Kara no Kyoukai Movie 7: Satsujin Kousatsu (Go)

In February 1999, a string of murders has Shiki Ryougi and Mikiya Kokutou on edge. These crimes share a disturbing resemblance to a similar set of homicides from 1995, when Shiki and Mikiya first met, and awaken a dark, murderous desire that has laid dormant within Shiki's soul ever since then.

With Shiki under suspicion due to her involvement in the past killings and supposed resemblance to the killer, she and Mikiya set out to find the true perpetrator. In the midst of their separate investigations, Mikiya grows increasingly concerned with Shiki's well-being and hurries to find the one responsible in order to protect Shiki from her own impulses. With the lead he receives from his cousin, police investigator Daisuke Akimi, Mikiya is led into the underbelly of Mifune City, as the salvation of Shiki's soul lies in his determination to prove her innocence once and for all.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ryougi, Shiki Main

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Kokutou, Mikiya Main

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Shirazumi, Lio Main

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Aozaki, Touko Supporting

Honda, Takako Japanese

Kokutou, Azaka Supporting

Fujimura, Ayumi Japanese

Araya, Souren Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Gakuto Supporting

Takahashi, Kenji Japanese

Hotaruzuka, Otoko Supporting

Kaida, Yuuko Japanese

Akimi, Daisuke Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki Japanese

Iwakami, Atsuhiro Producer

Kondou, Hikaru Producer

Takizawa, Shinsuke Director

Iwanami, Yoshikazu Sound Director

Reviews

Jan 24, 2022

Marco_Yooo

Recommended

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

Since watching the first episode of "Demon Slayer" i was a massive fan of ufotable as a studio. After finishing the fantastic "Fate stay/night" series i stumbled upon one of it´s original creator Kinoko Nasu´s other work and decided to give "Kara no Kyoukai" (The Garden of Sinners) a go. This review will not only cover this final 8th movie but the entire series.I watched it in the official order. If you are a first time watcher i would suggest you do the same thing. You can then go back and watch it all in chronological order during a potential ... rewatch.

My ranking for the movies goes as follows (Note that the number in brackets signifies the official watch order suggested by the author himself) :

1. A study in murder - part 2 (7)
2. Remaining sense of pain (3)
3. Paradox spiral (5)
4. Oblivion recording (6)
5. A study in murder - part 1 (2)
6. Overlooking view (1)
7. The hollow shrine (4)

Story - 7/10

First of i got to say that this is one of the most unique and interesting concepts for a story i have ever seen. It manages to thematize things like murder, multiple personality disorder, sexual abuse and drug addiction in a way that i´ve never seen another show do it. The supernatural elements are continiously beeing woven into the narrative giving the series a very heavy psychological feeling during it´s entire run. However the problem that i have to adress here is the way the show communicates information to the viewer. There were lots of things left unexplained or just simply glossed over that would have been vital information later. The pacing also seems off because some of the movies are simply a string of conversations and dialogue (Movie 2) while others can be described as full on action-packed rides (Movie 5). There are also issues with the tone of the story. Sometimes it´s all happy and funny for one movie, and the next one introduces a new horrible psychological issue. However i do plan to read the original novels that this show is based off, mainly because i think a lot of explanation might have been lost during the adaptation. That means my opinion on the story can change wildly in the future.

Animation - 9/10

This is the category that Kara no Kyoukai exceeds most of the anime of it´s time. Ufotable did an amazing job at conveying the cold, dark atmosphere of the story through their animation. The character designs are unique and memorable. Where the show really shines is during it´s fight scenes. The creative way the camera is used makes every fight unique and the effects animation makes every use of magic a treat to the eye. Of course ufotable developed as a studio and has improved wildly up until today but it was really interesting to see where it all began.

Music - 9/10

The music was outstanding. It mixes the energetic songs during the fight scenes with the eerie and dark tones of the rest of the show seemlessly.There was never a moment where the music felt out of place, which is admirable considering the weird tone shifts during the story. After this show, composer Yuki Kajiura would go on to make amazing soundtracks for other shows like Sword Art Online and Fate/Zero.

Characters - 9/10

The star of the show is definitely the main heroine Shiki Ryougi. Her development over the course of the show was outstanding and she quickly became one of my favorite characters (I currently use her on my profile picture :D). The change of her psyche and her multiple personalities make for very interesting dialogue and her banter with Mikiya Kokuto was always a treat to watch. The other characters, while not beeing developed as much, where also interesting. Aozaki was a ton of fun and although many might disagree with me, i enjoyed the character of Azaka Kokuto very much.

