Kara no Kyoukai 4: A success (finally!)

Less bullshit, more deflowering.

After three episodes of dubious quality, the animated Kara no Kyoukai series has finally come to terms with itself. Yes, it has awesome potential. Yes, it can be a fulfilling watch. No, it’s not intelligent and profound.

I’m confident the director of this chapter sorted out the pros of the cons of the franchise and made sure he capitalised on what worked. I’d buy the man a beer if I ever met him.

Kara no Kyoukai lit. means the ‘Boundary of Emptiness’. It’s a story of magic women (and one retarded kid) experiencing a magical world and being misguided in and abused by it because while they are able to control their powers, their minds are still of 21st century Japanese teenagers.

Chapter four elaborates on the title and shows us the weak Shiki, the Eros-Shiki, who would have been the third victim of magic in the series if her Thanatos side hadn’t taken control and overcame the former’s weak will to survive and be happy in an uncertain new world. It shows us Shiki is the protagonist of the show because unlike the last two chicks who were consumed by their magic and then promptly defeated, Shiki is the only one with a strong enough will to pull through as the stronger (though it could be argued that Shiki still did fall prey to the world’s magic, having to sacrifice Eros-Shiki to end the fight). This might be a misfortune because Thanatos-Shiki seems to have terminal constipation of sorts but let’s not dive into that.

"Son of a..."

*Choke*

What makes Kara no Kyoukai interesting is how these powers affect the minds of these vulnerable teenagers and their reactions to it with a little horror value in-between. This episode captured this well with its travelling-through-deep-hell-space scenes, Kokutou’s feature karaoke moment and the casual chop-up ones like the one above. The death-line animation was also improved this time to seem more dangerous and unstable rather than appearing like disco lights.

A characteristic of Kara no Kyoukai is it’s abundance of lore. Being a sister to the Tsukihime franchise, there’s much behind the show for the consumer to explore and appreciate. This forms a wall that newbies to the franchise, like me, have to break through before we are able to grasp the series. Understandably, the people behind the scenes are trying to have this show appeal as much as possible to the small number of fans who supply the majority of their income. The script backs the need to cater to the existing fans explicitly as most of the talk and discussions revolve around the lore of the world and does not try to include the clueless layman into it.

While KnK3 tried to avoid this problem by expanding the violence and blood to burn the need for words, KnK4 tackles this problem by  increasing the amount of out cut screen time exploring and delivering an idea of what the mystery is about before Tohko start’s yapping about it (I still have no idea what’s the point she’s trying to make half the time). I also applaud the executive team’s decision to have Kokutou play the singing extra this time to hide his boundless stupidity as a person and character.

KnK fails to be intelligent because the script focuses mainly on ideas in and reactions to the world’s lore and is naive on the whole. Very little is shown how society and powerless mortals like us react to these magics and second tier consequences hardly exist, and none of the shows seem to care about it.

Of course, the story ends again with Shiki stabbing someone. It always does. Nothing much to say here, except that we get to see her grow the Mulan haircut way. It would be nice if for an episode ends in something other than violence, but as I said before, I’m just a lowly freeloader.