Kara no Kyoukai Movie 4: Garan no Dou

Like the other films, this film emphasize heavily on character development while filling in questions for the viewers who had already seen the previous films. This film focuses mainly on Shiki and her abilities' origin, etc.

As usual, the visuals are amazing as always. The music and sounds use are mostly used before by the previous films but since they are suiting I am personally not going to complain about it.

As mentioned, this film focuses on character development, and it excels at portraying out the details of each character. Though most of the time it showcases character development on Shiki, Mikiya and Touko isn't left out ... either too.

Honestly I was disappointed in the lack of action involved but I still personally enjoyed this film since it filled up the questions.

This is part 4 of the KnK movie series
This movie is basically one big character development but I still enjoyed this movie.

(There will be some SPOILERS in my review)

[Story]: (8/10)
The story of KnK 4 now takes place 2 months before the events of the 1st KnK and immediately after the events of the 2nd movie. I was actually hoping for the 4th movie to take place after the events of the 1st KnK but I'm glad they didn't.
After Shiki got involved in a traffic accident, she spent 2 years in a coma and what's worse is she now has an amnesia. She is visited ... by a redheaded girl named Aozaki, a magus and works for a company called Garan no Dou.
Like I said above, I was hoping for the 4th KnK to move on past KnK 1 but I'm glad they didn't. This pretty much shows what happened to Shiki after she woke up from a coma after being involved in an accident 2 years ago. They showed us at the end of KnK 2 that she was being transported to the hospital but we didn't really know what exactly happened to her. The story tells us why and how Shiki got hurt. Not only that, it also shows us how and why Mikiya is working for Touko. In short, the story just tells us more about the main characters and why they are at that situation now which is not a bad thing.
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[Art/Animation]: (10/10)
The Animation is exactly the same as the previous 3 movies which is already a perfect and visually stunning animation.
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[Sound]: (9/10)
If my ears aren't broken, the soundtrack is exactly the same as the previous 3 movies. They were already great to begin with so I'm not going to complain that they re-used background themes. Another new ED theme song is used for this movie called "Aria" by Kalafina. In my opinion, it's a good song but not better than the ED used in 1st and 2nd movie.
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[Characters]: (9/10) (SPOILERS)
No new characters were introduced as the focus of this movie is the development of the main characters. The movie shows us that Mikiya has been visiting Shiki for the past 2 years, non-stop. He truly has feelings for Shiki and still does. Hell, even the nurses know him by now because he kept visiting the hospital. We also get to learn more about Mikiya, Shiki and Touko. I want to focus first on Mikiya. We learn that Mikiya didn't graduate college, had a fight with his parents and now lives alone and works for a dead end job (looks like a dead end job to me). Now focusing on Shiki, we learn that she now has an amnesia after waking up from an accident which means she doesn't remember mostly everything including the day of the accident. She somehow remembers the face of Mikiya but not his name though. We also learn more about her magic eye and how her second personality is now gone. Finally, focusing on Touko. The movie didn't really tell us anything about her that much in the previous 3 movies so I didn't find her an interesting character. Now, she seems like an interesting character to me. The movie shows us that she's a freaking Magus. That explains why she has knowledge to mysterious things that's going on around her. It also shows us what Touko is really capable of after they showed us the battle scene at the near-end of the movie. I'm starting to like these main characters.
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[Enjoyment]: (8/10)
This movie is just a big character development for 3 of the main characters but I still enjoyed it. It's giving us more reasons on why I should give a crap about these characters. That last battle scene was quite rewarding, showing us what Touko is capable of.
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[OVERALL]: (8.5/10)
The 4th movie didn't really go past the events of KnK 1 but this was still a great movie to watch. Learning more about the main characters is quite interesting. People tell me that the 5th movie will be a lot better than the previous 4 so I guess I'll be watching the 5th movie soon.

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but Garden of Sinners (aka Kara no Kyoukai) movie 4: The Hollow Shrine is not that good! In fact, if you take away the gorgeous animation, artwork, and music, its actually a pretty bad movie!

