Kekkaishi

From Zanecorpwiki

A fun anime that shows glints of something more.

Summary

The story, characters, and devices seem kind of thrown together, like a grab bag of ideas but it somehow comes together. At points it's almost sublime. I cried a little bit in the episode where Ginro and Koya battle. It's very much a young anime with all the common themes of trying harder, working for one's dream, etc. Stuff that I just eat up.

Details and Notes

This is a medium length anime, 21 24 minute episodes, but there's a lot going on and quite a bit of character development. It's well paced, and best of all it gets better as it goes along.

The focus is essentially quite narrow, two kids protect a sacred ground from the evil ghosts that are drawn to it. It's important work, but not really an epic background like many (most?) animes. There is some implication that all hell would break loose if the kids failed (like Buffy) but that kinda hangs in the background and the characters really come the fore as characters rather than participants in a larger than life story.