Kekkaishi, aka Inferiority Issues: the series
I should probably post about the conference I went to, or life in general, and I shall do these things eventually, but for a while now I have been wanting to do a bookelfe style post with picspam about Kekkaishi, SO I AM GOING TO DO THAT.
Kekkaishi has a pretty generic shonen setup. For centuries, two families of kekkaishi ("barrier masters"), the Sumimuras and the Yukimuras, have been tasked with protecting the magical ground of Karasumori while also fighting with each other over who are the real heirs of the techniques they use. Karasumori, by the way, has to be protected because any supernatural creatures that wander into it have a tendency to become superpowered and evil, which causes problems. The two current heirs to the families (identified by a square mark) are Sumimura Yoshimori and Yukimura Tokine. By night, they fight the supernatural! By day, they attend the combined middle school/high school that is on the Karasumori grounds.
What sets Kekkaishi apart for me is really two things. First, it uses its power systems in really creative ways. Creating shields may seem like a very limited power, but Tanabe and her characters find all sorts of uses for it, from leaping through the air to preventing people from intruding on your nap. This is a series where creativity and skill can and will win out over pure strength. But even more importantly, Kekkaishi is a series with a lot of very well-developed and complicated relationships between its characters. Characters suffer little misunderstandings, have trouble relating to one another, lie in order to get along, and deal subtly but significantly with grief long after the events that make them grieve. A lot of them are great individual characters, and they're even better as an ensemble.
Our hero, Yoshimori, here looking somewhat uncommonly badass. To a large extent Kekkaishi is his coming-of-age story, as he learns to be more in control and how to work in the world. Yoshimori is a good kid with a good heart who does not use his head as much as he should. His hobbies include baking, planning to bake, trying to impress Tokine, and skipping class to sleep. Yoshimori doesn't exactly mind being a kekkaishi, but he does mind being the legitimate successor. His goal is to seal away the power of Karasumori, eliminating the danger that it poses to everyone involved with it. ...His other goal is to create a stunning candy castle.
And Tokine, looking totally commonly badass. Tokine is made of awesome, you guys. Two years older than Yoshimori and the reason he is alive to attend middle school, Tokine doesn't have nearly the level of power that Yoshimori does. What she does have is a heck of a lot more skill, total dedication, and an ability to be very ruthless when it's needed, a combination that makes many characters point out that she is the superior kekkaishi.
She also has a paralyzing fear of cockroaches, but that is why her mother has mad cockroach-defeating skills. Awesomeness is strong with the Yukimura women.
This is Masamori, Yoshimori's older brother, who often gets depicted with DRAMATIC SHADOWS involved. He's a high-ranking member of a group which deals with the supernatural called the Shadow Organization (Urakai in Japanese). Masamori's life kind of runs like this: Apparently be an excellent older brother figure to just about everyone. Wonder why your younger brother is the legitimate successor instead of you. Plot to obtain great power by means which vary from blackmail to risking your own humanity and/or life. Get distracted by a desire to save people and/or guilt over not doing so. Plot to destroy enemies. Repeat.
Shishio Gen, who apparently has fewer manga images immediately available at a reasonable size, is a half-ayakashi kid who works under Masamori and ends up being teamed up with Yoshimori and Tokine. Gen seems at first like a violent loner, but the truth is that his half-ayakashi state has meant he's had a very rough time of it. He's gradually finding a place in the world and with other people. While being very good at destroying things.
Kagemiya Sen will very much not appreciate it if you mistake him for a girl. Sen is another half-ayakashi who works for Masamori, but his skills tend more towards gathering information and stabbing things at close range than the massive destruction Gen is capable of. Sen wants to be a strong fighter, but eventually settles on being an amazing spy-in-training and a highly useful tactician, with a side job of regularly making hilarious faces of disbelief at Yoshimori.
Kanda Yuri is a minor character but I am including her because you meet her towards the beginning of the series and she is adorable. A classmate of Yoshimori's with second sight, Yuri often takes note of the strange things going on around school. Since finding out that Yoshimori (and Tokine) can deal with these things, Yuri has started to ask or inform Yoshimori about them. Her two best friends tend to use this as an excuse to ship Yuri with Yoshimori, no matter how many vague but definite denials she gives.
Sumimura Sumiko may be largely absent from her sons lives, but she still loves them. She sometimes stops by to express this by doing things like dropping a dragon into Karsumori. She doesn't appear much until late, but is too awesome not to include.
There are many, many other characters I could include, but I should really stop here for now. Kekkaishi is currently over 340 chapters (though it is very near its end), so naturally I cannot include everyone in spite of how fascinating many of them are. I caught up to it by reading large chunks at a time, and I found it a pretty quick read, engaging and generally very well-paced.
