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The Garden of Sinners - Chapter 7: ……not nothing heart. (Murder Speculation Part B)
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Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners: Murder Speculation (Second Half) Status: COMPLETE
Movie
Murder Speculation's second part comes to us not only several movies late release-wise, but it's also divided from it's first part chronologically.
The whole idea is to tie together the loose plot threads from Murder Speculation (First Half), which, to be honest, is really only one plot thread:
Did Shiki really commit those murders like she said she did, or is Kokutou right and she never killed anyone?
Well if you're even remotely sane, you wouldn't have watched this far into the Kara no Kyoukai series like I have.
BUT if you possess the bare minimum degree of intelligence it would require to understand how and why exactly Oblivion Recording managed to **** up in the first 5 minutes, then your answer is probably... yeah. Shiki killed those people. Kokutou's an over-optimistic idiot.
Unfortunately, you would be wrong as this movie serves two purposes: firstly to prove that Shiki wasn't the killer, and secondly to bore you to death.
Once again we have a two-hour long movie and even more than last time I'm inclined to say it is WAY TOO LONG.
Now look, I'm no stranger to long movies. I've seen the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy.
But whereas Lord of the Rings manages to engage and largely keep you engaged, Kara no Kyoukai is, thus far, a traditionally slow series of movies. When they double their run-time in order to neatly fit into a televised animation block, then they have to create enough content to fill the time.
Unfortunately, Murder Speculation 2 just comes across like a much shorter movie where nearly every individual shot lasts longer than it needs to.
No joke, there was a point in the movie where I actually thought it froze since it was a still-shot and Kara no Kyoukai routinely employs dead silence instead of a backing track.
I shouldn't be ripped out of the movie by it literally slowing down to the point where I'm not just looking at an establishing shot, but a wallpaper.
The first two thirds of this movie are totally uneventful. We re-examine several scenes from Part 1 in which we see additional dialog between Kokutou and Shiki which contribute nothing to the story and Souren, the Big Bad who dies in Paradox Spiral shows up to babble about "the origin" before he disappears, supposedly taking her memories of this entirely pointless scene with him. Wow, great, that really added...
...
We learn the murders from before Shiki's hospital adventure come back and each one of them is found with new street drugs.
As in previous movies the police approach Kokutou to talk about the investigation, however at this point I'm seriously questioning why.
What possible advantage is there to talk to Kokutou? He's not L from Death Note, he's a useless stock male protagonist, he's got nothing to offer.
Well, Kokutou agrees to help the police by investigating on his own, which raises several new questions about his employment and financial situation, before heading out onto the streets, buying the latest drugs that get their users killed, USING THEM, and then going, "Hmm, I see, so that's what they do."
Wow. That is some BRILLIANT investigative work, Kokutou. Hey, the victims were all found hacked up into pieces, so next time why don't you try that out and stab yourself in the face?</foreshadowing>
The true criminal who's been killing people both before and after Shiki's hospitalizations TURNS OUT TO BE... *SHOCK GASP!*
That one guy from Part 1. You know, that one guy you totally don't remember Kokutou talking to because he barely had any lines and his role in this movie wasn't foreshadowed in the slightest?
Yeah, that guy.
Apparently, that guy is in love with Shiki.
Four times. Four ****in' times. For ****s sake, what's wrong with these ******* movies.
Shiki supposedly turned him down in school and he killed a stranger in retaliation. Souren caught up with him at some point and "unlocked his origin" which is honestly the most interesting thing in this whole movie.
Whole idea about "origins", with the Akashic Record, I'm GUESSING, being the origin or origins, is that in this world, reincarnation is real, and everyone is in some way influenced by the life they lead before, however in some unexplained metaphysical way, everyone can be traced back to their simplest previous existence, which is merely a concept.
The killer, Lio, became aware of what his origin was and, because of reasons, he's hopelessly become a slave to it. So, since his origin is "consumption", while he may have been able to act against this hidden impulse originally, Souren made him aware of it, and now he can't really help being a cannibal.
It's a really screwed up approach to the "fate" idea with hints of how "true names" worked in the Eragon universe: a cold summation of everything you represent.
I honestly find this interesting. Too bad it's such a small element of the movie.
The third act is where an otherwise Meh... movie becomes a Just... Bad movie for me.
We're told on multiple occasions that there's a distinct, important, and moral difference between "murder" and "slaughter".
If the movie meant this is a legal sense, I would agree, but I seriously doubt this was their intention.
