Kara no Kyoukai 4: Garan no Dou

Edit/Notice: If you post my screenshots somewhere, at least have the decency to INCLUDE THE FUCKING ICE CREAM.

Edit/Notice 2: Oro pm’ed me on IRC about how we get the ISO, apparently he had been told that I downloaded it from p2p. We buy it through a person living in Japan and they rip it for us.

Welp, my usual “hey guys I have the ISO here’s some screenshots” thread on /jp/ got deleted earlier tonight so I’ll post some here instead. Except I feel retarded about making image dump posts here unless they’re images of Schneizel so here’s a vague and shallow summary attached to some screenshots. :haw:

zuu boribori victory

ufotable’s claymation this time is about eating and drinking during movies. Rin and Sakura from the last claymation join the characters in the audience watching the film, which is now Rider on a bike. Shiki gets irritated by Neko Arc slurping loudly and Touko going munch munch. (The katakana around her is boribori, the onomatopoeia for munching.) Shiki uses her trusty knife to destroy a bo-shape.

knk4-01 knk4-22 knk4-02

Movie 4, The Hollow: garan-no-dou, begins with Shiki being taken to the hospital before the time skip at the end of Movie 2, making it take place 2nd chronologically. While Shiki is laying unconscious in the hospital over 2 years, there are scenes inside of her head. Initially it’s filled with other figures, but they all vanish. Her other personality, the male SHIKI, dies while inside of her. There’s a scene inside of her head where the two Shiki’s are drifting away from each other, and Shiki seemingly becomes hollow then.

knk4-03 knk4-04 knk4-05
knk4-06 knk4-07 knk4-08

After SHIKI dies, Shiki awakens and sees things differently now with her eyes. She turns towards a note and vase of roses on the nightstand and sees black and red acid trip-looking lines across them. Later when the doctor comes to talk to her, she’s shaken by her new vision and tries to shove her palms in her eyes to make the lines go away. Kokutou, who is called a loyal puppy by the hospital staff, comes to visit her but the nurse turns him away due to her attempt to smash her eyeballs in.

Shiki refuses to speak to anyone at the hospital and gets diagnosed with a speech impairment. A speech therapist comes to talk to Shiki who turns out to be Kokutou’s boss, Touko. She’s come there on purpose pretending to be a speech therapist to talk with Shiki. At night time, various spirits wander the hospital. One takes the form of SHIKI and tells Shiki that he’s going to enter her (shut up about sex jokes). Later after some conversations of tl;dr between Touko and Shiki about SHIKI’s death that I don’t fully understand, the spirit manages to enter another patient and turns them into a zombie of sorts. Using this body, the spirit attacks Shiki saying he’s going to enter again. With bandages still over her eyes, Shiki tries to escape her attacker and ends up jumping out of her window. Touko shows up outside of the hospital and casts fire magic using a cigarette, but it’s super not effective.

knk4-09 knk4-10 knk4-11
knk4-12 knk4-13 knk4-14
knk4-15 knk4-16 knk4-17

Touko can’t kill the zombie because it’s already dead and she tells Shiki that she can’t either, but Shiki points out it’s technically alive and animated so she’s going to kill it. During the convos of tl;dr that I skipped over in the previous paragraph because I was trying to cheat at writing the summary, something important was discussed that I now need to bring up to continue on: Shiki’s life and SHIKI’s death and the generic stuff that anime characters say about being alive and filling your empty/hollow self with something. Basically, after confronting all of that through talking with Touko, then jumping out of a window to save herself thus proving that she does value her life although kinda recklessly, Shiki leveled up and is no longer hollow. She is now filled with memories of Kokutou singing “Singin’ in the Rain” in horrible Engrish. Touko passes her a knife which she uses to cut her hair then she cuts the lines and destroys the physical host of the spirit. The spirit enters Shiki next and Shiki sticks her knife into her chest to kill the spirit.

knk4-18 knk4-19 knk4-20
knk4-21 knk4-23 knk4-24

Next time on Kara no Kyoukai, Paradox Spiral: Paradox Paradigm a.k.a. “Nakata Jouji in a 2hr long movie that all of the KnK novel people have said is going to be awesome.” (Also, the return of strawberry ice cream.) I found movie 4 to be refreshing because the plot wasn’t driven by “random murders around town” unlike the first 3. The movie uses an instrumental version of the ending theme, aria, during some scenes but I would keep hearing the lyrics playing in my head because of the karaoke. :ohdear:

21 Comments
December 16, 2008 in Anime
Tagged , ,

21 Responses

  1. I honestly can’t wait for the translation, I’m as happy as a little puppy now. :D

  2. Thanks for the info. Looking forward to it.

  3. alright, just another month till we get to hear Jouji talk about crazy shit! fuck yeah!

