Everybody dance!

What They Say:
Mirai goes after a perverted youmu with an eye for human girls. When it sprays Mitsuki with its stink juice, the Literary Club must band together to defeat the powerful–and horrendously stinky–youmu!

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Beyond the Boundary has had a good mix of action and silliness in its first few episodes here, though the silliness hasn’t been quite as outlandish as some series might be when you get down to it. Most of it comes down to the way that Mirai has a hard time with adjusting to being around other people and the changes to going to school here with others that are willing to help her. But she also has some things that come up during the action moments as well where you do have to laugh, such as in the early part here when she attacks a youmu on top of the school building that ends up spewing a ton of fluid all over her and Akihito. It’s a foul and disturbing bit overall, but it’s laced with some good humor since Akihito does his best to try and stop her at first.

The show has a fair bit of fun how Mirai tries different ways to deal with this particular youmu and it eventually turns in a way where Mirai has to ask help from the others in the Literary Club. That means doing their best to convince Mitsuki to help out since she’s so knowledgeable about everything and there’s always some good when it comes to having different people provide ideas on how to tackle a situation since we all think differently. The variety of plans that goes into motion is fun, including having Mirai dress up all cutely and distracting the youmu so it’s less guarded while Mitsuki puts the more formal plan into motion. It’s not one that go well and we get a whole lot of the same kind of stink related issues going forward.

The episode largely focuses on this and other kinds of plans to deal with the youmu but it’s all done with a kind of a wink and grin as it goes on. You almost get the feeling that Akihito has planted the thing in order to just mess with everyone and have fun with Mirai and Mitsuki. When we get the whole shower scene later in the second half and the kind of youthful passion behind it, you just feel it all the more. But it’s all about that youthful energy as they put their all into finding a way to defeat it, which means really going the distance and doing the unthinkable – creating a band with Mirai as the terrible lead singer in order to devastate the poor creature. With Mirai naturally being quite good at singing, and Mitsuki as well considering the voice actresses, what we basically get a really fun and polished dance sequence montage that just sells the characters in a very, very fun way.

In Summary:
Beyond the Boundary takes another episode to itself here where it just wants to focus on the characters themselves rather than any large scale issues or overreaching plot points. It’s more about drawing the group together in a fun way that really does allow them to work well together, work in sync and understand each other’s weaknesses and strengths. It is what you would call filler material in a lot of ways, but there’s something very fun and heartwarming about it as it progresses. Considering what the group gets to face at different times, the need to be on the same page and to prove they can do it when it counts is what it’s all about here and it does it well. It may not be the strongest episode, but it’s one I definitely had a lot of fun with.

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.