Yellow Tanabe

By night, Yoshimori Sumimura is a "kekkaishi", a demon hunter who creates magical barriers around his prey. By day, Yoshimori must deal with his addiction to sweets and a crotchety grandfather! Yoshimori's childhood friend and neighbor, Tokine Yukimura, is also a kekkaishi, but their families' conflict over who is the true practitioner.

Now the two rival kekkaishi must fight amphibious demons, a ghost of a pastry chef, miasmas of demons Yomi and Yoki, as well as embittered demon-dog Koya.

This show more series has a nice premise, but...

My main issue with this novel was that the main character, Yoshimori, wasn't established well in volume one. Yes, his character traits are there - he is being pushed into monster hunting by his grandfather, when he wants to work with sweets. It is difficult for him to juggle his duties as kekkaishi and school, and he usually falls asleep during classes. He is overprotective of his childhood friend/rival/love interest and does not want to see her hurt again. He refuses to hate his childhood friend as his grandfather would like him to, even though his family is technically competing over who the TRUE kekkaishi heir is.

The way the information is presented makes it seem more like a checklist than a natural character development for Yoshimori. The information was all rushed, and half of it seemed to emerge from nowhere. After introducing the supernatural side of things, which had been well established... BAM! Yoshimori suddenly plans to build a candy castle.

The artwork is decent, and I continued reading for three volumes. There was a slight improvement in the second volume over the first. The second volume opens with a flashback of Tokine as a child who asked her father if she could go demon hunting with him, but he declined. With the death of her father, Tokine's character and her relationship with Yoshimore change.

Although it has slight improvements, some moments detract from the story. The story struggles with balancing its supernatural elements and character development, leading to moments that feel disjointed or rushed. While there are glimpses of emotional depth, such as Tokine's backstory, these are often overshadowed by abrupt plot developments. This inconsistency makes it difficult for readers to invest in the narrative entirely.

The manga lost interest for me after volume three. Although the stories do have action, they don't improve. There is a good development of the dog spirits, as well as some of the powers. Characters are still notably weak, and the story, while alright in premise, is becoming predictable.

Overall, while Kekkaishi shows potential with its action and character development, its inconsistent pacing and predictable plot diminish its overall appeal. show less

A solid fantasy manga. Not spectacular at the moment, it's certainly a slow start but the instances of traditional folk magic with the appearance of Shikigami, magical servants, is very interesting. I think there is a good choice I will read this to the end.

Kekkaishi is basically a demon hunting manga. Let's not bother getting into the specifics, as they really don't make a difference. The main character is a kid in junior high who's secret family business is to get rid of demons (somewhere in the middle between your usual beast demon and a Pokemon) at night. His next door neighbor is a rival family who does the same. The girl from that family was friends with the main when small, but now she is more serious about her job than he is (he'd show more rather bake cakes), as well as more able, though less powerful, and good in school, and thus now behaves in a slightly uppity manner towards him. He has an obsession with protecting her since something stupid he did once got her hurt.

I'd gotten this vibe from the mangaverse that Kekkaishi was the fun shounen manga that might appeal to fans of Bleach or Naruto who either don't mind or prefer a more...modest effort. Something that isn't about painfully huge casts of characters who must all either drip cool, moe, or be perverted old men. Something that can be exciting without always being about how awesomely the main totally whipped that last guy who was supposedly the strongest man evah. Now, honestly, I like cool in my shounen series. I like a little attitude and exciting battles. But so many shounen focus on those things so much other stuff ends up shallow. So I was hoping taking one that didn't focus on that stuff would be awesome in other areas.

In the end, this manga seems solid for what it is, but not a lot more. I don't exactly want to call it average, since a lot of average manga aren't that solid. But...I'm a little miffed as to why this is supposed to be all that noteworthy. The baddies are anonymous, the battles don't hold a great deal of emotional interest, there isn't really a plot. It is so far indeed a more modest seeming effort, but it doesn't have any more substance in other areas like I was hoping for in exchange.

It doesn't, for example, try to make the characters amazingly awesome OMGcool. Which is where I start hoping, knowing this manga is supposed to be good, that not being tied down to that will allow them to make a more original, psychologically interesting character. But...they're all pretty meh. You can list all their traits and know them entirely. There is no nuance. I'm not the world's biggest supporter of Bleach and Naruto, but at least in a lot of the cases you'd have to watch the characters for a little to know exactly what they are like (if you're like me you might not be hugely impressed with what you find, but still). None of the characters have any chemistry. There's nothing really for them to form chemistry with.

Which sounds weird considering I just called this manga 'solid.' I think I do because, unlike a lot of manga who try to give their character development or interaction nuance and chemistry and fail....this one really doesn't try to go much deeper. Can you call it a faltered step if the step isn't taken?

Basically, it's just all kept very simple. It's juvenile. It seems like some older people like this too, though. Maybe this manga gets better in later volumes. But since I've never heard any utterance of 'the beginning's nothing special but keep at it,' and because even if it DID get better, I imagine it would be in the area of plot and battles rather than, say, complicating the characters, I'm definitely going to pass on further volumes. show less

This is a very weak start to the series. The stakes are very low, and I can't I don't have any real driving story for the series in future volumes, unless they're planning on making it a High School Romance series with occasional magical action, which is a plot I'd expect from a light novel series (or an adaptation thereof) not a manga in Shonen Jump. Maybe it will pick up next volume.