roscoe.daniel - 2016-08-19 04:53:44

Story
    Who are you at your origin? Not you as a person, but deep down, beyond the soul, your instincts. That is the main theme of the last movie in this series. 

    After the events of the last movie, a new series of murders starts to happen, you know, like always, what else is new. In actuality, quite a bit. All eye witness reports say they saw someone with a kimono. This tips off Kokutou that Shiki might have returned to her old ways and starts to investigate the murders. Shiki on the other hand, is hunting down this person but is dwelling on her once lost memories of when she faced Araya for the first time and of the the accident that put her in a coma. That`s what the first half is, its trying to convince the viewer that Shiki is the killer, but of course, she`s not. 

    The second half, what made this movie, introduced a villain of equal threat as Araya, Rio, a friend that Kokutou once new. Turns out Araya unlocked Rio`s origin some years before, right after Rio had killed some people and started eating them to avoid his guilt. His origin, his basic instincts, was to devour. With this, the stage is now set. Rio, obsessed with Shiki, wanting her to cross the line, to actually kill someone, to kill him in cold blood. 
    
    But didn`t Shiki already kill people?

    As it turns out, Shiki has never killed anyone before, and with that a new idea is introduced. You can only kill someone once, you kill yourself. Basically meaning that if you kill someone, not only are you killing that person, but you are killing a piece of yourself. If you kill more, than its not murder anymore, but slaughter. Rio, in his constant killing, has now gone insane, wanting Shiki to join him in his madness. 
   
    This is very much my new favorite movie of the franchise because it reminds so much of a Batman story. Why? Well besides reading Batman: Hush and seeing this movie on the same day, the villain, or villains, roles remind me greatly of the roles in that story line. Which also means my initial thought of Shiki from the first movie wasn`t wrong. I was right calling her Batman Shiki.

Characters
Shiki

This movie goes into the mind of Shiki. She has her memories from the accident and the confrontation that she had with Kokutou. Wanting to kill him because the other Shiki has felt something more than wanting to murder. She wanted to so bad, but just couldn`t because she had feelings for him like no one else before, a new feeling to her. So because she couldn`t do it, she tried to kill herself, which of coarse lead to her coma, the other Shiki dying so the joyful one can live. However, with Rio trying to make her kill, do the very thing she couldn`t, Shiki is starting lose her grip. Now having a craving to kill, but with Kokutou saying he will never forgive her if she did, she is conflicted. She wants to kill Rio because of his blood lust and, in turn, turning herself into a killer. At the same time, she does not want to because of Kokutou`s words and the feelings she has for him. Seeing her struggle with her emotions is something we haven`t seen, at least in this way. We saw her way of thinking and philosophy before, but we have never seen her struggle and much less with her emotions.

Kokutou

    This shows just how far he believes people can be saved. With all his doubt about Shiki, even starting to regret ever involving himself with her, he still believes in her as he believes Rio can still be saved, no matter what been done to him. He tries to snap Shiki out her mind set of wanting to murder. Really going deep into her psyche, using her own words against her, using everything he can so she wont murder Rio, an old friend of his. 

    In the final confrontation with Rio, he tried to snap him out of his insanity to no avail. Rio then tried to make Kokutou fall into the madness with himself and Shiki, with Kokutou refusing. Rio forcing drugs into Kokutou`s system with the only cure is Rio`s own drug, Kokutou still refused from dropping to his level. Leaving Rio to stab him in the eye, presumably killing him. 

    To put it blunt, Kokutou always has hope for everyone until the end. He saw what Rio had become, he knew Rio could not be saved. As for Shiki, he will "bare the burden of her sin" as he puts it. This really shows the extent of his relationship with Shiki, even if he does not forgive her for what she will do to a unsavable man, he will never give up on her as he, just as she, loves her.
 
Rio

 If Araya is Hush, the man that has planned everything from the beginning, then Rio is basically The Joker. Wanting Shiki to kill, wanting her to kill him. Playing mind games that do get under Shiki`s skin. With her memories of how the other Shiki felt about Kokutou and her wanting to murder. He just goes all in to make Shiki break, going as far as to almost raping her. He is just so violent, murdering people, eating some of their body parts, and having some skills to go against Shiki in combat. However, by far his greatest weapon is using is madness, justifying that Shiki should kill him. He has gone far beyond murder. His only end is to die, and he is going to drag Shiki or Kokutou, or maybe even both, into the whole that is his madness.

