Best Kara No Kyoukai (The Garden of Sinners) Movies

Chapter 5 & 7 were the two best movies by a long shot.

I now present to you arguably the most climactic and perhaps most popular installment in the Kara no Kyoukai film series. The fifth movie is both confusing and suspenseful in presentation as two separate stories are split separately before leading up to the final climax. The fifth movie starts out by a boy named Tomoe experiencing himself apparently killing his mother and cutting her guts out after she killed his father. This mesmerizing experience is only further enhanced in mystery when a bystander sees the father dead, yet when he calls on a police officer to investigate the incident, the father seems to be alive and kicking like never before. Back to the plot at hand, Tomoe is seen running from some street gangsters and is eventually cornered by them until Shiki confronts them and scares them off. Shiki then gives company to Tomoe at her residence. However, all seems not normal when it seems Tomoe is experiencing the same day over and over again with different outcomes, even as far as to seeing her own apparently dead mother walking healthily in the metropolis of Mifune City! Things then get down to business when Tomoe pleads Shiki to investigate the apartment he once lived in, that being the Ogawa Apartment Complex. Things seem oddly off for Tomoe even though Shiki sees everything is normal until they stumble upon some puppet zombies and eventually the Big Bad Souren Araya. Shiki is then pulled into an unknown void as the story shifts to Mikiya leaving Shiki's residence for a long while as Touko confronts her former friend Cornelius Alba and is prompted to go down to the Ogawa Apartment Complex as well. Things look bad when it seems Souren and Cornelius have killed off Touko for good. But when the two stories begin to intertwine, everything starts to unfold and make sense. Mikiya helps Tomoe learn what his family was like and what sacrifices his parents went through for him before going back to the Ogawa Apartment Complex. The climactic moments to follow are... more

In the first movie, Mifune City is left heartbroken as repeated incidents of school girls committing suicide by jumping off the abandoned Fujou building. However, matters get more pressing at hand once Mikiya is affected by this incident and is left unconscious, leaving it up to Shiki to investigate the supernatural entity instigating the suicide incidents. The supposed supernatural entity happens to be a second spiritual body possessed by the terminally ill Kirie Fujou, who killed the school girls in the first place in order to socialize with them in their ghostly forms, but to no avail. Eventually, after losing an arm and replacing it with a prosthetic one, Shiki kicks it into overdrive and slices and dices all the souls of the girls into oblivion, including Kirie's second body. With Kirie calmly confronted by Touko and the suicide incident resolved, the movie ends with Kirie finally ending her own life by jumping off the same building she had the other girls jump off of in order to experience the same feeling she had when Shiki took out her second body. What I have to say for Kirie is pretty much the same thing the rest of the main cast has to say for her.

The second movie now pretty much takes us to Shiki's origin story, as this film explores how Shiki first met Mikiya and got caught up in a series of serial killings that took place in the late 1990's. In addition, we manage to get an idea of what Shiki's two split personalities in one body are like and how they contribute to her role in the story. Caught red-handed covering herself in the blood of the supposed murder victims despite not being the true culprit, Shiki becomes more isolated from Mikiya. Despite this, Mikiya maintains a strong resolve and tries to look out for her, even going as far as to camp out her home every night, whether by falling snow or stormy rain. Eventually, Shiki has had enough of it and decides to kill Mikiya in order to put him out of any further danger she may cause to him. Thankfully, Shiki restrains herself at the last minute and is supposedly ran over by a truck, losing her male personality in the process, but miraculously still surviving the accident, putting her into a two-year coma or so.

The third movie introduces us to the fan-favorite antagonist, Fujino Asagami. The film starts by showing Fujino being mercilessly tortured by a group of street gangsters. After being hit with a metal bat, she finally snaps and takes her revenge by literally snapping most of the gangsters to death. Or should I say bending? (No, not that kind of bending.)

That same night, Fujino is left stranded in the dark until Mikiya stumbles upon her. He treats her kindly, allowing her to stay at his residence and take a shower. In the following days, it becomes clear that Fujino is now at large, taking out her inner pain on those who have hurt her and anyone who stands in her way. With her attraction to Mikiya and her dark purple hair, one could almost say she's a prototype of Sakura Matou.

Unsurprisingly, Shiki is sent to confront Fujino. The showdown pits Mystic Eyes of Death Perception against Mystic Eyes of Distortion. The two fight to the death with astounding animation and choreography. Shiki skillfully dodges Fujino's bending spells under a large suspension bridge. The fight reaches its climax when Shiki cuts through the bending spells and pins Fujino down.

Then, in one of the series' most iconic scenes, Fujino bends the entire suspension bridge they are on, demolishing it in heavy rain, vehicles and all. Despite all the chaos, Fujino is left barely alive. Miraculously, she is given a chance to continue living when Shiki removes the true source of her pain - an appendicitis. Thus, for the time being, all's well that ends well as Mikiya sees Shiki smile for the first time in a long while.

