Per­haps a reflec­tion of a troubled pro­duc­tion or the lack of faith placed in the source mater­ial, but the open­ing epis­odes of Arakwa Under the Bridge are supremely under­whelm­ing. Indi­vidual com­pon­ents of the pro­to­typ­ical SHAFT show are all present  —  the reli­ance on abstract close ups and over-coloured back­grounds, the pon­der­ous and cir­cu­lar script, […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• 3 episode taste test,
• Anime,
• arakawa,
• arakawa under the bridge,
• bakemonogatari,
• bridge,
• derelict,
• hiroshi kamiya,
• itoshki,
• kara no kyoukai,
• kou ichinomiya,
• maaya sakamoto,
• nino,
• review,
• rich,
• sayonara zetsubou sensei,
• shaft,
• tomokazu sugita,
• waif

Kara no Kyoukai
Kara no Kyoukai is, without hyper­bole, one of the most ambi­tious and intel­li­gent series, movie or oth­er­wise, to come out in the past ten years. As the pro­gen­itor of the Type-Moon dyn­asty it is afforded the means to avoid the over­bear­ing fran­chise over­load that can scare away fresh view­ers. It presents a world […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• anime of the decade,
• azaka,
• boundary of emptiness,
• garden of sinners,
• hollow,
• kalafina,
• kara no kyoukai,
• kokuto,
• mikiya,
• movies,
• murder,
• oblivion recorder,
• overlooking view,
• paradox spiral,
• remaining sense of pain,
• series,
• shiki,
• souren,
• speculation,
• toko,
• ufotable,
• yuki kajiura

The last movie in the Kara no Kyoukai fran­chise is in no hurry  —  two full hours to com­plete one of the best series of recent memory and it does so with grace, thought­ful­ness and poignancy that sur­passes even itself. Pulling together threads which have run through­out all of the films, it sub­limely finishes […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• animal,
• Anime,
• beast,
• boundary of emptiness,
• drugs,
• fight,
• gender,
• gore,
• kara no kyoukai,
• kokuto,
• lio,
• lion,
• lsd,
• marijuana,
• mirror,
• movie 7,
• murder,
• murder speculation,
• part two,
• predator,
• rape,
• review,
• satsujin kousatsu,
• shiki,
• souren,
• yuki kajiura

“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 […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• azaka,
• boarding,
• boukyaku rokuon,
• boundary of emptiness,
• christian,
• faeries,
• fairies,
• fire,
• god's word,
• kara no kyoukai,
• magic,
• memory,
• oblivion,
• recorder,
• review,
• school,
• shiki,
• touko

Four films into the Kara no Kyoukai series and the expect­a­tion is for a qual­ity dip, some­thing thrown together to appease fans and cover some of the source mater­ial that wasn’t as glam­or­ous or dir­ect­ori­ally chal­len­ging; The Hol­low is none of these things, but it is the closest the col­lec­tion has become […]

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Organised with care and attention into:

• Anime,
• boundary of emptiness,
• death,
• garan no dou,
• ghosts,
• heart,
• hollow,
• kara no kyoukai,
• knife,
• kokuto,
• magician,
• magus,
• mikiya,
• movie 4,
• shiki,
• sorcerer,
• spirits,
• the hollow,
• toko,
• type-moon