Overall
    This and and the fifth movie are by far the best movies in the series. A series that really doesn`t have a mediocre movie. This digs into the relationship with between Shiki and Kokutou. What happens when someone with no justification but to want to cause chaos attacks them, not as much physically, but psychologically. With that the theme of who are you at your core, your instincts. A devour, murderer, or a optimist? I absolutely loved this movie. I`m giving this movie a 

qadams - 2016-04-26 19:22:14

Kara no Kyoukai

空の境界

(The Garden ofSinners)

Animemovies are not that common when compared to tv series and they are usuallybased on ongoing or generally really popular anime, they serve as a getaway forthe fans to enjoy more of the same thing. The production quality is higher soyou can expect some impressive animation, but they can lack in originality,with a small number of characters, because you can’t fit everything in yourstandard movie length.

Kara noKyoukai or The Garden of Sinners in English is a series of 7 movies, done bystudio ufotable. The series can be judged as an alternate story set in the Fateworld; it is based off of light novels done by the creator of Fate.

Story

It’sinteresting to note that every movie is connected, and they end a way thattells you there will be more. Something not that common with film series, sinceusually a studio has a set budget to work with and you can’t tell if somethingis going to be a success in the eyes of the public. Only a few Western filmseries have done this and succeeded.

The storybegins in 1998; we are introduced to our two main characters. Those are MikiyaKokuto and Ryogi Shiki. Kokuto is a nice and talkative person, while Shiki isbeautiful but also a serious and cold girl. The first few minutes show thesetwo talking, while the scene the follows show us a girl committing suicide byjumping off a building, stylized as a beautiful butterfly landing on theconcrete. This first death scene shows us that this anime has gore and is notafraid to use it in full effect. We learn that our protagonists work for anagency that solves murders that are committed by the supernatural, the agencyis lead by Touko Aozaki. During the films we get to see the many mysteriesthese three come by, fighting some of the most interesting and well designedantagonists, while at the same time Kokuto is trying to get close to Shiki andunderstand her personality.

The firstmovie will have you confused; it’s short and is used to introduce the maincast. Even though it does introduce the characters, other than Shiki, you don’treally get a reason to care for the other characters, from the first movie,because their screen time is short and they get no character development.  You are just explained the situation with thesuicides and put straight into the action, so to say. Over the course of themovies the characters are explained we get to know why they act like they do,some movies have specific characters just for that story and in the end youlearn how all 7 movies are connected, the story is finally connected and youget the full spectrum. Kara no Kyoukai likes to explore some darker themes suchas suicide, murder, rape, multiple personality disorder, punishment, drug abuseand even cannibalism.

Characters

Ryogi Shiki

The seriesmain character and also the biggest mystery. She was born and raised in theRyogi clan, where for generations children were taught to have multiplepersonalities. That is why she has two different persons inside her: a male SHIKI(織), who speaks in a masculine tone andrepresents yang, and female Shiki (式) who speaks in afeminime tone and represents yin. During her younger days she is hit by a carand loses her male persona leaving her in a coma for two years. When she wakesup she realizes SHIKI is gone, probably because he „died“ in the car accident.But Shiki doesn't feel connected with her persona, even though she knows whoshe is. Because she was so close to death she gains the  "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception" asupernatural ability that allows the user to see the inherent mortality ofeverything (both living and non-living) in the form of lines and a single point(which is the "origin" of the object). With this ability tokill even God, as she says, she also has combat practice since she was a child,making her a deadly opponent.

Mikiya Kokuto

The only male member of the agency. He looks like youraverage lad, but he is far from it. He could have avoided everything thathappened to him in the movies, if he had never met Shiki one day, on a snowywinter day. Because of this he quits collage and starts working for AozakiTouko and her supernatural agency. He feels partly to blame for what happend toShiki, and he also has feelings for her, and because of this he gets intosituations that question he feelins but also his morality.

Even though he doesn’t have any magic abilites, he shows usthat he has the most powerful weapon, courage. Something that means geting byfear, not not having any.

Aozaki Touko

Touko is the head of the detective agency in which Shiki andKokuto work. Even though she says she is only a doll maker, she is actually apowerful mage. Touko is for the most part a relaxed person and she goes bythings in a calm way. She is one of the few people the know what is going in onthe dire situation of the story.

Azaka Kokuto

The younger sister of Mikiya, and he has feelings for him,yes. She is the main rival of Shiki when it comes to Mikiya and she becomes theappreantis of Touko just so that she can get close to her rival. Later on itturns out she has a talent for the fire type of magic, causing flames.

Animation and sound

Like mentioned above this is a film series, so the animationis top notch. The contours areprecise, colours sharp and the stylization morethen appealing. The animation shines in the darker themes, the graphicpresentation of murder and the aftermath of it. The animation is some of thebest in anime, especially in the fighting scenes, which are some of the best.Even though it is from 2007 it shows us what the studio ufotable is capable of.Sound wise, it can be also said to be amazing, this is my second favorite animewhen it comes to music, after Attack on Titan. The music is composed by YukiKajiura, at first the music is simple and melancholic, but later on it getsmore complex and dynamic. Also, the voice actors, these movies never got anEnglish dub, so I can’t talk about the voice acting since I don’t knowJapanese, but I will just state that the voice actress for Shiki, MaayaSakamoto, knows how to act and you feel the emotions that she puts into hercomplex character.

