Kara no Kyoukai: Oblivion Recorder

“Don’t burn, be moe” is how Kara no Kyoukai: Obli­vion Recorder starts, the stop-motion vign­ette ufot­able are known for as ador­able as ever. It’s an inaus­pi­cious mes­sage for a series which so far has staunchly avoided anime tropes, but unfor­tu­nately the new prot­ag­on­ist Azaka is every bit as viva­cious and anim­ated as the slang sug­gests, and it can’t help but seep into the rest of the film. Mak­ing sporadic cameos through­out the other movies, it was a fore­gone con­clu­sion that she would even­tu­ally move into a lead role, this does not auto­mat­ic­ally imbue her with any of the qual­it­ies one expects from Kara no Kyoukai and her pro­nounced lack of them is key to the film’s drastic shift in tone.

“Action is now a pris­matic erup­tion, col­our spew­ing from magic and faer­ies with com­plete dis­reg­ard for scene comprehension”

Tak­ing place in a Chris­tian board­ing school some­where in Japan, Azaka has been ordered by Touko to look into reports of faer­ies caus­ing unrest on cam­pus. Shiki is brought on to com­bat the visu­ally eph­em­eral creatures, how­ever this only ant­ag­on­ises Azaka who sees her as a com­pet­itor for the affec­tions of Mikiya. A recent sui­cide by one of the stu­dents of the school raises sus­pi­cions, espe­cially when her class­mates are unable to recall any­thing about the incid­ent or the girl in ques­tion. A teacher who resembles Mikiya catches Shiki’s atten­tion, but it tran­spires a stu­dent is behind both the faer­ies and the stolen memor­ies; Azaka con­fronts the stu­dent, plead­ing for them to stop while Shiki faces a power­ful sor­cerer known as God’s Word who seems to be the archi­tect of the entire affair.

Accom­pan­ied by a jaunty ditty and a gold spark­ling faerie, Azaka turns to the cam­era and winks play­fully. No more than five minutes into the film is it more obvi­ous that the dark, sin­is­ter over­tones that epi­tom­ised every other Kara no Kyoukai entry are, for the moment at least, on hold. Azure skies and pla­cid foun­tains com­plete the open­ing scene as Shiki strokes a dog fol­low­ing both her and Azaka through Reien Academy. Azaka’s cheer­ful demean­our isn’t inher­ently det­ri­mental to the tenor of the film, her con­stant blush­ing fits and exag­ger­ated man­ner­isms how­ever are and are a regres­sion to easier and more well-trodden ter­rit­ory. Even her eyebrow-raising feel­ings for her brother are presen­ted as cute and affable than taboo and it is left to Shiki, of all char­ac­ters, to act the adult.

Light­hearted­ness is wel­come after the oppress­ive atmo­sphere of films such as Remain­ing Sense of Pain, nev­er­the­less it is at odds with the harshly ser­i­ous sub­ject mat­ter and, most dis­ap­point­ingly, drastic­ally reduces the impact of the two ant­ag­on­ists. Misaya, the stu­dent behind the faer­ies is exposed too early and her dia­logue with Azaka too forced, but it is God’s Word who suf­fers the most. His like­ness to Mikiya is never explained, his power of abso­lute per­sua­sion is crim­in­ally under­used and vitally his con­nec­tion to both Araya Souren and Shiki is bru­tally terse, lost in an oth­er­wise unre­mark­able fight that ends before it has got­ten under way. The pos­sib­il­ity for him to assume a more pro­act­ive and vil­lain­ous role is present, but never exploited much to the impair­ment of the movie as a whole. The end res­ult is a pair of ant­ag­on­ists whose actions are ill explained and need­lessly arbit­rary, strip­ping them of any pos­sible malevolence.

Lam­ent­ably this is indic­at­ive of many other themes and char­ac­ters through­out. The implic­a­tions of the memor­ies plundered by the faer­ies are not explored in any sat­is­fact­ory detail which makes them more or less super­flu­ous — the faer­ies them­selves turn from shim­mer­ing mischief-makers to pincer-headed aggressors too swiftly and their sup­posed omni­pres­ence is only implied rather than demon­strated. The past films have so deftly explored sub­jects such as murder, time and gender, memory seems ripe for avail­ing but it is ignored for fur­ther fluffi­ness from Azaka and Shiki. Like­wise for the drug usage lead­ing to sui­cide, over­look­ing the change from the ori­ginal source material’s com­pensated dat­ing plot, the details are treated as unim­port­ant until an expos­it­ory diatribe by Azaka at the cli­max. The whole nar­rat­ive bar­ring a select few choice dia­logues are utterly incon­sequen­tial to the over­arch­ing plot of Kara no Kyoukai and the film is con­tent to place a magical girl front and centre rather than bet­ter util­ising the oppor­tun­ity to pro­duce some­thing of sub­stance and significance.

Tellingly, this is the most aes­thet­ic­ally accom­plished film in the series so far; released from the murky con­fines of rain-drenched urban environs the anim­at­ors are free to play with an exten­ded col­our palette and a new type of com­bat that bridges the gap between Shiki’s knife-work and Touko’s magic. Action is now a pris­matic erup­tion, col­our spew­ing from magic and faer­ies with com­plete dis­reg­ard for scene com­pre­hen­sion and restraint. Light is made mal­le­able and always chan­ging from the twi­light glow before a storm to the dust mottled beams through church win­dows in the early morn­ing, artistry is found in the most incid­ental of places. Visu­ally there is noth­ing to fault and everything to love, atten­tion and tal­ent graces every ele­ment and this is top tier work from all involved.

Obli­vion Recorder is the wind down after an immense effort, still cre­at­ive and pol­ished but more play­ful and famil­iar — like slip­ping back into old clothes. Azaka is a wholly dif­fer­ent prot­ag­on­ist to those before her: she is tact­ile and whim­sical, enthu­si­astic and unyield­ing but her demean­our changes the fun­da­ment­als from a Kara no Kyoukai film into some­thing more main­stream. The change in pace and incon­sequen­ti­al­ity of the major­ity of events makes this a dis­ap­point­ing addi­tion to the series; when taken on its own it is enter­tain­ing and demon­strates more pathos than com­mon anime fare but the beauty of Kara no Kyoukai was that it was so rare and poised. The sev­enth and final movie will likely elab­or­ate on the cryptic portents uttered by the inef­fec­tual ant­ag­on­ists, but until then this pen­ul­tim­ate entry in the series is dis­heart­en­ing but it is too late in the series to class this as any­thing other than a stumbled res­pite before the grand finale. ¶