TYPE-MOON Review: Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners Chapter 5: Paradox Spiral
It’s taken me a while longer to digest this chapter of ufotable’s Kara no Kyoukai adaptation than I would have liked — partly because I’ve been distracted by my focus on other articles, but also because at almost two hours in duration, it’s twice as long as any preceding chapters. Paradox Spiral is a dense, complicated and deliberately confusing film — but it’s also extremely rewarding, recontextualising many events from earlier episodes, while also introducing and explaining complex lore central to the entire TYPE MOON/Nasuverse.
In terms of this eight-part DVD/blu-ray collection, this fifth part, (the box set oddly calls it Paradox Paradigm, despite the Japanese title Mujun Rasen translating directly into English as Paradox Spiral) is fifth in chronology. While it may seem like the series has dispensed with its non-chronological structure following the initial four chapters’ mixed-up order, Paradox Spiral’s internal timeline is initially bewildering. Split up into three main “arcs”, they sometimes run concurrently with one another, and whole scenes are sometimes repeated, but from completely different perspectives. This isn’t a movie you can half-ass watching — you need to pay attention or you’ll be lost. I watched it three whole times before I could say I was confident I understood the plot and was able to write about it.
Although the fan translation of the original novel isn’t exactly ideal, I still found it a valuable resource especially because it even comes with diagrams and more detailed explanations of abstract concepts like “The Counter Force/Deterrent Force” and “The Akashic Records/Vortex of Radix/The Root of All Phenomena”. The movie does its best to distill these explanations into some very dense, heavy dialogue, but a single watch is insufficient to truly digest why these concepts are important to the villains’ mind-boggling plans. I previously reviewed the recently-released updated visual novel version of Nasu’s first fictional work (Witch on the Holy Night/Mahoyo), the original novel of which preceded Kara No Kyoukai’s novels by a few years.
Kara no Kyoukai builds on and deepens Mahoyo’s concept of “The Swirl of the Root” as the ultimate goal of all mages. In this aspect, Paradox Spiral works extremely well as a direct thematic sequel to Mahoyo. In Mahoyo, Touko Aozaki was the main antagonist, and her aim was to steal her family’s magical crest inheritance from her younger sister Aoko, in order to use it to access the Fifth Magic and gain access to The Root. In Paradox Spiral, Touko battles against other mages who intend to access The Root via other means, namely by using Shiki Ryougi and her Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. (Mystic Eyes as a concept were also introduced in Mahoyo). Touko’s behaviour in Mahoyo, plus her antagonists’ behaviour in Paradox Spiral, really does cement the expectation that all mages in Nasu’s stories are selfish, amoral, sociopathic assholes. The best thing to do when faced with one of Nasu’s mages is to run the hell away and hope they haven’t transferred your soul into some weird container while you weren’t looking.
Yes, Paradox Spiral is full of Existential Dread. Yay! Early on we’re introduced to troubled teen Tomoe Enjou who runs away from home, convinced he’s murdered his own parents. When he’s attacked and chased by a group of youths, Shiki Ryougi comes to his aid (violently) and as a “fellow murderer” offers him a place to stay, on the floor of her small apartment. Over the next month, Tomoe stays most nights and gradually falls for the mysterious Shiki — though she laughingly rejects his advances. Something about Tomoe’s story doesn’t add up though, so Shiki agrees to accompany him to the apartment building where he previously lived with his parents — only to find them alive, but in extremely troubling and bizarre circumstances.
Tomoe’s apartment building is weird, a complicated and disorienting construction maliciously designed by its architect(s) to induce madness in normal human beings. I can believe such a place exists — there’s something called “sick building syndrome” where residents develop physical symptoms perhaps due to the use of certain construction materials, but there’s also evidence that people crammed into high rise buildings exhibit increased frequency of mental health disturbances. Perhaps Nasu was aware of this when he wrote the original novel.