In conclusion, Kara noKyoukai is a masterpiece film series, but sadly it is not very well known.Obviously it is not for everyone. Somebody who likes poems mixed with brutalthemes, should watch this. Ufotable shows us what they can do and they give usa reason to call this one of the best anime out there.

eeichmann - 2016-02-19 05:12:46

Not a better love story than Twilight. I'll admit I've never enjoyed the "If you kill him you'll be just as bad as them!" plot line, but I've never seen one done so poorly in quite a while. Besides being a juvenile philosophy, more importantly it didn't end up panning out. The antagonist was still killed in the end. Shiki didn't become evil because of it. If you killed the bad guy at the end of the first act, you could've saved Mikiya's left eye, Shiki's thumb, and maybe saved some innocence along the way. So what was the point?

The idea that you can only kill ONE person and after that you're an irredeemable monster makes no sense, and isn't even true within the context of the story. Shiki SLAUGHTERED/MURDERED/KILLED Araya. Stabbed him dead. This was after the coma, so she cannot blame SHIKI (I've read Tsukihime, I'm aware of the dual personality shtick). But now in the 7th movie she wants to pretend she's an innocent snowflake that has never killed before? Oh, well Araya was a slaughterer so it was okay to kill him. Well so was Shirazumi.

I'm sure there's plenty of you out there who thinks there's an answer for all these criticisms, and really the movie is just 2DEEP5ME. I don't care. I still don't like it.

alanis61 - 2015-07-21 03:08:47

Satsujin Kousatsu (Part 2) is the final film in the Kara no Kyoukai series and I have somewhat mixed feelings on it. I'm not really going to touch on the artwork, animation, or the sound. Beautiful stuff as usual.

One of the core mysteries of the series is the question of Shiki's involvement in the multiple gruesome murders that took place 4 years before the events of this film. The main focus of this film is the culmination of this plot-line and I think for the most part it's handled really well. Even now as the final entry in the series, the movie takes its time and allows the viewer to make their own connections between the tidbits of information that are laid out piece by piece. And as deliberate as the pacing can be, it all leads up to an awesome and very satisfying climax and conclusion. Pretty much all the loose ends are tied up, Shiki has a fine character arc, and I was (mostly) satisfied with how the events played out. Despite all of this, there's some pretty silly elements of the film that bog it down a bit, namely the parts having to do with drugs. I also couldn't help but feel an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the emotional foundation of this film, that is, the moral conflict between Kokutou and Shiki. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I'm not going to get into it too much, but the reasoning for their conflict just feels inconsistent in light of the 5th film and much frustrating drama could have easily been avoided. Honestly, I'm just going to chalk it up to Nasu contradicting himself like he usually does. Still, I overall really enjoyed their intimate relationship and how they play off one another.

This leads me towards the characters and the dialogue of the film. There seems to a be a common thread throughout many Type-Moon works, and that is of characters being the embodiment of extremes. From Araya and Kokutou, and from Kiritsugu to Sakura, many embody some extreme personality trait or ideal, and their dilemmas often stem from how they reconcile these traits or ideals with the harsh reality around them. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle for these types of characters. They can certainly be interesting, but they often stretch my suspension of disbelief and can really try my patience. Shiki is great however and one of my favorite characters. She's complex and mysterious but not just for contrived mystery's sake, there's very real and understandable reasons why she acts the way she does. I also just really love the way she handles her business, she's definitely got major style. However, I feel like I enjoyed the character interactions in the other films a bit more than this one, partly because of the dialogue, which was pretentious at times. I was more forgiving towards the other films because despite how overwrought the dialogue could be, it was still generally very interesting. However, they really do lay it on a bit too thick for this one. Indeed, there's like a five minute philosophical discussion on the difference between murder and slaughter and I swear my eyes rolled all the way back into my skull. 

Despite all my complaints, this is definitely a quality film, and I feel like the Kara no Kyoukai series is a quality watch, especially so if you like moody and atmospheric anime. Especially Paradox Spiral, which after a needed re-watch is now one of my favorite films ever. It's also a good watch if you're even a casual fan of Type-Moon, as it lays down the foundation for a lot of the important lore and concepts that came later. 

cronin.waino - 2014-11-18 02:57:28

Every single movie in the Kara No Kyoukai series 1-7 is masterpiece tier is you can handle the lengthy amount of dialogue. Movie #7 is the conclusion to the series, and is just as god as all the others.

dickens.bridget - 2014-08-25 14:47:55

Because Hummingbird's review system is faulty...

http://hsmedianerdreviews.blogspot.com/2014/08/anime-review-kara-no-kyoukai.html