Review of Blood Blockade Battlefront

The average anime are always the hardest to review, especially when there's some obvious merit to them, despite all the elements that made someone dislike the experience as a whole. Kekkai Sensen is one of those anime for me. There were entire pieces of this series that I felt were consistently good, but most of it was lackluster. For those who also aren't huge fans of it, I would venture to say that the general opinion of Kekkai Sensen is, "It was okay to watch, but it wasn't always enjoyable." Here's where I feel this series did well: the humor and the MC. Now, I don'treally know what to say about the MC without spoiling anything, but I enjoyed watching him grow over the course of 12 episodes because he was already a decently-built character to begin with. I don't think there's a whole lot I can say about the rest of the characters because I was simply never made to feel as invested in the cast as I should have been for an anime like this, but that didn't stop me from at least enjoying the main character.

Now, the humor is my absolute favorite part of Kekkai Sensen. That's where I could sit and talk about how amusing the characters and their relationships are for paragraphs and paragraphs. Whatever the magic was behind the humor, it stuck out to me as special, and that's what kept me watching. It was an element that was used well and presented well, and for me, it contributed to nearly all of this series' entertainment value. I feel like I should bring up the OSTs, too, because I do feel like they did their job particularly well, and even if I'm not a fan of songs as OSTs (instead of scores), I can't deny that Kekkai Sensen set a good tone with the music they included.

So, what's left is the drama and story of Kekkai Sensen. Neither of these enticed me all that much. Like I said, I couldn't make myself feel much for these characters, so anything that drove the story toward a deeper plot didn't connect with me. I don't know that I'd call Kekkai Sensen's plot "non-linear" so much as I would call it choppy and slow. It is an episodic series, so don't expect a long, complex story to unfold around the smaller adventures these characters are having. That being said, yes, there are threads of a story beneath all the episodic pieces. I don't feel like those threads were worth much, if I'm honest, and by the time it all came to a head in the end, I was simply ready to move on from it.

Bear in mind that this type of anime isn't my thing at all, so if it looks interesting to you, please try it out. It's not unwatchable, by any means, and there are a good stack of moments throughout the season that are either hilarious or super cool to watch. I just didn't connect with any of it. Alas, there are still 12 more episodes to go. Maybe my opinion will change after watching season 2.