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW
For a first time viewer, the design and purpose of the apartment building is difficult to grasp — but essentially it comes down to the fact that it’s based on the yin-yang symbol (also referred to as the Taiji in Chinese philosophy), and utilises secret spirals to enhance resident disorientation. There are two halves to the structure that are exact replicas of each other, and by changing signage and rotating the spiral staircase and elevator secretly as they ascend, residents are none the wiser that they are no longer living in the individual apartment they initially moved into. It’s a super-weird concept that’s made even stranger by the use of another common TYPE-MOON concept — that of the Bounded Field. Tomoe’s apartment building is a closed system separated from the rest of reality by magecraft, the people within nothing but pawns. Secreted away from the world, Paradox Spiral’s antagonists hope to avoid the interference of The Counter Force, a manifestation of the world/humanity’s collective will, which prevents mages from accessing potentially reality-warping primal Magic.
It’s no wonder that Tomoe is messed up — his parents are resurrected every morning only to die at night, as part of an experiment in mortality by creepy mage Souren Araya, whose name has been mentioned a couple of times in previous episodes. It turns out he forced Shiki to confront Kirie Fujo in episode one, and Fujino Asagami in episode three, in order to fully awaken the awareness of her powers so that Shiki would then become a suitable vessel for his soul to inhabit (eek!). He’s been manipulating everything in the background, as he sees Shiki as his path to The Root, and True Magic. Shiki’s “origin” is “emptiness”, which means she is inextricably linked to The Root, which is both formless void and origin of all information. Souren’s “origin” is “stillness” (translated as “quiescence” here), which means he’s very hard to kill — Shiki can’t even see his “death lines” like she can with everything else in the world.
Souren isn’t exactly the most charismatic antagonist — he’s kind of a downer, his eyes are always in shadow, and he monologues dourly. He’s clearly an asshole of the highest order though, because he collected thirty families, placed them in his Condominium Of Crazy, waited for them to murder each other, then harvested their brains and trapped their souls in lookalike puppets. He separates them from the cycle of death and rebirth, forcing them to murder each other over and over and over for his own sick satisfaction. That’s a pretty dark concept, and its reveal of the basement-brains-in-tubes towards the end is only-just-enough-on-this-side-of-ridiculous to prevent Kara no Kyoukai from jumping the shark entirely.
What keeps Paradox Spiral from degenerating into hokey nonsense is not just the intense and disorienting storytelling structure, but the fantastic direction, production design and cinematography. Director Takayuki Hirao’s use of colour is exemplary, especially in scenes evoking the sheer wrongness of the apartment complex. Its lighting is anxiety-provoking red, a stark counterpoint to the more calming dark blue of the outside world, or the luminescent blue of Shiki’s truth-illuminating eyes. Scenes are presented from bizarre, uncomfortable angles, and during the second arc, despite her central involvement in the story, Shiki herself is never depicted onscreen, a deliberate choice presumably because of her disappearance at the conclusion of the first arc. It makes her eventual, triumphant return in the third even more powerful than it was in the novel.
Paradox Spiral doesn’t feature only one antagonist — apart from the gloomy, perpetually-haunted-looking Souren Araya, we meet Cornelius Alba, a flamboyant blonde wanker who wears an ostentatious red top-hat and suit to match. He’s much more akin to how I perceive most TYPE-MOON mages — obnoxious, dangerous, and full of himself. He’s a very irritating character and comes across as oddly cartoonish and out-of-place in a work of otherwise such grim tone. His pretentious peacockery marks him out as a more stereotypical villain, a character type one would expect perhaps a less experienced author to write. Nasu himself apparently later wanted to rewrite Kara no Kyoukai, but only relented on seeing how ufotable elevated his work with its animated adaptation. Decades on from his original novel (written right at the beginning of his career), I wonder if perhaps he views Cornelius with some embarrassment now? He’s certainly one of the story’s weaker components.
