Review: Kara no Kyoukai Chapter One - Overlooking View

The first chapter Overlooking View (俯瞰風景, Fukan Fukei) of movie Kara no Kyoukai – The Garden of Sinners was release first in theatre and then on DVD. A long time has passed since the first released of the movie, long enough for me to write a review before the DVD version of Chapter four Garan no Do comes out.

FYI, I’ve collected some data from all kinds of website, Wiki, other blogs, in English, in Japanese etc., all rights belong to their respect owners.

Story (from wiki)

Mikiya Kokuto brings over some ice cream while visiting Shiki, but Shiki is not happy to see him and adamantly refuses to eat any of it. Afterwards, Shiki and Touko discuss the recent spate of unusual suicide incidents where several high school girls fell to their death , but left no suicide note and had apparently no reason to commit suicide. Touko concludes that the girls did not intend to die. At night, Shiki visits the deserted part of town containing the Fujo buildings which have now fallen into disrepair and am about to be demolished, and while there chances upon the body of newest victim. She also notices several ghostly figures floating above the Fujo building.

The next day, Shiki discusses the building with Toko, as she can feel something abnormal about it. Toko suggests that the figures are records and memories of the victims who have died so far but have for some reason not dissipated into the world. In the afternoon, another Shiki is walking outside when another victim falls to her death. Deciding to take action, Shiki visits the Fujo building at sunset and battles a mysterious apparition that manages to take control of Shiki’s left arm and tries to choke her to death with it. Using her mystic eyes, Shiki destroys her arm which is revealed to be a puppet arm that Toko created for her. While the arm is being repaired, Shiki eats the ice cream that Kokuto bought using her remaining arm. The next day, Shiki takes back the repaired and improved arm, returns to the Fujo building and destroys all the floating figures and the apparition, who attempts to use her power of suggestion to make Shiki fall. It has no effect on her because she never had interest in such things.

Afterwards, Kirie Fujo awakes in her physical body on her hospital bed after being killed by Shiki in her spiritual body. Touko walks in and asks why she did it, Fujo replies that she didn’t intend to make them fall, she just wanted to make friends with them, and so called to them, as she was stuck in the hospital with an incurable condition ever since she could remember. After Touko leaves, Fujo decides that the moment of her death when she was killed by Shiki was the most that she has ever felt alive, and wanted to relive that feeling. She wheels herself to the roof of the Fujo building, where she commits suicide by falling from the roof. Kokuto wakes up, feeling as if he had slept for a very long period of time, and Shiki demands that he stay over at her house to finish the ice cream he bought. In the Epilogue, Touko is walking near the Fujo building with an unidentified woman, where Fujo’s corpse has been found. Touko comments that she just probably could not fly today.

Characters (from wiki)

Shiki Ryogi (両儀式, Ryogi Shiki)

Voiced by: Tomoko Kawakami (drama CD), Maaya Sakamoto (movies)

A teenaged girl, who possesses the “Mystic Eyes of Death Perception”, a supernatural ability that allows the user to see the inherent mortality of everything (both living and non-living) in the form of lines and a single point (which is the “origin” of the object) which is shown by having a rainbow-like color in her pupils. A cut along any line will bifurcate the object, no matter the sharpness of cutting tool used, and a stab at the point destroys the object’s origin, causing instant death. She recently recovered from a two-year coma caused by a traffic accident. Prior to the traffic accident, she originally had two personalities, a male personality named Shiki (織, Shiki), and the original female personality Shiki (式, Shiki). Children born into the Ryogi family are generally male and are raised with two personalities, so the male personality is customarily called the “yang” personality, while the female is called the “yin” personality. It is easy to tell which Shiki is speaking at a given time because they both have a distinct style of speaking, most notably that the female Shiki refers to herself with the pronoun watashi (私, watashi), while male Shiki refers to himself as ore (オレ, ore). After waking from her coma, Shiki discovers that she can no longer feel the male Shiki’s presence and assumes that he died because of the accident. She also feels a detachment from her memories before the accident, and while she knows she is Shiki, she does not feel that she is. In the hopes of regaining herself and the “dead” Shiki, she puts on a cold façade that somewhat resembles the female Shiki’s and tries to act as the male Shiki did. Toko understands the sense of detachment Shiki feels, but considers the current Shiki a third, new personality. She assists the Garan no Do agency in handling paranormal cases when combat is required.