Enjoyment - 7/10

Watching this show was a very unique experience. The different problemes i had with the pacing and tone are apparent though. Also be prepared for some heavy psychological drama, blood and sexual themes. If you are just an average shounen fan who likes fast paced action and sport shows, this series of movies is not for you. I would recommend this to everyone who likes deep psychological stories with a lot of dialogue and metaphors.

I will review the original novels after i read them

- Marco Yooo

FINAL SCORE - 8/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 11, 2015

Eagleshadow

Mixed Feelings

I have no idea what this show is doing anymore, it's become too hard to analyse. This movie/episode was both good and bad, parts of it were kinda fun, but there were countless bad parts mentioned below. Overall, it was fun riffing on it while watching. All good points and bad points mentioned before remain.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

- 10:00 just fuck already! Or at least hug and kiss I don't care, but this status quo relationship is getting too ridiculous for a show seemingly so serious and mature.

- 16:15 what is this Saya no Uta soundtrack doing in my KnK?! Can't say it's not appropriate... ...

- 18:18 Really? You're gonna follow her even after what just happened? I'm not sure which one of them is supposed to be the psycho anymore. ...hey wait, was that the point all along?

- 24:48 lsd and pot? I hope this wasn't supposed to come across as ''junkies are getting murdered'' because to me it came across as ''people who enjoy life are getting murdered''.

- 25:12 link between drugs and murders? Thematic message better not end up being ''lsd and pot are bad''.

- 29:03 Their idea of tripping on 1/10th lsd dose is everything fades to black? Please...

- 30:52 She's the hero this city needs, but not the one it deserves

- tripping - you're doing it wrong. Also, ''he doesn't really reccomend it'', right... I guess no other line would be acceptable to the publishers. I like how his friend is cool with it.

- 36:00 TIL: ''lsd mixed with pot destroys your body'', oh wait let me rephrase that, TIL: ''Kara no Kyoukai sucks hairy ballz''.

- 37:19 Why exactly is she trusting him with all this free info? He's just a random stranger asking drug dealer suspicious questions. Oh right, same reason as above. .

- 37:42 Oh! Oh! Lipreading time! Hei...sen...berg!

- 43:00 Action scenes have been feeling weightless for a while, like nothing is at stake anymore. I guess that's what happens when writer calls back his shots, like that artificial arm deal, and especially the ''bringing characters back from the dead'' part. Why should I care if protagonist gets cut or killed when I know it won't matter? Why should I care if antagonist gets cut or killed when I've been watching people cut up and kill people, and far worse, for hours and hours already, since it's practically what the show is about. This is a serious problem.

- 48:00-56:44 To many ridiculous stuff to keep count.

- 1:12:28 Jack...pot! ...I'll show myself out.

- 1:20:30 We're really hammering in this idea that murder takes away one's humanity aren't we. How about hammering in the idea of smoking murdering your lungs? Since, I mean, there's about as many cigars smoked in this show as there are murderers, and just as viscerally. It's a show about smoking and murdering at this point.

- 1:23:43 ...man... if anyone ever needed a shower...

- 1:24:30 ''This how you sex right? I'm no longer virgin right? Right?!''

- 1:27:15 And here we go again calling back punches using random fantasy magic. Now I won't even care the next time someone starts salivating all over someone else.

- 1:29:10 And now drugs are also magic, why did I expect that not to be the case? I can almost hear the writer thinking ''my ignorance about drugs is hereby redeemed!''

- 1:31:08 ''10 times more potent than pot, you'll die if you don't do anything about it'' Ok this is officially so bad it's good again. (Also... you know you could puke it out right?)

- 1:32:00 Could've just fed him the bloodstuff right away...

- 1:32:10 Say no to drugs, kids! Even if it kills you!

- 1:34:18 I'm not buying it until I see his head on a stick. Actually I'm not buying it even if I see his head on a stick.

- 1:50:00 ''I won't let you go as long as I live'', he meant to say kiss.

Well that was a pretty epilogue, beautifully contrasted to the rest of the show. So I guess murder taking away one's humanity didn't really matter after all, in the end, at least consequence-wise. Seems like bad writing but I don't feel qualified enough yet to tell for sure."

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 14, 2025

1stDecame4Danime

Not Recommended

This series is dumb and has no balls when dealing with the MC let alone writing an actual any actual justification when dealing with him in the end.
One might clap blindly like a seal at the sole "twist" in this series finally revealed here (garbage pacing), or one might notice that this joke of a reveal is so plot hole riddled as to have killed this series 7 times over by now. Some plot holes (vague spoilerish): This movie hilariously poorly retcons in an antagonist who was there all along Shiki just didn't notice that their classmate was a killer despite instinctually being able sense ... killers. Shiki insists she murdered the victims in the prequel (this is the core impetus for both the entirety of her character (winding up in the hospital to get the eyes of death) and the series, as well as that of pretty much every antagonist in the series). The uncontrollable serial killer antagonist watched as his romance target started dating someone else while murdering random people instead of the new partner, then did absolutely nothing for 4 years and then picked back up like nothing happened (this part 2 should've taken place immediately after part 1 without any time skip, this is just poorly written).