Once again, Yuki Kajiura’s score is absolutely spectacular — it’s one of the best anime soundtracks I have ever heard, especially during the action sequences it perfectly complements ufotable’s detailed, smooth animation. Even during quieter scenes, it evokes such deep melancholy and longing — a profound mix of both beauty and pain. Ending theme Sprinter by Kalafina is probably the best one yet — heartfelt, beautiful and tragic, it recalls Tomoe’s broken, impossible dream of becoming a professional athlete.
Paradox Spiral’s inclusion of material like domestic abuse and depression is profound, not only because of its sincere soundtrack. Souren announces that Tomoe could never hope to beat him because his “origin” is “worthlessness”, suggesting that even from birth he’d never amount to anything, that his overwhelming self-hatred was innate. Yet as Touko explains at the end, the only reason that Souren’s bizarre plot failed was because of simple familial love, of Tomoe’s imperfect attachment to his damaged family. Even that small amount of love, from a supposedly “worthless” individual was enough to derail the plans of a powerful 300-year-old mage. It’s these little nuggets of emotional truth that help to raise Kara no Kyoukai above the level of mere supernatural fantasy into something lasting and worthwhile.
Apart from these strong emotional underpinnings, Nasu’s musings on the nature of spirals, paradoxes and the Taiji leave me kind of numb. Characters say meaningless phrases like “I wish this spiral was a paradox.” What does that even mean? It sounds clever, like much of Nasu’s waffling often does, but it’s just noise to me. The novel is full of this, and I can’t help but think that Nasu must have still been in the middle of his chunibyo phase when writing it. Though considering how much dense overexplanatory oddness there is in his later Fate visual novel, perhaps he never grew out of it. I also admit I struggle to understand many of the plot developments in Fate/Grand Order, where random shit seems to happen mainly because it’s cool, not necessarily because it arises naturally from character interactions.
Paradox Spiral is an excellent example of a story where the author has started with a bizarre concept and then built everything else around it. That’s not necessarily a bad way to write a story — but it does sometimes come across as needlessly arcane and complicated. In this instance, I really enjoyed it and would go as far as to say this has been my favourite Kara no Kyoukai chapter so far, despite its non-standard structure. Even considering its labyrinthine plotting it still finds time to focus on character. Tomoe Enjou is like a guest protogonist in this one, with much of the action seen from his often bewildered perspective. He’s a mass of contradictions, repressed anger, neuroses and wilful denial that make him empathetic. Despite his many flaws, he’s a doomed hero whose tragic end is moving and meaningful.
Tomoe’s interactions with Shiki shine light on her deeper character — her capacity for humour and empathy — and this helps expand her role from sociopathic terminator-like figure to something more nuanced and human. Her sulk at the conclusion when she complains that Mikiya has acquired a key to her apartment without providing her with one for his is adorable. Mikiya himself has a fun scene with his sister Azaka and employer Touko where they interrogate him about whether his attraction to Shiki is independent of her expressed gender or not. Azaka does come across as quite mean. So far, her only character trait has been that she hates Shiki, though we don’t yet know why. Perhaps that will be explored in the next episode, which seems to be set at Reien Girls’ Academy, her (plus Touko’s and Mahoyo’s Alice’s previous) exclusive high school.
With Paradox Spiral, Ufotable outdid themselves with their adaptation of a very challenging story, balancing exciting action with humorous character interludes, complex mystery, deep lore and impeccable presentation. I could certainly see myself returning to watch this again someday, though probably not for a while — three times is enough for now! The next chapter looks to be a return to a shorter runtime, so hopefully I’ll be back to speak about that soon!
Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners Chapter 5: Paradox Spiral
Directed by: Takayuki Hirao
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: 16th August 2008
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: 114 minutes
BBFC rating: 18
RRP: Blu-ray CE box: £180 (can be found online for as low as £90)
Fan-translated novel link: here