Continuing from where the second movie left off, the fourth movie takes us to right after Shiki's accident as she is transported to a hospital. Left in almost critical condition, Mikiya worries deeply for her as she recovers from her coma for almost two years. Over the course of those two years to the end, Shiki has both lost and gained something as a result of her accident. Thanks to the severe blow dealt to her head by the incoming truck, Shiki has now lost her male personality, leaving only her female personality alone as she copes with it through putting on a cold facade. On the other hand, Shiki has mysteriously awakened an unknown power in what would later be known as the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. Unfortunately, Shiki is all but excited with this newfound ability, as she initially sees it as a curse to her since she can now see how people can die just by detecting their weak spots. Thus, Touko introduces herself to Shiki for the first time as a magus posing under the guise of a newly hired medical counselor. Through philosophy and a sudden ambush by a supernatural zombie, Shiki learns to embrace her new power. And with Touko bestowing the trademark knife Shiki now wields, Shiki manages to kill the zombie and finally learn how to hone it properly, giving her a position at Touko's independent paranormal agency to deal with more supernatural incidents like this one.

Well, here goes. The sixth movie in the film series, and apparently the most divisive one as well. Here, Mikiya's sister Azaka finally gets a movie to herself as we get to see her be an apprentice of Touko and take on a mystery of her own when her school is caught in a series of incidents involving fairies mesmerizing female students and subjecting them to danger. While Shiki does tag along for the ride, it's mostly Azaka's time to shine as her Day in the Limelight gives us how she came to develop her... incestuous attraction to her brother Mikiya and how she wishes to impress him. Especially since she's not very fond of Shiki. That said, while Shiki is off doing her own thing when she confronts a man named Satsuki Kurogiri sent by Souren Araya to help her remember her male personality and memories, Azaka manages to break down with her dancing fists of fury as she confronts the true culprit of the incidents in the form of the chairwoman of the student committee Misaya Ouji. Eventually, when the fairies turn on Misaya, Azaka manages to defeat them and save Misaya, resolving the conflict. Meanwhile, Shiki finishes her encounter with Satsuki as he disappears, having dodged her attacks perfectly with his God's Word origin. While the chapter this movie adapts doesn't adapt everything the light novels revealed about Shiki's memories being restored and what happens to Satsuki, I still found it decent since it gave Azaka some time to shine. Of course, I can see why many see the sixth movie as the weakest of all the main seven, but nonetheless, it was still a good watch.

The 2nd best movie after the 5th one. This one was the hardest to understand as well though but the ending was just too amazing and mikya x shiki was heartwarming!Loved it

Excluding the epilogue and the extra movies, the seventh movie is the last release order installment in the film series. In this final installment, the seventh movie catches up on the events of the second and fourth movies as the same murders that happened in 1995 are happening again four years later in the year 1999. This draws both Shiki's and Mikiya's attention, and more so with Shiki, as she manages to find the true culprit of both murders in the form of a student turned serial killer beast Lio Shirazumi. With Lio's taunts and murderous intent, Shiki has only one thing on her mind but to kill him. Despite Lio's nature and atrocities, Mikiya comes to understand Lio in a personal conversation with him as he learns how one single rejection by Shiki sent Lio into a downward spiral of darkness as he took out his rage on some bar patrons at an arcade and accidentally killed one of them prior to having to eat the corpse. Of course, Souren has a part in this and encourages Lio to embrace his bestial hunger and bloodlust. That said, it then comes to down to Shiki finally confronting him in an empty warehouse where marijuana or something else is being grown and harvested. The fight between the two is both suspenseful and terrifying with Lio's taunts finally breaking Shiki, allowing her to be disgustingly licked by Lio and essentially raped by him (that's 10 good character points off for you, Lio). Things only get worse when Mikiya comes to the same warehouse they're in and Lio almost kills him with a strike to the eye and his forehead. While Mikiya does manage to miraculously survive this casualty, Lio is led to believe he really did kill Mikiya, killing the only real friend he ever had. Meanwhile, as Lio fully gives in to his carnal instincts, Shiki somehow manages to burn and eradicate her chains and free herself, finally going in for the kill as she slices and dices Lio up to death real good. Following the deadly encounter and Shiki and Mikiya reuniting with each... more

As this is the epilogue, I'll keep things short for this description. Basically, after the events of the seventh and final movie, Mikiya with a non-functioning eye is seen walking down the road on a snowy day just like the same snowy day where he first met Shiki, complete with her in the same white kimono as well. Most of the epilogue then treats us to some philosophical conversation as the audience is either left thought-provoked or entirely bored with the epilogue. Regardless, the falling snow does make the epilogue at least beautiful enough to watch through. Eventually, Shiki tells Mikiya about a third personality she harbored, one that transcends her male and female personality. As in one that's essentially an incarnation of a goddess of the void herself. After supposedly healing Mikiya's leg or something else, Shiki in her third personality then says farewell to him as she expects to meet him again tomorrow after that snowy night.