This is quickly followed up by such profound quotes as,
Is that right, movie? It's instantly dehumanizing to kill another human, huh?
EVEN in self defense, huh?
And on top of that, someone who kills other people can't kill themselves? Really?
You know, I seem to recall that can still happen. I think it even happened in a Kara no Kyoukai movie. Yeah, I think it was called
You know, the very first movie in which you take a moral stance against suicide regardless of the circumstances? It seems now, you appear to be more accepting of suicide and instead are taking a moral stance against killing in general.
You know, as much as I disagree I may be able to accept that that's your view, but when you contradict yourself with lines like THIS:
You're starting to sound like MAYBE you don't actually know what the hell you're talking about.
So, apparently Shiki comes to the realization that despite killing her murderous side, she's still compelled to kill people (YOU'RE SEVERAL MOVIES TOO LATE TO THAT PARTY), but she decides that she'd rather stay with Kokutou and resist her urges.
Which is why she goes looking for the killer, tells him she doesn't have time for him, and then walks away.
Oh yeah, I can see that working out REALLY WELL.
Of course the killer knocks her out, handcuffs her to nothing, leaves her unattended, and she's instantly pacified.
Oh no, she's been MILDLY inconvenienced, but don't think about how she could probably leave, break the cuffs, or kill him regardless, we need a contrived reason for Superman to lay there as Lio molests her and demonstrates one of the stupidest new abilities he's learned...
the ability to drool a lot.
Yes, we have an extended sequence in which Lio just lays on top of her, licks her up and down, sucks on her breasts, and literally soaks her in spit.
Shiki decides to escape from her cuffs and the second she does all of the saliva evaporates for no reason whatsoever.
Kokutou tracked Shiki down because he's ******* "puppy-kun" and Lio finds him just in time to break his leg, stab him in the face (see what I did there?), and homo-erotically mouth feed him super marijuana which is supposedly 10 times as powerful as regular marijuana and enough to kill the user without intervention.
Kokutou's obviously still in the movies that take place after this though, so there's no tension to this whatsoever.
Lio returns from "killing" Kokutou to find Shiki has gnawed her thumb off at the base to escape the handcuffs, tells him she "doesn't have time" for him, and starts walking away.
Lio says he killed Kokutou, she gives up, he wastes a lot of time running around trying to scratch her to death with his nails 1000 Cuts-style, and she finally hacks him to pieces.
He dies.
Disappears in a glaring continuity error.
Reappears in another glaring continuity error.
And Kokutou miraculously survives super marijuana.
THE END.
Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]
Movie
Murder Speculation's second part comes to us not only several movies late release-wise, but it's also divided from it's first part chronologically.
The whole idea is to tie together the loose plot threads from Murder Speculation (First Half), which, to be honest, is really only one plot thread:
Did Shiki really commit those murders like she said she did, or is Kokutou right and she never killed anyone?
Well if you're even remotely sane, you wouldn't have watched this far into the Kara no Kyoukai series like I have.
BUT if you possess the bare minimum degree of intelligence it would require to understand how and why exactly Oblivion Recording managed to **** up in the first 5 minutes, then your answer is probably... yeah. Shiki killed those people. Kokutou's an over-optimistic idiot.
Unfortunately, you would be wrong as this movie serves two purposes: firstly to prove that Shiki wasn't the killer, and secondly to bore you to death.
Once again we have a two-hour long movie and even more than last time I'm inclined to say it is WAY TOO LONG.
Now look, I'm no stranger to long movies. I've seen the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy.
But whereas Lord of the Rings manages to engage and largely keep you engaged, Kara no Kyoukai is, thus far, a traditionally slow series of movies. When they double their run-time in order to neatly fit into a televised animation block, then they have to create enough content to fill the time.
Unfortunately, Murder Speculation 2 just comes across like a much shorter movie where nearly every individual shot lasts longer than it needs to.
No joke, there was a point in the movie where I actually thought it froze since it was a still-shot and Kara no Kyoukai routinely employs dead silence instead of a backing track.
I shouldn't be ripped out of the movie by it literally slowing down to the point where I'm not just looking at an establishing shot, but a wallpaper.
The first two thirds of this movie are totally uneventful. We re-examine several scenes from Part 1 in which we see additional dialog between Kokutou and Shiki which contribute nothing to the story and Souren, the Big Bad who dies in Paradox Spiral shows up to babble about "the origin" before he disappears, supposedly taking her memories of this entirely pointless scene with him. Wow, great, that really added...
...
We learn the murders from before Shiki's hospital adventure come back and each one of them is found with new street drugs.