Series review:
The 1st 4 movies were pointlessly rearranged out of chronological order in the same way as the source material (thereafter is chronological). You'll find online (much like with any series) fanboys blindly recommend watching it in the order it was released. They will give no actual valid justification for this achronology however. So allow me: The author published each individual chapter online coming up with it as they went and ended up writing prequel chapters and sequel chapters and such off the cuff merely because that's the order they came up with it. Achronology adds absolutely nothing to these movies beyond the pointless achronology itself: pointless convolution of simple linear storytelling, not even adding timeline mystery as it literally tells you the dates for each movie and it's readily apparent which comes before which. What it does do is detract from the story: It shows the chronological last of the 4 1st, thus spoiling your experience of the 3 movies thereafter because all of them are murder-oriented, removing all suspense of whether or not many of the exact same characters will die when we now already know that they won't, they have plot armor to live because they need to be there for the later chronology. They made a lame story slightly worse by recommending the release order. If you want to watch this in the release order, go ahead and watch the HP movies in a random order for the exact same result because achronology is just inherently better and aren't you special?

Each movie in this series follows the main cast involved in another supernatural murder mystery scenario of the week for them to investigate/resolve via exposition dump nonmystery rather than piecing together evidence alongside the audience and often just completely removing all suspense by showing us the murderer and their circumstances from the start.
Both each movie internally and all the movies taken as a whole can be described as a dumb series of random asspulls strung together. Every aspect of it is making itself up as it goes:
For example, intrigue: Why is the killer making swastikas, ying-yangs, and sewing hands and feet swapped on victims? No reason really, plot point dropped forever.
Why does she practically only drink water and seemingly blood? Surely she can't be human, is that blood-coffee? maybe she's a vampire, oh seems she's actually a doll, wait nevermind the author decided to go a different way, came up with the backstory for her arm and she's actually human and her inhuman diet will never be addressed again. wrighting 100.
You can pretty much watch the author coming up with the characters in real-time from blank edgy cardboard nothings to suddenly dumping exposition backstories and that's about as far as they get. Then after a few movies suddenly maguses and suddenly all puppet masters and nothing matters welcome to Fate (oh yeah, Nasu did write Fate, makes sense, wait is this just a Fate spinoff? Damn I've been tricked into watching Fate filler side stories haven't I?).

Despite being ostensibly 'dark fantasy', while it deals with dark/mature themes this isn't horror, just 20% violence/gore between 80% filler. Rather than horror it's mature action, and whatever attempts it makes to be dark come across as laughably edgy and usually conveyed through idiotic shonen villain monologuing (think Angels of Death taking itself completely seriously).

The dialogue is nearly 100% filler/exposition in addition to frequent poor translation/nonsense dialogue.

Barely any actual cinematography or even interesting shots. The best it manages is a bunch of superficial nothings like dead body with blood, oOoOo blood, spoOoOoky and 1 Elfen Lied gore ripoff character who the series just never has show up again? But I guess this shallow filler counts as deep to some people.

The MC is a noncharacter simp with almost no backstory and hardly any relevance to the series. most everyone else actually goes out and does stuff while he kinda just shows up to talk and occasionally participate by simping for girls almost certainly because he's been written as a generic MC self-insert for a VN nonromance harem builder with all the hentai scenes left out. He's a pencil-pushing desk warmer the girls immediately fall for who has been written out of the story with dumb excuses like being comatose and going off for weeks to learn to drive and the story taking place elsewhere only to briefly call him up on the phone to say hello. Let alone making a different character MC, you know your story is bad when your MC of all people would be better off cut from the entire series.

They frequently skip entire scenes that are actually part of the plot and just sort of act like they haven't, as if they were supposed to be there but simply cut for pointless ambiguity because it apparently just isn't interested in telling the story, as if it is rushing through the plot in order to cram in as much cost-saving filler as it can. The finale of the series retcons in an antagonist as if he has been their friend all along even though it fills the series with a 4 year gap of plot holes and is dumb on the face of it and pointlessly meaningless if one tries to look any deeper. This series is a low effort unrevised draft.

Extreme Haagen-dazs ice cream product placement ads.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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