Kyokai no Kanata - 09

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With the Calm in full swing, Akihito’s youmu side takes over and the gang has to decide what to do about it.

There’s a lot more to this episode of Kyokai no Kanata than just that, though.  To be honest, picking and choosing what to discuss in this review has been difficult.  But I’ll try to cover the important parts.

First of all, it’s nice to see the Nase siblings all working together in this episode.  Not only do Mitsuki and Hiromi partner up to take down a gigantic youmu, but Izumi joins them and Mirai when looking for Akihito after his youmu half takes over.  And they sort of need to stick together at that point, because youmu Akihito is really freaking powerful.  Recall that, in the last episode, Izumi took out dozens of youmu within a matter of seconds without breaking a sweat.  Akihito, on the other hand, can actually stop her attacks, even during the Calm.  The Calm makes youmu weaker, remember, so that just speaks to his ridiculous amount of power.

It turns out that Izumi is up to something, though.  I’ve been sort of suspicious of her the whole time, because she always acts so darn mysteriously and is super cryptic most of the time.  Hiromi has a bit of an argument with her (a very one-sided argument, mind you, as Izumi doesn’t really say much) regarding her suspicious actions.  He suggests that she caused Akihito’s youmu half to take over and that she’s using Mirai to kill Akihito, all of which seems pretty darn accurate.  Honestly, there are a lot of adult characters who are incredibly willing to use children as tools of assassination in Kyokai no Kanata (yes, two is a lot).

As predicted, Akihito turns out to be the “Beyond the Boundary” (or at least is incredibly likely to be that particular youmu), which is a youmu capable of destroying the world.  My question is this: based on Akihito’s personality, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, so what exactly is Izumi’s reason for wanting him dead?  It’s got to be more than just protecting the world from destruction, because he would never do that sort of thing.  Heck, his youmu half wouldn’t have taken over at this point if she hadn’t caused it to happen.  So what does she gain from his death?

At the risk of spoiling too much (because you should really just watch this episode and see what happens for yourself), we end on another cliffhanger.  Kyokai no Kanata has some really effective cliffhangers (as if we wouldn’t want to come back for more without them).

Kyokai no Kanata Episode 10 Preview

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