Beyond The Boundary Episode 10
What They Say:
In a dream, Mirai informs Akihito of what happened during their battle and why it had to be this way. Then time jumps backwards to six months earlier. At long last, Mirai’s motives and Izumi’s plan are made clear!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having dealt with the problem of The Calm in the last episode, it was a dialogue heavy piece overall with some good moodiness and atmosphere to drive it all home. At least until Mirai stuck her sword into Akihito in order to save him before he became an immortal killing machine. So yeah, we’ll call that a win. Though the plot itself felt a little forced in some ways with what it did, the end result was a striking sequence that has now spilled over into Akihito recovering after learning what he did and Mirai doing her best to take care of him. Of course, she’s just not that competent as a homemaker so that leaves him in quite the panic considering what she’s done. Anyone that brings home a whole hogs head and puts it in the fridge like that without knowing how to truly deal with it just isn’t right.
The first half of the episode works nicely to bring everything back into a sense of normalcy overall, providing us with a few nods towards the bigger picture as we see Mirai and Akihito return to school and interact with others. It’s not huge but there’s just this unease about everything, especially when you add in some of the visuals to the atmosphere that paints it in a particular way with the music. Though there are some near-romantic issues that are dealt with, we get taken to the events of the previous episode instead as we see the real fallout of what happened when Mirai attacked him, using her own body to absorb The Calm and deal with it. It’s an intriguing sequence as it unfolds, especially when it plays its trump card to reveal that it’s all a dream. Putting some of the onus on him for what she did and still drawing a connection between the two works nicely and gives Akihito something new to deal with as he wakes up and understands the reality of the situation.
This is used as a decent leaping off point as we go back six months earlier and see how Mirai was brought in to deal with Akihito, which is dark and ominous but also balanced by a brief montage of the number of times she stuck her sword through him. Mirai working her goal of killing him but being unable to because of his nature is something that’s explored throughout this past part as we see the other side of the story that was hidden from us, one where she’s told to stay away from him but is invariably drawn closer to him. The back story helps to show the ways that Mirai was trying to deal with the threat that Akihito represents, but also trying to find a way as time went on to save him since she’d grown to care for him. It’s a nice bit of story material that accents what we’ve seen, but I’ll find myself in the camp of wishing this was placed within the series itself so that we could see the struggle she had instead of generally writing her off as barely competent half the time.
In Summary:
While not exactly a game-changer for me, Beyond the Boundary does adjust the view you can have on the series by shifting it to the side and allowing you to see things that had been going on without notice. And it is interesting to see how Mirai has approached her mission, the changes along the way and why she’s doing what she’s doing. But I still find myself feeling that it’s cheap to do it this way, a few episodes away from the end, revealing it here rather than as a part of the show throughout. That would have made the character more compelling and added a good bit of tension along the way since we could see the double life of sorts that she’s leading, sympathize with her and worry about the result rather than just feeling that she’s mildly incompetent most of the time. There are some very good moments here but I’m not sure how to feel about this episode overall in the larger context yet.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.