TYPE-MOON Review: Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners: Future Gospel: Extra Chorus
For the final, final, (honest) final time, with Kara no Kyoukai: Future Gospel: Extra Chorus, we come to the end of studio ufotable’s animated adaptations of TYPE-MOON co-founder Kinoko Nasu’s novels. Except this 32-minute film is based on three doujinshi manga chapters, and attendees at the original theatrical run (where it ran alongside Future Gospel: Recalled Out Summer) also received a pamphlet containing the TOTAL ABSOLUTE ULTIMATE FINAL WE ARE NOT LYING THIS IS NOT A DRILL final text story Final Record. So far, Final Record hasn’t been animated, and ufotable are on record stating they have no intention of doing so. I’ll cover both Extra Chorus and Final Record in this article. So far, Nasu has not returned to Kara no Kyoukai (henceforth referred to as KnK) in any way.
Not since the film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has a movie story required so many endings. (Think of the unfilmed Final Record as KnK’s Scouring of the Shire, if you will.) Nasu originally intended to finish his story with the end of novel volume two, and Chapter 5: Paradox Spiral, as that concluded the story of main antagonist Souren Araya. Nasu soon realised he needed to add two extra chapters to complete co-protagonists Mikiya and Shiki’s love story, then he wrote an epilogue, and then a sequel, then some side-story doujinshi manga, and then a bizarre extra story… Meaning the original ending is now only the middle of the story. Following Paradox Spiral, KnK’s thematic and narrative consistency is… spotty, to say the least.
Chapter 6: Fairy Tale was one of my least favourite chapters, an opinion apparently shared by much of KnK’s fandom. Chapter 7 was a great conclusion, while Chapter 8 was a ponderously slow and indulgent epilogue. Recalled Out Summer was a fun if unnecessary sequel. So what of Extra Chorus? (We’ll discuss Final Record later.)
The print version of Extra Chorus was released by TYPE-MOON at Comiket 74, 16th August 2008, as three short doujinshi manga chapters, bundled together along with the two text stories (Möbius Ring and Möbius Link) that were later adapted as the Recalled Out Summer movie (2013). Only in 2011 were these stories and manga officially published by Kodansha and made available to non-Comiket attendees. Written by Kinoku Nasu, Extra Chorus was illustrated by fellow TYPE-MOON co-founder and character designer Takashi Takeuchi, whose distinctive designs are also evident in other loosely-related works like Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night.
Much like with their reverent approach to Nasu’s novels, ufotable lifts the manga panels almost frame by frame to construct their anime version. These chapters neatly fit into gaps between previous chapters in the original eight-chapter series, and in general are fairly light-hearted, except perhaps for the middle segment. First up is Feline, set between Remaining Sense of Pain and Overlooking View. Shiki has not long finished her battle with Fujino Asagami, and her boss Touko Aozaki has replaced her damaged left arm with a functionally identical prosthetic. Mikiya drops a cat off at Shiki’s place while he travels, and tries to find a permanent home for it. Shiki isn’t particularly thrilled to be left with an animal, but it’s clear she and the cat are similar in temperament, and Shiki empathises with it. I’ve mentioned before how cat-like Shiki can be.
Feline is an ephemeral but fun short that shows us some light-hearted interaction between Shiki and Mikiya that perhaps was missing from the mainstream chapters. They didn’t often interact that closely together, and were often both doing their own things. Even in this domestic slice-of-life scenario, Shiki still manages to be terrifying. The art style is even more cartoony than in Recalled Out Summer, which does fit the fluffier tone.
The second, much more sombre segment, is Daylight, which follows on from Overlooking View but before Paradox Spiral. It doesn’t feature any of the principle cast at all, but focuses on new character Risu Miyazuki, a student at Reien Girls Academy, the school attended by Mikiya’s sister Azaka and her roommate and best friend Seo Shizune (main heroine of Recalled Out Summer: Möbius Ring). Risu is a troubled girl who bitterly mourns the death of her friend Yuuko Andou. Risu and Yuuko had made a suicide pact together, but after Risu snapped at Yuuko with unkind words, Yuuko was bewitched by Kirie Fujou (ghostly body-controlling antagonist from Overlooking View) and threw herself to her death from atop the Fujou building. Risu struggles to process this, and her grief, coupled with her belief that the world is filthy, leads her to consider suicide either by cutting her wrists or throwing herself from a bridge. Yeah, it’s a lot heavier than a cute little short about a kitty-cat.
Risu is saved from self-destruction by a more-than-slightly-sinister Fujino Asagami, who, following her recent battle with Shiki, has lost most of her sight and now navigates using a white walking stick. Despite her new vision impairment, Fujino’s mystic eyes continue to hold terrifying power. She scares Risu to her senses, and helps her to recognise the blessing that a new day of life can bring.
Perhaps Fujino’s not so bad after all? Her method of helping people goes way above extra, twisting the metalwork of yet another poor bridge to shreds, but at least her heart is in the right place. She expresses deep regret for her murdering of six people in her previous appearance. I like Fujino’s character a lot, I also think she looks really cool. I’d love a Fujino spinoff with her wandering the world, twisting bad guys’ arms off and scaring troubled teens into good behaviour.
The final short, Say Grace, is a sweet little coda, set between Paradox Spiral and Fairy Tale, where Shiki and Mikiya go to the shrine together for New Year 1999. They pray and sit in the snow, while we see some peripheral characters for the final time. The cat now belongs to Azaka, Azaka returns to school to spend New Year with her friends Seo and Fujino after being dumped for Shiki by her brother, and Risu visits Yuuko’s grave, gaining closure. It’s a happy way to leave things, though we know that only a couple of months hence, Shiki will confront her dark twin Lio Shirazumi and Mikiya will be gravely injured.
