Review of Blood Blockade Battlefront
Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen burst onto the scene with far less acclaim than it deserves. It had been years since we’d been shaken to our boots by Nightow’s seminal work: Trigun, which exists as some pretty big shoes that Kekkai Sensen has filled out nicely. Leonardo Watch is an aspiring photo journalist who has made his way to Hell Salems Lot, a neighborhood in NYC where a portal to an alter-world has opened up and humans and monsters now must coexist. Leo, struggling to adapt to the new & incredibly diverse normal he’s found himself in, gets wrapped up into a secret organization named Librathat essentially exists to keep the peace between the monster and human worlds. From there he goes on to struggle through culture shock & insanity of everyday life with this group of colorful characters with diverse backgrounds and capabilities.
The anime adaptation of the work, while it doesn’t exactly follow the manga, remains consistent with the East-meets-West spirit of Nightow’s work, the characters and the city as he conceives it.
While I can understand the potential for the explosive nature of Kekkai Sensen to turn some viewers off, it’s fans sing its praises for its parade-like charm as an unparalleled strength. The series is an adventure-comedy, but don’t think for a second that it isn’t without a surprising amount of depth. KS characters possess unique back stories, outlooks & philosophies on life, they struggle through guilt and relate to each other in understandably different ways.
Most central to the depth of this story however is the relationship between Leo, Michella (Leo’s sister), Mary (White) and William (Black). Without getting into too much detail, the intrapersonal tensions each of these people have with each other and their experiences as two sets of siblings are navigated so compellingly you almost forget that Zapp Renfro--just about the anime version of Bender from Futurama--somehow exists in the same show.
It's opening song "Hello World" by Bump of Chicken deserves a serious honorable mention as it exquisitely captures the pace, spirit and emotion wrapped up in this title you will not want to miss out on.
I truly don’t see any problems with this title other than maybe it should have been drawn out further. It’s a masterpiece that has been egregiously underrated.
“Everyone thinks at some point if what they are doing has any meaning or not. Will the day come when I get what's coming to me, or not? How much influence does my existence have on the world at all, or doesn't it?” - William Macbeth
100% Seinen Jump approval.
FFO: Baccano, Bungou Stray Dogs, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop