Feb 02 2009
Kara no Kyoukai Movie 5 ~ My Brain In A Jar
I see you~~
I’ve seen all the previous Kara no Kyoukai movies already and needless to say I was not expecting a full almost 2 hour movie this time round. You can just see from the 170 screenshots here in the gallery that the length isn’t exaggerated. But it was certainly worthwhile - amazing animation, awesome music and a story line that did not disappoint (eve though it was rather abstract and imaginative). I just like shows such as Kara no Kyoukai. Not just for the air of mystery about the characters involved but rather the idea and conceptualizations that support the structure of the plot.
This episode round we’re introduced several new characters that have connections back to both Shiki and Touko. Our principle player is Enjou Tomoe, a orange/red headed boy who bears startling resemblence to our lucky hero from Fate/Stay night Emiya Shirou. Apparently having run away from home after killing both his parents, he is saved by Shiki who, strangely enough, decides to take him in because both of them are the same.
Our main focus is on the time that Tomoe spends with Shiki and him coming to understand the truth about himself and his family and home. After spending a considerable amount of time away from home with no report of his crime, both him and Shiki decide to pay a visit back to his apartment complex only to find out that the entire building is enspelled to repeat the last days of each of the occupants lives. According to Souren Araya, magus and former school buddy of Touko, the building is an experiment so as for him to reach the Spiral of Origins, a goal that all mages seek in the pursuit of truth. To that end he has rigged all the resident’s brains to the building and watches them die repeatedly, day after day. Unfortunately, he also needs Shiki because of her Magic Eyes of Death Perception, an ability that is inherently tied to the ideal of the Origin because it sees the lines that destroy them. However, Shiki is captured and Tomoe manages to escape.
On the flip side, we also have both Touko and Kokuto investigating the building as well. We meet another one of her old school mates, one Cornelius Alba (whose fashion sense is extremely loud to say the least). He hates Touko and sees this as an opportunity to get back at her for stealing his laurels of accomplishment,by throwing his allegiance with Araya. Too bad though. But he proves to be quite useless in the entire movie and gets eaten twice (the second being the last time).
I’m finding Touko’s ability as a mage to be fascinating to say the least. Apparently ‘puppets’ also referred to her ability to generate ether creatures from a projector, which themselves are a form of shadow puppetry popular in some Asian countries. The fact that she created a double of herself is even cooler though the mechanism of her transfer is never really explained in full.
Araya’s abilities themselves are on a different scale since he integrated himself into the building in question. According to Touko he could crush any space at will though he restricted himself from doing so since he needed Shiki alive. That and he could create magic tentacles from his bounded barriers. Too bad they didn’t really do much when confronted with Shiki’s ability to destroy anything.
There were alot of metaphysical ideas also thrown into the mix - the idea of ying and yang, and the paradox spiral that exists on each side of this equation, Araya’s idea of the continuous cycle of death that he experiments on, what makes someone ‘alive’ (this driven home by Tomoe and his knowledge that he is indeed a fake) as well as the fact that Shiki is in fact the female side and that it was the male personality that had died all those years back. In the final confrontation, Shiki is freed because Aaraya neglected her prison and her ability to cut through anything and he is defeated even after causing the entire building to collapse in an attempt to trap her. Everything he did was to selfishly destroy the world and the people that he saw as ugly and unnecessary. He ironically finds out in the end that he shares the same name as the buddhist concept of Collective Conciousness, and the fact that selfishness might be in everyone, just as he disappears.
Overall, this movie was the best yet. I just shake the feeling that Shiki is a tag bit overpowered. But then again, the ability to see Death isn’t exactly a normal everyday ability either. I find that Shiki’s annoyance to Kokuto, simply because he ran away to the countryside to get a driver’s license, to be amusing. I’m even more amused by her blush in the end when she asks for the keys to his apartment. I guess it does prove that she’s more feminine than she lets on.