  4. 風の谷の名無しさん

    Oh man. Do you have any idea how strung out I’ve been? I can barely hit these keys from my hands shaking so much!

  5. fukken subs where

  6. Wewt! Can’t wait for it to be subbed. :D

  7. I probably should stop being a slowpoke.jpeg and watch these movies. Anyway the question would be how good are they? Like something “good” being character growth/developement, decent animation quality, good music, relevant filler(if there is any), everything pretty much explained, etc.
    The art style looks pretty good though, and since its a movie the animation quality should be above par.
    Btw, the strawberry icecream possesses more calcium than other icecream.

    • 風の谷の名無しさん

      They are written by Nasu Kinoko. If you know what that means then you know what that means, and you also know if that’s what you want to watch or not.

      • Sadly I have no experience with any of his works. But anyway, I’ll watch the first film and if I find it interesting I’ll continue onwards.

        • well, also be aware that the plot is pulling a Tarantino.

          the further you watch into it, the more what’s going on makes sense. So if you like the basic setting and production values, it might be worth to stick with it even you’re completely lost.

    • I would say this series of movies is the best anime I have ever seen to date with every aspect at top marks.

      The story is pretty much lifted from Nasu Kinoku’s novels and genuinely the only editing is to make it flow well as a movie. If you follow heiro’s advice and follow through on watching this series it will give you a good feel for Nasu’s stories

      Hope you enjoy 8)

    • Okay just saw the first film(Thanks gg and Takajun for the subs).
      Heres my opinion anyway:
      I wouldn’t call it the best but it easily contends with the best anime I’ve seen(More on that in the conclusion).

      Animation:
      Simply a masterpiece, the backgrounds are extremely detailed and the characters seem to blend into these backgrounds to the right degree. The fluidity of the animation itself is also a highpoint and when combined with the action sequences themselves the result is euphoria. The cgi and the colour overlays are also well produced.

      Soundtrack:
      The soundtrack is also well executed with the music matching every scene(from what I can remember. The Ending theme is also quite catchy.

      Characters:
      The characters besides easily fitting the background, present a decent level of depth to their actual personality and aren’t exactly “cookie-cutter” characters.

      Conclusion:
      In all its a good watch, with the animation itself alone making it worthwhile, the plot so far appears detailed, and its generally quite interesting. As stated earlier I wouldn’t rank it the best I’ve seen as Gintama holds that spot quite securely(partly due to fanboyism but thats pretty much irrelevant, for those who aren’t watching it episode 3 is a good startpoint, with it becoming awesome from 18 onwards). However this disposition may eventually change as I continue onwards.

  8. beast mode speed on this one

  9. @ miasmacloud could you mb make a fabuloussummary for parts 1-3? :D
    tyy :)

  10. Thanks for the sub, yey! \o/
    gg/Takajun ftw!

  11. Trivia: The puppy comment regarding Kokuto is likely an in joke regarding his voice actor, Kenichi Suzumura. Probably reinforced by Shiki’s voice actress being Maaya Sakamoto.
    They were a voice couple in a certain PSP game where the bloke was described as a puppy XD

    As for the singing in the rain, I thought that was pretty good – criteria being I was able to pick out and understand every word. Singing in another language – nice work I think!

  12. So like, what happened between the end of movie 2 and the timeskip to make Shiki end up how she did in the beginning of this one? Did they not say yet cause I just skipped through the whole 2nd movie and am still missing it.

    • Um…she kinda got hit by a car while trying to do you-know-what to Kokutou and was severely injured. Well, if the headlights approaching Shiki at the end of movie two are any indication.

  13. This is so fast. o.o

    GJ GG

Leave a Reply

Using Gravatars in the comments - get your own and be recognized!

XHTML: These are some of the tags you can use: <a href=""> <b> <blockquote> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>