkai is Cowboy Bebop as well as Trigun (which i watched back to back when they came out), the idea of dedicating the entire first half of the show for world and character building through episodic seemingly unrelated stories was really done best by those two shows (but IMO Cowboy Bebeop perfected it, Dandy tried to recapture it but i think it was out to do something slightly different .. which is total wacky randomness and adventures, it’s still Shinichiro Watanabe in both).
What makes this idea fail in most modern anime and work in shows like Cowboy, Trigun and B3 is having a strong theme/s and a strong style which most shows just lack … but these series has it in spades .. the stories always seem unrelated and all over the place (remember Cowboy Bebobp having episodes about some hallucination substance, another about some alien gello thing, another about a creepy insane super soldier .. in short ..none of them had anything to do with the main story or with each other) but with the flair of the style and strong themes of these show it simply just works like … hmmm .. magic!!?
Again .. in about 20 mins this show managed to make me smile, laugh, get disturbed and even get teary eyed … about a little mushroom kid XD
This is speculation, and I’m not sure if anyone else has pointed this out but
Show Spoiler ▼
Nej was freaking adorable, holy hell wtf. If he’s not recurring I’ll be upset.
Leo’s relationship with White is freaking adorable, holy hell wtf.
Love this show <3
I gotta say the music for this show is superb. The track that was playing when Nej and Leo were getting beaten was great. I really want to know when the soundtrack is coming out.
Release date for the OST is July 15th, so still 2 months until then.
Had a hard time sitting through that pummelling but otherwise another superb episode. I’m really impressed with the world-building of this series, it’s zany but it seems to work. Very few anime out there can do that.
I’m just gonna add my voice to the chorus. Great show. It was a bit weird at first because the lack of direction seemed like kind of a weakness, but once you kind of come around to the idea that the world itself is the point, and the presentation is just amazing, I find myself enjoying it exponentially more with every episode.
Also, I really enjoy Leo’s relationship with White. My understanding is it’s anime-original, but I hope they give it a satisfying resolution and don’t kill her or something to get her out of the way of the ‘true’ plot.
Is that the voice of Tony Tony Chopper?
Yup, Otani Ikue, who also voices Pikachu =3
I, too, like the sound effect for Leo’s eyes. I don’t know who created it but it is used regularly in anime as a badass sound. I remember the movie “Summer Wars” using it for the virus, but I’m sure I heard it in other anime too.
For those unfamiliar with American comics – “Ron Jomita , Jr.” (the artist for the burger wrappers Nej geeks out over) is a not so subtle reference to the prolific comic book artist John Romita Jr. (aka JRJR). He has drawn tons of Marvel books, and is the current artist for the ongoing Superman book.
Talk about a super obscure reference for an anime…
So different. So good.
One episode with so much feel. This episode reminded me with the episode where QT fall in love with a Coffee Maker robot. A non human character with so much feeling to show to the audiences. This episode sealed my love for the show.
https://randomc.net/image/Kekkai%20Sensen/Kekkai%20Sensen%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2035.jpg
This pic…… THE FEELS!
why can’t anime be like this anymore? back when there was common sense and two people of the same sex could hang out, have fun, and have an actual friendship and nobody screamed “omg they must be in love with each other because so and so blushed around this person” forgetting that blushing can mean admiration not romantic love. I just love how nightglow isn’t the pandering type I love how he’s making a show anyone can enjoy without insulting the audience’s intelligence or catering to specific fetishes just for the sake of catering to them.
that feeling…
What a great episode!
and yet, where is episode 12…. btw, I need that sound effect ;^;