Kara no Kyoukai - The Garden of Sinners - 01 Review - 82/100
Ah, I finally got the chance to watch this one. If I recall correctly, The Garden of Sinners 01 is the first part of a series of seven movies, based on short stories by the creators of Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime, produced by the Ufotable that did Manabi Straight and Tales of Symphonia. After watching the 45-minute long first part, I’m eager for the next ones, because It had quite a few good points.
It’s rare to see a mystery-movie nowadays, since most of them focus on either action or drama. The Garden of Sinners deals with the topic of suicide and adds a supernatural touch to it, and the result works quite well. A lot of effort has gone into the dialogue, and it ends up meaningful and thought-provoking, but the real highlight of this movie is without a doubt the gorgeous graphics. Ufotable received a big budget to work with, and they knew exactly how to use it. Yuki Kajiura’s soundtrack may not be among the best of her work, but it still manages to make The Garden of Sinners into a feast for the senses.
The storytelling is a bit sloppy, though. We hardly learn anything about the main characters: where did Shiki’s l33t-powers come from? How did the boy lose his consciousness? How did Shiki lose her arm? What kind of job does she do anyway? Why is she the only one who goes after the string of suicides? All questions that remain unanswered, and I hope that the next movies will at least answer the most basic ones, and give some much-needed background to the characters. At this point, I found it hard to sympathize with them, because I knew hardly anything about them.
And there is of course the matter of Haagen Dasz. The pizza hut references in Code Geass and Darker than Black is one thing, but these commercials always knew how to stay in the background. In the Garden of Sinners, a bunch of pointless scenes are wasted, simply because they only focus on a bunch of packs of Haagen Dasz.
Still, overall this movie made good use of its limited time to deliver a solid enough mystery-story. Now let’s see what the other movies will have in store.
this is kind of written like Baccano!, the time line’s out of order in all 7 arcs. for example, the explanation for shiki’s arm would be in the 3rd movie. the second arc comes out this month so please keep blogging this :)
Comment by clara's buddy — June 2, 2008 @ 15:23
In the original book, it was as withholding with information as the movie, it wasn’t until later chapters (later movies) that we got to learn more about the characters. The story was all out of order as it will probably be for the movies.
And also, Hagen Daz was in the original… the large amounts of water bottles (forgot which brand) was new though.
Comment by Deranged — June 2, 2008 @ 16:06
ooh i cant wait for the 2nd part. saw the frist part a month back or so. i liked it, thoguh there were alot of unexplained things like of the such
Comment by miden — June 2, 2008 @ 16:37
i like that they did not introduce many things in the first movie,that added to the mystery of this movie but the questions will be answered in the later movies we can notice from the preview of the 2nd movie that they will start to reveal bit by bit the information we need
also the animation was just perfect,i just loved the graphics,effects used when Shiki jumps from one rooftop to another,overall i loved the dark tone used for the animation in this movie
Comment by Archer — June 2, 2008 @ 17:37
Deranges was right, the ice cream was there from the very beginning.
“where did Shiki’s l33t-powers come from? How did the boy lose his consciousness? How did Shiki lose her arm? What kind of job does she do anyway? Why is she the only one who goes after the string of suicides?”
the first will be revealed in 3 more movies, he lost consciousness because the girl in the hospital tried to take him away. Shiki dosen’t have a job, she only did something because the guy was involved. She was probably the only one who knew about it’s supernatural background and bothered to do something about it. There’s also another probably reason but I won’t spoil anything for anyone.
Anyway, I loved the movie(not as much as the book though) and can’t wauit for more.
Comment by CHoux — June 2, 2008 @ 18:28
You are occasionally hey not doing illegal download alone when DVD is bought.
Comment by sak — June 2, 2008 @ 20:30
Even if it was in the original story, I rather doubt they’d publish a DVD without at least permission from the brand owner. It’s only reasonable to assume sponsorship if some brand is explicitely mentioned especially if there never was a need to.
Comment by Kurisu — June 3, 2008 @ 23:40
Hey, guys.
Just a clarification for its timeline.
1st movie = 4th
2nd = 1st
3rd = 3rd
4th = 2nd
5th = 5th
6th = 6th
So, it is recommended to watch this movie in order of 2nd->4th->3rd->1st->5th->6th.
I’ll wait for the release of at least 3rd movie before I start watching this series ;) It’s because we’re not sure when the DVD for the 4th movie will be released.
Comment by niea — June 22, 2008 @ 0:33
So, Kara no Kyoukai 2 is out and subbed by gg & TakaJun…are you going to blog it? Please do!
Comment by PhuzyBuny — June 25, 2008 @ 20:40
Do you know if the seven movies have already been released? I have only heard about three of them . Do you know when the others will be released then? Please let me know. Thanks.
Comment by Windy — July 24, 2008 @ 11:05
To answer the previous post, the first three movies are out in Japan on DVD, and on the web with subs. Movie four showed in theaters a month or two ago, and movie five is going to show in theaters in August. No idea on six or seven, though. It was about a five month turnaround to get from the first three movies in theaters to DVDs, so I bet we’ll be able to see four, five, and maybe the others around the end of this year.
Comment by Bakodo — July 25, 2008 @ 6:42