TYPE-MOON Review: Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners Chapter 2 …and nothing heart (Murder Speculation — Part One)
Continuing my deep-dive into the earlier and less well-known works of TYPE-MOON’s co-founder and writer of Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night, we’re now into the second part of anime studio ufotable’s The Garden of Sinners/Kara no Kyoukai. Most of this series’ stories are blessed with two titles, this one carrying the somewhat incongruent combination …and nothing heart (Murder Speculation Part 1). Whereas the opening episode took place in September of 2008 and is fourth in continuity, the second flashes back to 1995 and is the first in continuity, depicting the initial awkward interactions between series leads Shiki Ryougi and Mikiya Kokutou.
Seen mostly from Mikiya’s viewpoint, we follow him navigating through high school and attempting to maintain a friendship with the self-described misanthropic Shiki. Although beautiful and graceful, Shiki’s hostile attitude to her fellow students has led to her becoming a loner — and she’s just fine with that. Mikiya’s persistent dialogue and lunch dates with her act as a source of irritation — though it’s clear that their attraction to one another is mutual, despite Shiki’s protestations.
While Mikiya hails from an average family — he lives with his mother, and spends mealtimes with his police detective cousin — Shiki is the designated heir to a local upper class family with a supernatural secret. Unlike her brother (whom we don’t meet), Shiki has inherited the family’s curse — a kind of split personality syndrome — and apparently this makes her the only child of her generation fit to carry on the family name. Because of this status, Shiki disparages herself in her own words as a “psycho”, and refuses to engage with other human beings. The anime struggles to include as many details as the original novel about the nature of Shiki’s affliction, so reading it (even in somewhat wonky fan-translated form) is helpful to fill in the blanks.
Whereas Overlooking View featured multiple allusions to the theme of “emptiness”, Murder Speculation Part 1 introduces the theme of “duality”, most prominently with Shiki’s alternative personality SHIKI. (In the original Japanese, two different character writing systems with the same pronunciation are used for the two versions of her name.) In Shiki’s family tradition, each child is given two phonetically-identical but ideogrammatically-different names, one male and the other female, for if and when they manifest the curse. Shiki’s subdued female personality is dominant, but the more confident masculine SHIKI acts and speaks very differently — much to Mikiya’s surprise when literally dragged out on a date.
Mikiya takes the news of Shiki’s dual personality in his stride, but draws Shiki’s ire perhaps for getting on too well with her more forward alter-ego. Unfortunately in their hometown of Mifune City there has been a rash of serial murders, and Shiki seems convinced that she — or at least SHIKI — is responsible for them. She warns Mikiya that one of the reasons that he should not get close to her is that SHIKI will murder him. Mikiya can’t accept that Shiki is capable of murder, despite her oddness, so for weeks stakes out her home at night to make sure she can’t go out on her frequent night-time walks and become implicated in crimes he thinks she didn’t commit.
Due to the nature of Murder Speculation as only the first part of a larger murder mystery story, we receive almost no answers to any of the questions raised by the deliberately confusing and obfuscated plot. Is Shiki responsible for any of the murders? One of the corpses is found with a yin-yang symbol carved into it, recalling the theme of duality evoked by Shiki’s split personality. Sometimes the viewer is led deliberately to believe that Shiki is an unhinged murderer — such as the early scene where she uses the blood from a fresh corpse to give herself a pretty lip coating, or when she’s later seen standing over a corpse with its fountain of blood spraying across her face. She’s depicted as demonic and inhuman. However, it’s also clear that Shiki herself has no clear recollection of what happened, and her claims to being a killer don’t match up with reality. Our expectations as viewers are being toyed with.
There’s also a mysterious bit-part character — a high school pupil — who only says a few words to Shiki in passing in the corridor — “I know you’re irritated, but isn’t four times a bit much?” Shiki doesn’t respond other than to look even more irritated, but it’s clear this person, whoever he is, knows something about Shiki and is implying she has committed the recent serial murders. I think he’s probably the character Mikiya later mentions in the book as “Lio Shirazumi”, an upperclassman who is leaving the school “to do something he wants to do”. This character is also later seen having dinner with Mikiya at a restaurant before Mikiya heads off to find a corpse outside Shiki’s house. I suspect it may be a long time until we get answers about this mysterious person and his links to Shiki.
Murder Speculation Part 1 is very different in tone and content to the more action-oriented and overly supernatural Overlooking View. It’s more of a character piece, interspersed with moments of mystery and gruesome body horror, striking a bizarre tone somewhere between romantic school drama/slice of life and detective noir —another example of its theme of duality. Mikiya is drawn as a lovestruck and gentle, but determined and persistent suitor for Shiki’s affections, in comparison to his greatly reduced supporting role as essentially a pot plant in the first episode. It’s good to discover more about what makes him tick. For such a mild-mannered chap he’s developed quite a morbid fascination for crime — it’s no wonder he later ends up ditching college halfway through to work for Touko’s supernatural detective agency.
Shiki remains something of an enigma of a character, though it’s clear she feels frustrated by her perceived lack of control in her life. She doesn’t wish to be her family’s heir and finds the responsibility tiresome. She attends the local school because it’s the shortest commute, and not because she values her education — she attends only because it’s expected, and can’t stand interacting with the fellow students she despises. Mikiya represents a wild card she can’t control — she’s unable to understand his interest in her, but it’s clear that something in her subconscious finds him fascinating — as SHIKI admits to liking him, and SHIKI and Shiki are but two facets of the same person.
Shiki’s struggles with her belief that she is a murderer, and it’s a little hard to know if we’re meant to empathise with her, or suspect her, or merely be baffled by her — perhaps all three. If anything, her family seem complicit in hiding whatever it is they believe she’s been doing. We gain no insight into why by the time of Overlooking View Shiki has essentially disowned her family. We also don’t yet discover how she ends up in a coma, nor how she acquires her magic blue glowy eyes.
Kara no Kyoukai holds its cards close to its chest, yet for a patient viewer it’s compelling and mesmerising to watch. It’s something that needs to be digested slowly, and when in a certain mindset. I don’t think I could binge this show, and it’s not something I could watch when tired. It’s slowly-paced almost to a fault, but every scene, every lighting choice, every uttered word, every musical leitmotif, every pause seems to hold some kind of meaning. Unlike most mainstream anime designed to be fun but disposable candy-coloured entertainment, Kara no Kyoukai is to be experienced in meditative fashion, and reflectively mulled over.
The post-credit stinger leaves us with this ominous utterance from an unfamilar voice:
“Three pieces have been prepared:
A double body that floats, depending on death.
An ill-fit being that takes pleasure by contacting death.
The one that awakens the origins by escaping to death.
They become entwined with each other and wait at the conflicting spirals.”
I can guess who two of the “pieces” refer to, I can only imagine that the third episode will enlighten us as to the final one. I’ll be back soon to write about it!
Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners Chapter 2 …and nothing heart (Murder Speculation — Part One)
Directed by: Takuya Nonaka
Screenplay by: Masaki Hiramatsu
Story by: Kinoko Nasu
Based on: The Garden of Sinners/Kara no Kyoukai novel series by Kinoko Nasu
Music by: Yuki Kajiura, Kalafina
Production studio: ufotable
Original JP release: 29th December 2007
JP Distributor: Aniplex
UK home video release: 22nd December 2014 (Limited Edition DVD Collection), 25th November 2019 (Collector’s Edition Blu-ray set)
UK distributor: MVM
Language: Japanese audio with English Subtitles
Runtime: 59 minutes
BBFC rating: 18
RRP: Blu-ray CE box: £180 (can be found online for as low as £90)
Fan-translated novel link: here