As in previous movies the police approach Kokutou to talk about the investigation, however at this point I'm seriously questioning why.
What possible advantage is there to talk to Kokutou? He's not L from Death Note, he's a useless stock male protagonist, he's got nothing to offer.
Well, Kokutou agrees to help the police by investigating on his own, which raises several new questions about his employment and financial situation, before heading out onto the streets, buying the latest drugs that get their users killed, USING THEM, and then going, "Hmm, I see, so that's what they do."
Wow. That is some BRILLIANT investigative work, Kokutou. Hey, the victims were all found hacked up into pieces, so next time why don't you try that out and stab yourself in the face?</foreshadowing>
The true criminal who's been killing people both before and after Shiki's hospitalizations TURNS OUT TO BE... *SHOCK GASP!*
That one guy from Part 1. You know, that one guy you totally don't remember Kokutou talking to because he barely had any lines and his role in this movie wasn't foreshadowed in the slightest?
Yeah, that guy.
Apparently, that guy is in love with Shiki.
Four times. Four ****in' times. For ****s sake, what's wrong with these ******* movies.
Shiki supposedly turned him down in school and he killed a stranger in retaliation. Souren caught up with him at some point and "unlocked his origin" which is honestly the most interesting thing in this whole movie.
Whole idea about "origins", with the Akashic Record, I'm GUESSING, being the origin or origins, is that in this world, reincarnation is real, and everyone is in some way influenced by the life they lead before, however in some unexplained metaphysical way, everyone can be traced back to their simplest previous existence, which is merely a concept.
The killer, Lio, became aware of what his origin was and, because of reasons, he's hopelessly become a slave to it. So, since his origin is "consumption", while he may have been able to act against this hidden impulse originally, Souren made him aware of it, and now he can't really help being a cannibal.
It's a really screwed up approach to the "fate" idea with hints of how "true names" worked in the Eragon universe: a cold summation of everything you represent.
I honestly find this interesting. Too bad it's such a small element of the movie.
The third act is where an otherwise Meh... movie becomes a Just... Bad movie for me.
We're told on multiple occasions that there's a distinct, important, and moral difference between "murder" and "slaughter".
If the movie meant this is a legal sense, I would agree, but I seriously doubt this was their intention.
This is quickly followed up by such profound quotes as,
Originally Posted by Flashback Grandpa
People who’ve killed other people can’t kill themselves. They can’t die as a human.
EVEN in self defense, huh?
And on top of that, someone who kills other people can't kill themselves? Really?
You know, I seem to recall that can still happen. I think it even happened in a Kara no Kyoukai movie. Yeah, I think it was called
OVERLOOKING VIEW
You know, the very first movie in which you take a moral stance against suicide regardless of the circumstances? It seems now, you appear to be more accepting of suicide and instead are taking a moral stance against killing in general.
You know, as much as I disagree I may be able to accept that that's your view, but when you contradict yourself with lines like THIS:
Originally Posted by Kokutou
Everyone has their preferences, yours just happens to be murder.
So, apparently Shiki comes to the realization that despite killing her murderous side, she's still compelled to kill people (YOU'RE SEVERAL MOVIES TOO LATE TO THAT PARTY), but she decides that she'd rather stay with Kokutou and resist her urges.
Which is why she goes looking for the killer, tells him she doesn't have time for him, and then walks away.
Oh yeah, I can see that working out REALLY WELL.
Of course the killer knocks her out, handcuffs her to nothing, leaves her unattended, and she's instantly pacified.
Oh no, she's been MILDLY inconvenienced, but don't think about how she could probably leave, break the cuffs, or kill him regardless, we need a contrived reason for Superman to lay there as Lio molests her and demonstrates one of the stupidest new abilities he's learned...
the ability to drool a lot.
Yes, we have an extended sequence in which Lio just lays on top of her, licks her up and down, sucks on her breasts, and literally soaks her in spit.
Kokutou's obviously still in the movies that take place after this though, so there's no tension to this whatsoever.
Lio returns from "killing" Kokutou to find Shiki has gnawed her thumb off at the base to escape the handcuffs, tells him she "doesn't have time" for him, and starts walking away.
Lio says he killed Kokutou, she gives up, he wastes a lot of time running around trying to scratch her to death with his nails 1000 Cuts-style, and she finally hacks him to pieces.
He dies.
Disappears in a glaring continuity error.
Reappears in another glaring continuity error.
And Kokutou miraculously survives super marijuana.
THE END.
Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]