I should also probably point out that I'm talking entirely about the manga. I watched one episode of the anime, and it seems to dumb the series down, as well as having voice actor choices I do not agree with. I might not be as annoyed with it if I hadn't read the manga, but coming from the manga it was a disappointment.
Kekkaishi has a pretty generic shonen setup. For centuries, two families of kekkaishi ("barrier masters"), the Sumimuras and the Yukimuras, have been tasked with protecting the magical ground of Karasumori while also fighting with each other over who are the real heirs of the techniques they use. Karasumori, by the way, has to be protected because any supernatural creatures that wander into it have a tendency to become superpowered and evil, which causes problems. The two current heirs to the families (identified by a square mark) are Sumimura Yoshimori and Yukimura Tokine. By night, they fight the supernatural! By day, they attend the combined middle school/high school that is on the Karasumori grounds.
What sets Kekkaishi apart for me is really two things. First, it uses its power systems in really creative ways. Creating shields may seem like a very limited power, but Tanabe and her characters find all sorts of uses for it, from leaping through the air to preventing people from intruding on your nap. This is a series where creativity and skill can and will win out over pure strength. But even more importantly, Kekkaishi is a series with a lot of very well-developed and complicated relationships between its characters. Characters suffer little misunderstandings, have trouble relating to one another, lie in order to get along, and deal subtly but significantly with grief long after the events that make them grieve. A lot of them are great individual characters, and they're even better as an ensemble.
Our hero, Yoshimori, here looking somewhat uncommonly badass. To a large extent Kekkaishi is his coming-of-age story, as he learns to be more in control and how to work in the world. Yoshimori is a good kid with a good heart who does not use his head as much as he should. His hobbies include baking, planning to bake, trying to impress Tokine, and skipping class to sleep. Yoshimori doesn't exactly mind being a kekkaishi, but he does mind being the legitimate successor. His goal is to seal away the power of Karasumori, eliminating the danger that it poses to everyone involved with it. ...His other goal is to create a stunning candy castle.
And Tokine, looking totally commonly badass. Tokine is made of awesome, you guys. Two years older than Yoshimori and the reason he is alive to attend middle school, Tokine doesn't have nearly the level of power that Yoshimori does. What she does have is a heck of a lot more skill, total dedication, and an ability to be very ruthless when it's needed, a combination that makes many characters point out that she is the superior kekkaishi.
She also has a paralyzing fear of cockroaches, but that is why her mother has mad cockroach-defeating skills. Awesomeness is strong with the Yukimura women.
This is Masamori, Yoshimori's older brother, who often gets depicted with DRAMATIC SHADOWS involved. He's a high-ranking member of a group which deals with the supernatural called the Shadow Organization (Urakai in Japanese). Masamori's life kind of runs like this: Apparently be an excellent older brother figure to just about everyone. Wonder why your younger brother is the legitimate successor instead of you. Plot to obtain great power by means which vary from blackmail to risking your own humanity and/or life. Get distracted by a desire to save people and/or guilt over not doing so. Plot to destroy enemies. Repeat.
Shishio Gen, who apparently has fewer manga images immediately available at a reasonable size, is a half-ayakashi kid who works under Masamori and ends up being teamed up with Yoshimori and Tokine. Gen seems at first like a violent loner, but the truth is that his half-ayakashi state has meant he's had a very rough time of it. He's gradually finding a place in the world and with other people. While being very good at destroying things.
Kagemiya Sen will very much not appreciate it if you mistake him for a girl. Sen is another half-ayakashi who works for Masamori, but his skills tend more towards gathering information and stabbing things at close range than the massive destruction Gen is capable of. Sen wants to be a strong fighter, but eventually settles on being an amazing spy-in-training and a highly useful tactician, with a side job of regularly making hilarious faces of disbelief at Yoshimori.
Kanda Yuri is a minor character but I am including her because you meet her towards the beginning of the series and she is adorable. A classmate of Yoshimori's with second sight, Yuri often takes note of the strange things going on around school. Since finding out that Yoshimori (and Tokine) can deal with these things, Yuri has started to ask or inform Yoshimori about them. Her two best friends tend to use this as an excuse to ship Yuri with Yoshimori, no matter how many vague but definite denials she gives.
Sumimura Sumiko may be largely absent from her sons lives, but she still loves them. She sometimes stops by to express this by doing things like dropping a dragon into Karsumori. She doesn't appear much until late, but is too awesome not to include.
There are many, many other characters I could include, but I should really stop here for now. Kekkaishi is currently over 340 chapters (though it is very near its end), so naturally I cannot include everyone in spite of how fascinating many of them are. I caught up to it by reading large chunks at a time, and I found it a pretty quick read, engaging and generally very well-paced.
I should also probably point out that I'm talking entirely about the manga. I watched one episode of the anime, and it seems to dumb the series down, as well as having voice actor choices I do not agree with. I might not be as annoyed with it if I hadn't read the manga, but coming from the manga it was a disappointment.