Spoilers ahead


Up until now I have been enjoying the Garden of Sinners anime quite a fair bit. Although not on the level of Nasu's other works (Fate and Tsukihime in particular) it still remains an enjoyable watch. Yet, I can confidently say that this movie was an absolute slog to get through, despite only being 46 minutes long. I also feel confident in saying that if ... Garden of Sinners did not have top tier production values, I'd easily rate this movie below a 5.

Let me explain my reasons why.

So basically in this movie Shiki has been in a coma for 2 years, and it is diving more into her backstory. Cool right? More Shiki = great! Well yes, but actually no. While I was looking forward to seeing Shiki's backstory being explored, this movie handled it in the worst way possible. They could have showed us more of her upbringing, her relationships with other cast members, maybe revealed a power or secret that she had been hiding from us all along. But this entire movie is just pretentious anime bullshit times 1000. Instead of the usual badass Shiki that we got in the first 3 movies, this time around we get a depressed bitch who constantly flip flops between wanting to live and die, leaving the viewer with a miserable watching experience. Some random fuck jumps at you out of nowhere and begins to strangle you. What do you do? Well I'd assume most people would at least try and fight back, maybe start punching and kicking, throw objects or grab a potential weapon and utilize it. What I can fucking guarantee you is that pretty much nobody is going to lie there and begin pondering the meaning of existence. "What is the meaning of life?" "What purpose does my life actually have?" "For what reason were we brought into this world?" "Why should I keep on living?" "Is death as bad as it seems?" "Life is so hard and death is so easy." "Why was I even born?" are all questions that are completely and utterly meaningless as you only get one shot at life. Once you're dead, that's it. Your time's up. Game over. Lights off. The time is now, and if you aren't living in the present you will just waste your life away whether you like it or not. But yeah, Shiki literally just sat that for minutes on end like a dead fish out of water, spouting all that existential, philosophical crap (in her mind) trying to make it sounds "deep" and "mature" when in reality she's just making herself look like a big fat clown.

Now, Garden of Sinners is a franchise that is praised heavily by elitists. "It's peak fiction" they said. "Shiki is top 1 fictional female" they said. "Kara no Kyoukai = best Nasu work." they said. Well I'm here to tell you that those are all a bunch of lies. Granted, I just finished watching this film, so I can't speak on movies 5-8. Maybe they are much better and will solve my problems that I have with this franchise.

I do enjoy the mystery elements of Kara no Kyoukai. Which is why this movie felt like a massive gut punch because it pretty much answered none of the pre-established mysteries, left us with more, and just was kinda an overall waste of time.

There were some good moments in the film like when Shiki "killed her other self" with the knife. And look, I'm not trying to sit here and tell you that Kara no Kyoukai has a complete garbage story, because it doesn't. It actually has very interesting themes and presents them in a unique way. The problems lie within the execution. For example, it seems that Nasu loves using negative things such as r*pe and death to drive home points (this happens more in movie 3). I'm not going to dive into that right now, but I'm glad he toned that shit down in Fate because it can be insanely edgy at times, and the only reason I can think of it being there is for pure shock factor, which doesn't work after you've experience enough media.

And, I know people are going to hate me for this, but I gotta say. If I wanted a "deep" and "complex" story, I would just read Ulysses, Crime and Punishment, How to Kill a Mockingbird, etc etc. Those would have a lot more to offer in terms of compelling narratives than watching a depressed anime girl go between wanting to die versus not wanting to die. Instead of making a quick decision that would satisfy us we are forced to watch her lie in bed like a dead moth just because she doesn't have the balls (literally and figuratively) to off herself.

Again. Only reason I'm giving it a 6 is because it has beautiful animation (credit to ufotable) and amazing music (credit to Kalafina and Yuki Kaijura). If these aspects were nothing short of stellar, I probably would have given this a 3 and dropped the franchise as a whole.