Kara no Kyoukai #6: Boukyaku Rokuon (Oblivion Recording)
I must admit that the premise of this outing didn’t fill me with as much enthusiasm as some of the earlier ones. It sounded like the story was shying away from the hard-edged grittiness that I’ve come to respect so much in the series, what with it being about something as light-hearted as Mikiya’s kid sister Azaka looking for fairies at school. Sure enough, the general tone of this movie is a lot brighter, more humorous and is mostly concerned with Azaka and her personal perpective on things rather than putting Shiki in centre stage.
What pleasantly surprised me though was that this relative levity and the shift in character focus offered so much to enjoy on their own. Azaka has always been a bit, well, overprotective of her elder brother but this is where she is given the opportunity to explain why as best she can. The mystery thriller side of things is still present, of course, but it’s more character- rather than plot-driven. With a some FIRE to spice it up a bit.
I thought the the storyline could’ve been handled a bit better, however. The inexperience of the director may be the cause here because it didn’t progress as fluidly or realise the potential of the themes as fully as they might have been; I’ll wait for that eagerly-awaited English language translation of the original novel, allegedy reaching the shelves sometime this autumn, before judging that aspect too harshly though (more info on this from Ray over at Anime Diet). Complexity and maturity aren’t the name of the game here anyway: after the heavy-going fifth instalment it’s probably a good thing that we’re treated to a shorter piece that’s more ‘fun’ and easier to digest.
Broadly speaking, each successive chapter of the Kara no Kyoukai story alternates between a challenging, plot-driven narrative and a more sedate one that deals with the personalities and motives. It’s a good way to keep the viewers on their toes and prevents the tone falling into a rut but in practice it means that as a general rule of thumb the odd-numbered movies are of the psychological headfuck variety while the even-numbered ones, such as Boukyaku Rokuon, act as interludes and bring us up to speed on the character development.
That said, there are some great moments of supernatural combat as well as those that continue to build up my impression of Shiki’s fascinating personality. The final battle that Azaka waged in particular looked and sounded wonderful – rounded off with an axe kick to a giant flower. Really. It’s all in the details as always: the sizzle of embers and splashes of water, nuances in body language and detail of animation that lesser production teams would either choose to or be forced to ignore.
Fundamentally this is Azaka’s story and as such fills in the gaps that explain the peculiar relationships she shares with Mikiya and Shiki. As a supporting character you might question how important she really is but quite honestly I found her time on screen to be too entertaining to care. The dynamic between her and Shiki had me grinning like the fanboy that I am but the viewpoint that Nasu’s storytelling takes is especially appropriate here. That is to say, it takes a morally neutral stance in letting people who are very strange by the standards and conventions of society state their feelings without condemning them or making excuses on their behalf; which is particularly important when the character in question has an onii-chan complex that governs many of her actions.
Rather than trying to force the viewer into accepting Azaka’s misplaced affections by making you sit through scenes that would make many viewers feel uncomfortable, the film instead depicts how her emotions have influenced her life in a more general sense (which inevitably leads to moments where she butts heads with Shiki to hilarious effect). It’s impossible to completely bring the average viewer round to the same way of thinking as a character who is markedly abnormal but it does at least allow you to see where she’s coming from.
Behind the verbal sparring and moments of straightforward action-orientated entertainment there’s still the mass of subtexts that leave you thinking afterwards, which is why I find Kara no Kyoukai to be such a success on multiple levels. This isn’t the best demonstration of that in the series so far, sadly, but once the true nature of the events is in the light of day it becomes clear how it’s all trying to make some statements about the importance of, and problems associated with, human memory.
Shiki and Azaka are both trying to recover memories they had lost while in contrast the Fairy Incident was the result of memories born from misunderstandings and motivated by the mistaken idea that erasing them will somehow set things right. I’ll be a smartass at this point and say I thought something was wrong with that teacher right from when, for a split second during one scene, his eyes were shown as unnaturally bloodshot. Anyway. I didn’t think Ouji’s character was particularly well-explained either but there was just enough to allow me to grasp how she had taken things on herself and how this caused events to take an even more serious turn for the worse.