I should make a point to record here that as far as I know there is no longer any legal option to watch either Recalled Out Summer or Extra Chorus in English. They were released together in hideously expensive Collector’s Edition blu-ray format by Aniplex USA (boo hiss) back in 2015, and has long sold out. It does not appear to have been re-pressed or re-released. The Australian release from Madman has disappeared from the internet, and even scouring Amazon yields only links to buy the hilariously overpriced Japanese blu-ray. Because Aniplex USA hates replying to their UK distribution partner MVM’s emails, there has never been a UK blu-ray release.
At one point Recalled Out Summer and Extra Chorus both streamed on Amazon Prime in the US, alongside Chapters 1–8, but they’ve been de-listed and now only chapters 1–7 are available. Chapters 1–8 remain available to buy on US blu-ray courtesy of Aniplex USA (daylight robbery prices) or UK blu-ray from MVM (slightly more sensibly-priced). Your only options to watch Recalled Out Summer or Extra Chorus are to be lucky and find a secondhand copy, or to pirate. I’ll let you speculate on my mode of access, but let me also say I’d buy an official UK disc in a heartbeat. Come on, Aniplex, what’s your problem?
Novella-length Final Record, like every other text version of KnK, is of course unavailable to read officially in English. There is a fan translation, the link to a pdf of which I’ll leave below. In length it’s about equal to the combined text of both Möbius Ring and Möbius Link. I suppose if it were to be animated, it would probably fill a 60–90 minute film fairly easily. Chronologically, it’s set later than every other KnK entry except for Möbius Link which flashes forwards to 2010. It’s Summer 1999, so a few months after Chapter 8: Epilogue.
Final Record is a really weird story that is even less essential than Recalled Out Summer or any of the Extra Gospel shorts. It starts off with several characters from Reien Girls’ Academy (Azaka Kokutou, Fujino Asagami, Seo Shizune and Misaya Ouji) running around trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Yes, this is KnK does Night of the Living Dead. It doesn’t explain why any of this is happening, and then the world ends. Oops. Suddenly the same characters are all now spending the night in a weird building with strange architecture (hinted to have been designed by Touko Aozaki, much like the apartment complex from Paradox Spiral) along with some other characters, including Shiki Ryougi. Everyone starts dying one after the other, and it seems like a bonkers murder mystery where everyone is the murderer. Ok… And then the world ends again. Ooops.
So by this point it’s clear that something very odd is going on. It reads like a fever-dream, though perhaps the clunky fan-translation doesn’t help with this. There are several sections where the translator apologises that they don’t understand a line of text and do their best. It can’t be easy to translate Nasu’s esoteric prose… In the final segment, it’s apparently now 2009 and the same four girls all work together… writing magazine articles or something? Anyway it turns out their world is a digital facsimile and it starts collapsing all around them as their world ends in screaming and terror. Oooops.
So eventually it explains that everyone has been trapped in a shared dream state by a magical movie projector left behind by Touko Aozaki before she buggered off to greener pastures. Never trust anything left behind by one of Nasu’s mages. Shiki rescues everyone by cutting it. That’s what she does. Never change, Shiki. It’s really a completely pointless story with some baffling but fun scenes. I can see why ufotable didn’t think it would be worthwhile to adapt, but I don’t know… If they went really hard with the weirdness and crazy action, an animated version might be fun. Anyway, it’s completely skippable and adds nothing to the franchise as a whole.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my exhaustive run through everything Kara no Kyoukai. It’s been an at times exhausting journey, I’m glad it’s over now, but I’m also glad I finally managed to finish it. As a whole, it’s a very flawed franchise, filled with incomprehensible lore, impenetrable conversations, horrifying violence and it’s almost always so… very… sloooooow. However, it also has a fascinating story, interesting characters, and some fantastic emotional moments and stunningly beautiful artistry. The soundtrack is one of the best I’ve ever heard. There’s a high bar of entry, and it’s stupidly difficult to acquire everything needed to experience the whole thing, but hopefully the links I’ve provided are helpful to signpost you to the more obscure parts, like fan-translated novels and doujins. At some point soon I’ll tackle Nasu’s other big visual novel Tsukihime, certainly before the remake is due out officially in English next year, but I think I need a break from TYPE-MOON for a while! Thanks for reading!
Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners: Future Gospel: Extra Chorus
Directed by: Tomonori Sudou
Screenplay by: Akira Hiyama
Story by: Kinoko Nasu
Based on: Kara no Kyoukai Mirai Fukuin: Extra Chorus doujin manga written by Kinoko Nasu and illustrated by Takashi Takeuki
JP Publisher: Kodansha
JP Publication date: 16th August 2008 (doujin, Comiket 74), 11th November 2011 (mass market)
ISBN: 978–4–06–138919–9
Music by: Yuki Kajiura, Kalafina
Production studio: ufotable
Original JP release: 28th September 2013
JP Distributor: Aniplex
US home video release: 21st April 2015
US Distributor: Aniplex USA
Language: Japanese audio with English Subtitles
Runtime: 32 minutes
Fan-translated doujinshi manga link: here
Kara no Kyoukai: Final Record
Novel by: Kinoku Nasu
Initial JP publication: 28th September 2013 (Future Gospel film bonus)
Hardcover JP publication: 30th January 2018
Publisher: Kodansha
ISBN: 978–4–06–511014–0
Fan-translated novel link: here