Mikiya Kokuto (黒桐幹也, Kokuto Mikiya)

Voiced by: Kentaro Ito (drama CD), Kenichi Suzumura (movies)

Shiki’s friend who, two years ago, made a promise with Shiki to attend college. He discovers a doll at an exhibition his friend asked him to attend and falls in love with its flawless craftsmanship. He is so charmed by it that he seeks out the maker, Toko Aozaki, and then finds her residence. With his hopes of attending college with Shiki crushed because of her coma, he drops out of college to work under Toko as an assistant investigator. Toko holds his investigative skills with high-regard because of his ability to find her workplace, an abandoned building hidden to all except those who wish to find it. The male Shiki and the current Shiki call him Cocteau (コクトー, Kokutoo) due to his last name’s resemblance to Jean Cocteau’s last name, though the current Shiki dislikes it for an unknown reason.

Toko Aozaki (蒼崎橙子, Aozaki Toko)

Voiced by: Kikuko Inoue (drama CD), Takako Honda (movies)

Appearing as a puppet maker, Toko is actually an extremely powerful sorceress. She runs a business in an abandoned building called Garan no Do (伽藍の洞, Garan no Do), a detective agency consisting of only herself and Mikiya that only takes supernatural or otherwise abnormal cases. She is the sister of Tsukihime’s Aoko Aozaki, with whom she does not share a particularly good relationship. In the early editions of the novel, Toko was portrayed with short blue hair. In the newer editions of the novels and the movies, she has been given long red hair; Nasu and Takeuchi, dissatisfied with older illustrations of Toko, changed her hair colour to reflect her relationship to Aoko Aozaki, who also has red hair.

Azaka Kokuto (黒桐鮮花, Kokuto Azaka)

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (drama CD), Ayumi Fujimura (movies)

Mikiya’s younger sister, who loves him. She becomes an apprentice of Toko due to her rivalry against Shiki, and is talented in the magic of ignition. She is quite similar both in appearance and abilities to Akiha Tohno (though Akiha’s ability consists of controlling external heat, whereas Azaka’s ability is inducing ignitions). In an interview with Nasu, despite their rivalry, Azaka actually likes Shiki personality and vice-versa except their relationship with Mikiya has made it difficult for both of them becoming good friends.

Review (by myself)

After listening to what Maaya (The chatacter voice of Shiki) said in her interview, I was really impressed by her performance, not only in the show, but the way she perform. I’ve watched so many anime, listened to so many dramas and radios, and I like all kinds of sounds performed by human, well, and machine. Maaya is still one of my favorite CVs (Character Voice). Her sound is pure and fresh, sometimes, if needed, a little bit masculine, and all of these perfectly fit the characteristic of Shiki.

Shiki is a cool chatacter, basically. And the only way she performs like a girl is be with Kokuto (well, I might exclude the situation that another Shiki is be with Kokuto). But I don’t think Shiki herself has realized this feel at first, and even late after in the coming episodes.

When talking about my favorite character of Kara no Kyoukai (KaraKyou for short in Japanese), apart from Shiki, yes, Azaka is my favorite one. Azaka, the youger sister of Mikiya, though showed up only in the end of the movie, her characteristic is “beautifully” described in the novel. Sure, I haven’t finished it, probably read the rest of the book after watching all the anime movie. I guess most of the people would like to make it this way. (I don’t know whether there’s English version.) When talking about Azaka, it occurred to me that another character of the novel of Kinoko Nasu (奈須きのこ, the author of Kara no Kyoukai) – Fate/stay night. Yes, if you really watched or read Fate/stay night, of course, or played the game, you will notice that the main character Rin Tosaka is an likely character of Azaka. Well, it seems far away from my topic and let’s get back to what I want to say.

Let’s talk about another main character, Mikiya. Mikiya is a kind heart man whose characteristic is growing harder to be found in our world. When Mikiya first realized he has fall in love with Shiki, he noticed the meaning of what he had done before, and continued to perform like he always did. Somebody may not like this character, but I do appreciate Mikiya, and consider him to be one of those rarely acceptable heroes in anime series I’ve watched (since some of the heroes are really dumb).

About the music of Kara no Kyoukai, well, that’s what I really impressed. Yuki Kajiura (梶浦由記), a genius in music, do all the soundtracks in Kara no Kyoukai. In all, this is great.