I was so excited when I first heard that VIZ Media was going to release an English-subtitled version of the Kekkaishi anime! As the editor of the Kekkaishi manga, I was curious to see how it compared to what I had imagined. Sometimes it’s hard to see something animated that you have been animating in your head. But this anime doesn’t disappoint! You can catch new episodes on Mondays.

Kekkaishi is such an action-oriented manga that it’s really nice to see everyone—people and weird ayakashi (demons)—actually MOVING. Horror depends on timing... It’s hard to get maximum shock value with just the movement of images and text from panel to panel and page to page. In manga, you can have a surprise hit the reader after they turn a page. In anime, you can have an ayakashi suddenly jump out at the viewer from the screen! Aiiieeee!

The Kekkaishi animators do a great job—lots of dramatic poses and movements and jumping-out-at-you’s. Yoshimori and Tokine’s demon dogs, Madarao and Hakubi, float and bob up and down and the kekkaishi’s kekkai appear out of thin air (instead of in the next panel) and have an eerie glow.

I love Yellow Tanabe’s unusual, artistic, streamlined ayakashi designs, and they’re even creepier and scarier and weirder in color.

On top of all this, the Kekkaishi music is really great! Varied, eerie, and evocative.

I hope the Kekkaishi manga readers in the audience are happy with the anime. And if you are seeing the anime first, I hope you'll check out the manga. If possible for a series, I always like to experience both.

Manga and anime each give you something a little different. Manga adds detail and pacing that can’t fit into anime, and anime is the perfect medium for magic, which needs to glow and sparkle and flash and change color. Better than CGI in a live-action movie, animation can quickly execute any artistic effect you could dream up.

— Annette Roman, Kekkaishi manga editor