When I finally got the time and ambition to watch the first movie, I turned off the light, cranked up the speakers and got comfortable to enjoy a supposed great anime movie series.
After about 30 min into the movie I stopped.
I couldn’t watch it anymore because it annoyed me too much.
“What the heck is wrong with it?”, I asked myself.
This show looks so good, this show sounds so good, but damn is it annoying to watch.
Without wasting anymore time I get right into reviewing:
Story
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Mysterious suicides occur in the city our protagonist lives in. Apparently ghosts or demons have something to do with it. A horror, mystery detective show?
Sound great right?
Yeah no..
What sounds good on paper is in truth horribly presented.
Let me get out the worst part right from the start: The pacing.
The show is in a non-chronological order, which sometimes can be pretty cool as it creates suspension and you want to know how things ended up this way. But problem is that you will be most of the time confused watching this movie. And because it is a movie being 50min confused isn’t really entertaining or interesting. It’s actually just plain annoying.
Who are these characters? Where and when does this play out? How did it all end up this way?
We don’t get any of these information beyond some basics. Also the events feel tagged on. Things just happen without any transition. It tries to be super complex and smart but ends up being pretentious by not covering the basics or giving us enough information throughout the movie.
Which ends up making the movie make no sense.
I mean who are these ghosts anyways, why can Shiki fight them, and why is her boyfriend asleep at some point. Why are there no other characters besides the 3 main characters. WTF happened in the end? Nothing makes sense as it is so poorly explained or presented.
It ends as confusing and blank as it started with no real plot or connection.
Characters
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What’s even worse than the story are the characters.
There are 3 of them, Shiki the emotionless doll protagonist who is boring to watch every second throughout the entire show and I can’t stand her face.
Then there is her boyfriend Mikiya who has only pretentious bullshit to say and then falls asleep at some point.
And then there is Touko who seems like the only human being in the entire show but ends up adding nothing much of value to the overall cast.
The problem with the character is:
We don’t know anything about them.
Who are they?
Why do they do the things they do?
Why should I care about them?
What the hell are they even doing the entire movie?
I never watched a show with characters that felt so distant. I had literally 0 connection to them. They were merely dolls doing random crap and talked random pretentious shit.
This brings me to the next part and maybe the worst of the entire movie.
The dialogues. Wow are they bad.
The entire time they try to sound super serious and smart but end up using fancy words saying absolute nothing.
It’s not like what they say matters, it’s just fancy words which has no relation to what the fuck is going on.
They literally pull out their conversations out of their asses, which is a big reason why they all feel so blank and dull and boring.
I watched a couple of confusing shows with almost emotionless characters but at least everything they did and say made sense in their environment, not so in Kara no Kyoukai.
Sound and Animation
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I keep it brief here as there is nothing to complain about.
The soundtrack is amazing and the overall sound effects are good too.
The voice actors do an okay job being emotionless pretentious robots, which is not a compliment.
The animation is good but not as amazing as people want it to be, it’s more cool tricks than actual amazing animation and a lot of cgi and possible rotoscoping.
The character designs look hideous as all type moon character designs. And they are especially ugly when you keep in mind what kind of characters they represent.
Enjoyment
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What can I say I had to watch this show 3 times (actually I picked it up 3 times) to finish it, and even then I rushed to the end because nothing of interest happened.
It’s the most pretentious bullshit movie I’ve ever seen and I really don’t wanna watch the other ones, but maybe... just maybe I’m gonna give them a try, just to see if they get any better (which I heard they don’t).
Scores
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Art and Animation
Artstyle +1 (Gradience and textures look great)
Quality +1 (really good quality)
Background +1 (Nice colors and dark and gloomy)
Character Designs -1 (In general I don’t like type moon character designs)
Visual Effects +1 (The best part)
8/10
Sound
Voice Acting 0 (bland but not bad)
Soundtrack +3 (disregarding my usual opening, great soundtrack overall. what a waste on this show)
Sound Effects +1 (really good)
9/10
Story or Content
Premise and Setting +1 (Interesting)
Pacing -1 (Horrible pacing. goes all over the place no connection to events)
Complexity -1 (lol deep bullshit, only confusing)
Plausibility -1 (none)
Conclusion -1 (ending leaves you with nothing)
2/10
Characters
Personality -1 (emotionless dolls)
Behavior and Chemistry -1 (random talking no real chemistry)
Development and Progression -1 (no development, stale and boring)
Motivation and Backdrop -1 ( we no nothing about anything and everyone does just things because...)
Likability -1 (hated every single character)
0/10
Enjoyment
Art and Animation +1 (good art wasted on a shitty movie)
Sound +1 (fantastic music, wasted on a shitty movie)
Story and Content -1 (boring, confusing, nonsensical, pretentious)
Characters -1 ( horrible brick like characters)
Value 0 (I don’t wanna remember this shit but others will... oh well.)
5 /10...
but actually 0/10 as I couldn’t bring myself to watch it in one sitting and hate it a lot.
Final thoughts and Conclusion
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Kara no Kyoukai is the epitome of pretentious dribble. It’s a waste of good music and art and was one of the biggest wastes of time in my life.
It’s a clear candidate for my list of worst anime I’ve ever seen.
4/10 Bad!
