Kara no Kyoukai (空の境界, Edge of Emptiness)

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m a TYPE-MOON fan. Yes, I’ll also admit I started on that road with Fate/Stay Night. I’ve seen the anime adaptations of FSN and Tsukihime, and played a few hours of the original visual novels.

[Unfortunately, I got too annoyed with visual novels. I prefer a physical book with pages I can flip with my fingers.]

That being said, it would only make sense that I was thrilled to hear of an animated adaptation for Kara no Kyoukai, Kinoko Nasu’s first novel for TYPE-MOON.

Kara no Kyoukai [known among fans as Rakkyo], is a mystery novel revolving around Ryogi Shiki, a teenage girl who possesses a pair of Mystic Eyes that can see ‘fault lines’ in any object, living or inanimate. Trained with a blade, Shiki can utterly destroy an object simply by cutting along these ‘lines of death’. The story of Rakkyo unravels Shiki’s past and the mysteries of the series of events happening around her.

'Please cut along the glowing lines'

As much as I’d love to, I can’t read the original novel. For one thing, I can’t read Japanese. Another thing, no American publisher has bothered to pick this series up, which doubly lends credit to its mysterious existence.

[Well, it 'is' pretty damn mysterious outside Japan, you see.]

Anyone who appreciates the compelling story-telling from Tsukihime or FSN would know how exciting it would be to experience another scenario written with Nasu’s level of quality.

Now that I’m done sharing some background trivia with you, here’s my take on the first chapter in this series of films. It’s titled Fukan Fuukei [Overlooking View], and it attempts to introduce the characters and the setting of the whole story. For that, I’m satisfied, but not quite yet. Given the fact that I know practically nothing of the story behind Rakkyo, here’s how I see it.

Chapter 1 contains a lot of vague dialogue. Conversations about unfathomable concepts and unfamiliar terms that describe of things which only served to raise more questions rather than answer the already existing ones.

Nothing much was revealed about anyone, or anything at all. In fact, it all seems like one very long episode of a weekly running anime series – except that it was released theatrically.

Maaya Sakamoto sounded really different this time around. I like.

It doesn’t have that much action, nor does it have much character or even plot development. In effect, Chapter 1 is just a ‘pilot’ episode of some sort. That was probably what TYPE-MOON was aiming for, not that I’m really complaining. There’s nothing really special about the animation, either.

It did, however, feature some explicit gore, and the characters move with a LOT of style. Fluid movements, hand and body motions that trace elegant curves and grittily-detailed sceneries that brilliantly showcased the mood of the show. Criticisms aside, this chapter only left me feeling thirsty for more.

As with Type-Moon’s other animated adaptations, Rakkyo featured a marvelous musical score by none other than the fantastic Kajiura Yuki [.hack//SIGN, Mai-HiME]. In fact, I watched the movie, loved the music, and then only a few days later did I realise who actually composed them. The theme for Chapter 1, ‘Oblivious‘ is absolutely beautiful to behold.

Lovely [and deadly] eyes, though we never quite saw them in Tohno Shiki :p

All in all, I say Kara no Kyoukai: Chapter 1 is something that’s made solely for the pleasure of the old-school fans of the original series of light novels. I’m sure plenty of things from the novel were in there somewhere, but for those of us who aren’t so lucky, we’ll just have to wait for another chapter or two before Rakkyo will start to make any sense at all to us.

PS: There’s a nice little prologue after the credits, and a preview of the next chapter – be sure not to miss it!

This post is tagged Kara no Kyoukai, Type-Moon

This post filed in *Review