Kara no Kyoukai Movie 4: Garan no Dou

Like the other films, this film emphasize heavily on character development while filling in questions for the viewers who had already seen the previous films. This film focuses mainly on Shiki and her abilities' origin, etc.

As usual, the visuals are amazing as always. The music and sounds use are mostly used before by the previous films but since they are suiting I am personally not going to complain about it.

As mentioned, this film focuses on character development, and it excels at portraying out the details of each character. Though most of the time it showcases character development on Shiki, Mikiya and Touko isn't left out ... either too.

Honestly I was disappointed in the lack of action involved but I still personally enjoyed this film since it filled up the questions.

This is part 4 of the KnK movie series
This movie is basically one big character development but I still enjoyed this movie.

(There will be some SPOILERS in my review)

[Story]: (8/10)
The story of KnK 4 now takes place 2 months before the events of the 1st KnK and immediately after the events of the 2nd movie. I was actually hoping for the 4th movie to take place after the events of the 1st KnK but I'm glad they didn't.
After Shiki got involved in a traffic accident, she spent 2 years in a coma and what's worse is she now has an amnesia. She is visited ... by a redheaded girl named Aozaki, a magus and works for a company called Garan no Dou.
Like I said above, I was hoping for the 4th KnK to move on past KnK 1 but I'm glad they didn't. This pretty much shows what happened to Shiki after she woke up from a coma after being involved in an accident 2 years ago. They showed us at the end of KnK 2 that she was being transported to the hospital but we didn't really know what exactly happened to her. The story tells us why and how Shiki got hurt. Not only that, it also shows us how and why Mikiya is working for Touko. In short, the story just tells us more about the main characters and why they are at that situation now which is not a bad thing.
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[Art/Animation]: (10/10)
The Animation is exactly the same as the previous 3 movies which is already a perfect and visually stunning animation.
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[Sound]: (9/10)
If my ears aren't broken, the soundtrack is exactly the same as the previous 3 movies. They were already great to begin with so I'm not going to complain that they re-used background themes. Another new ED theme song is used for this movie called "Aria" by Kalafina. In my opinion, it's a good song but not better than the ED used in 1st and 2nd movie.
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[Characters]: (9/10) (SPOILERS)
No new characters were introduced as the focus of this movie is the development of the main characters. The movie shows us that Mikiya has been visiting Shiki for the past 2 years, non-stop. He truly has feelings for Shiki and still does. Hell, even the nurses know him by now because he kept visiting the hospital. We also get to learn more about Mikiya, Shiki and Touko. I want to focus first on Mikiya. We learn that Mikiya didn't graduate college, had a fight with his parents and now lives alone and works for a dead end job (looks like a dead end job to me). Now focusing on Shiki, we learn that she now has an amnesia after waking up from an accident which means she doesn't remember mostly everything including the day of the accident. She somehow remembers the face of Mikiya but not his name though. We also learn more about her magic eye and how her second personality is now gone. Finally, focusing on Touko. The movie didn't really tell us anything about her that much in the previous 3 movies so I didn't find her an interesting character. Now, she seems like an interesting character to me. The movie shows us that she's a freaking Magus. That explains why she has knowledge to mysterious things that's going on around her. It also shows us what Touko is really capable of after they showed us the battle scene at the near-end of the movie. I'm starting to like these main characters.
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[Enjoyment]: (8/10)
This movie is just a big character development for 3 of the main characters but I still enjoyed it. It's giving us more reasons on why I should give a crap about these characters. That last battle scene was quite rewarding, showing us what Touko is capable of.
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[OVERALL]: (8.5/10)
The 4th movie didn't really go past the events of KnK 1 but this was still a great movie to watch. Learning more about the main characters is quite interesting. People tell me that the 5th movie will be a lot better than the previous 4 so I guess I'll be watching the 5th movie soon.

Everyone desires to be destroyed and remade from scratch.''... I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about such generalisations. I mean I know it's a character's opinion, but it feels more like writer just putting the idea forward, an idea I find a bit ridiculous. Or am I just taking this stuff too literally? Is it supposed to be deep and relevant on levels I can't understand yet? Or is it just writer sharing his negative view of the world, or trying to appeal to depressed in the audience? Or just stringing together words in a way that might appear deep and thoughtful? Is ... it an inaccurate translation? Damned if know... but I can't help not finding it slightly annoying.

27:18 KnK really has these moments where overly serious scene is so seriously serious that it just becomes ridiculously funny for all the wrong reasons. As much as it's case of so-bad-it's-good, it also breaks the atmosphere and immersion that this show tries so damn hard to create. I mean there's a big percentage of scenes that only have the purpose of illustrating the atmosphere and environment to set the specific mood. Though the mood doesn't change much, but they keep doing it to reinforce it, to keep up the consistency of the overall artistic experience. Though as I've said before, I'm pretty sure it's possible to do that while also moving the plot forward, but that's not something KnK directors/writers seem interested in doing.

Overall, the 4th part is quite short (40 min) and hence doesn't feel like a movie at all, it feels like one regular anime episode just dragged out to twice the size. That's not to say it's boringly slow, as it's audio visually beautiful enough for it not to be the case. But really, whole ''movie'' is just Shiki healing up, dealing with her mental state, and being discharged. There's hardly anything to talk about. It doesn't just feel like a small episode of a larger set of events, it actually is, which is why I find it silly this is officially a ''movie''. Anyways, this makes it difficult to grade it. I don't understand why they chose to tell this story in a non chronological order, but I can't say I appreciate it at all. I think I'd prefer this story told chronologically. This is just making it more difficult to follow.