As wonderfully entertaining as Flaming Imouto Rage proved to be in the end, the God’s Word thing was still a neat ability and made the showdowns more interesting; it’s a shame that Kurogiri probably won’t turn up in the last film because the writers could have had a lot more fun with his character. The subtleties of his dialogue left me a bit stumped but again the issue of memories that refuse to truly go away causes Shiki as much trouble as it does for Azaka. It leads me to suspect we haven’t seen the back of Araya either, which makes me wonder if he is indeed the final adversary to be faced before the story draws to a close.
So yeah, unless the novel miraculously turns up in the meantime I reckon this will be all we have to satisfy ourselves for a while yet. A few minor things could’ve been done better but when we have a character as lively as Azaka and when the action set-pieces are so wonderfully married to a stellar soundtrack, I can’t bring myself to complain too much. I noticed a brief Fujino Asagami appearance in school too. Good to know the poor lass is doing okay!
I also see what they did in using Fairytale as the theme song; obvious allusions to the story aside (like they did with Sprinter in part five), it has a wonderful restful and dreamlike feel, appropriately like a melancholic childhood memory. Wonderful stuff.
I think for me two things managed to kick this particular instalment of Kara no Kyoukai up from “run of the mill” to something rather better. Firstly, the dynamic between Azaka and Shiki really surprised me – I was expecting it to either be really annoying or a complete non-event, but it ended up being excellent realised as their relationship developed from mutual distrust/dislike into quite a natural understanding. Secondly, the whole “memories” theme really fascinated me, especially as it wasn’t given a heavy-handed treatment and simply developed alongside the plot and really served to provoke thought rather than simply serving up questions and then answering them like some kind of lecture.
Aside from those points, I think the biggest issue with this instalment is that it didn’t quite fit in with the darker themes of the series as a whole (which is odd given that it sounds as though it would have had the original novel been followed); even given the “interlude” standing in numerical terms of this movie it still felt almost as though it belonged to a different series or a spin-off of some kind. That wasn’t enough to prevent it from being an above average viewing experience with a lot going for it thankfully – It’s just a bit of a shame that it felt less like the “garden of sinners” and more like the “allotment of mild misadventure”.
I really enjoyed the character chemistry too, but I agree that the lightness was a bit overdone. Reading around, the original text is A LOT darker and hard-hitting than what we saw here – as much as I appreciated the reprieve from gore and angst, I think it would’ve been possible to retain that and still have Asaka’s vivacious persona to sweeten the pill.
Considering how each film isn’t a set length – they all have different running times, basically being as long as they need to be – they can’t really use time constraints as an excuse to leave certaib plot points out. A shame that.
It was a fun watch, but I had trouble understanding exactly what the deal was with the student council president. I wonder if it was a fault of the direction, or of the translation/fansubs I watched (which look to be the same as yours).
I’ve never had cause for complaint with gg either, so I’m guessing (a mixture of conjecture and reading reviews from people more familiar with the novel than I am) that her background wasn’t fully explained in the movie. I didn’t understand what made her tick either really, unless it was revenge for the girl who was ostracised by her classmates. Here’s hoping Del Rey deliver on the novel later this year…
I enjoyed it greatly, but I had serious issues with how much they sidelined Satsuki’s part – for some reason, this one had the most changes out of every other movie (that link to the other site gets in-depth over the differences from novel -> movie).
I can understand how some of the changes were necessary or wouldn’t have effected the plot in the slightest, but a few of them really harmed the overall flow of the movie…
http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~typemoon/rakkyo/06.htm <– a great summarization of what happened in the novels.
Frankly, there is a reason that Kurokiri Satsuki AKA God Word Mayday is a character that scares you. It’s not because he kills people in scary ways; it’s how he uses those things that you do not want to remember again; it’s the way he acts as a “person” while having that power that sends a deadly chill up your spine…That was my impression after reading the chapter 3 times trying to grasp exactly how he’s frightening.