The sixth Kara no Kyoukai movie is called “Oblivion Recorder”. Unlike the fifth movie, it only takes up an hour of airtime, and tells about another supernatural mystery case in which Shiki becomes involved. While it doesn’t match the standard that was set by the movies 3, 4 and 5, it nevertheless is a nice little movie.

In this movie, we learn that Mikiya has a younger sister. This movie shows her, as she tries to solve a murder mystery that took place in her school, helped by Shiki. The storyline this time is simple but effective, and there’s a nice layered mystery behind a seemingly straight-forward murder. The build-up is pretty well done, and overall this makes for an enjoyable movie.

Where this movie fails to live up to in comparison to its predecessors is that its scenario and execution lack polish. Mikiya’s sister turns out to be yet another girl with a brother complex. I dunno, I think that the creators tried to appeal to taboos, but that doesn’t really work when this trope is already used by tons of other anime. And overall, as much as I appreciate that we got to know more about Mikiya this way, as a main character for a KnK movie, she fails to stand out and is among the least interesting ones.

On top of that, the dialogue also feels rushed and uninspired for a movie. There are a number of conversations that clearly lack a bit of polish here and there, and there are quite a few plot-holes left open at the end of it, most of which I don’t think are going to be answered by the seventh movie. This movie simply doesn’t have the deep characters nor the addictive storytelling of the third, fourth and fifth movie.

What it does have, however, is the best CG during an action scene out of the six movies so far. Mikiya’s sister’s magic is very flashy and the creators make really good use of it during the action scenes. As a standalone movie Oblivion Recorder would have been fine, but the standards of the Kara no Kyoukai movies so far have become higher than average after all.

Okay, so I finally managed to check out this movie. My big fear before I started watching it that, now that he’s almost reached his retirement, Hayao Miyazaki would have lost his touch by now, especially considering how his previous movie (Howl’s Moving Castle) was arguably his least impressive work. Nevertheless, these fears were ungrounded: Ponyo shows that the old master still has plenty of tricks left up his sleeve. And then some.

Miyazaki’s movies that he made for Ghibli can basically be divided into two categories: epic and down-to-earth. With Ponyo, he tries to combine the two by creating a charming little story about a five year old boy who meets a goldfish with magical powers, and yet creates enough opportunities to show off some amazingly creative visuals and animation that you wouldn’t expect in such a down to earth movie. The result really works and it’s become a movie that’s suitable for any age to enjoy.

The animation really shows how much work went into this movie. Even though CG is the norm in today’s anime, Ponyo is entirely drawn by hand, and contains a record number of 170000 hand drawn pictures. This series really shows how much you can do with just animation: in an industry of anime in which the norm is to cut corners, this movie is full of life with an amazing attention to detail in even the slightest moves, and there’s hardly any frame in which something isn’t moving. The amount of eye candy in this movie is also amazing, and even though the art style is simpler than in some of his previous works, the visuals still rank amongst his most impressive.

This movie also excels in its portrayal of five-year-olds. I read somewhere that Hayao Miyazaki lives right next to a kindergarten school or something similar, and so he’s had plenty of opportunities to fully study how little kids behave. Kosuke is a bit timid, but a very likable young lead. This series doesn’t have much character-development and background (only a few side-characters have a serious change of character), but considering the story and situations they were thrown in, they didn’t really need to: it was fun enough to watch them as they were and extra focus to get some character-development or background in would only have gotten in the way of what’s really important.

My problems with this series lies within some of its messages it attempts to teach to kids. With the environmentalist that Hayao Miyazaki is, I expected that he would show the bad implications of major floods. Instead, a flood in this series just appears, puts an entire landscape under water for a few hours and then disappears without ever leaving a trace. Oh, I’d wish that reality were this simple and convenient. Or how about people who’ve lost their ability to walk, and suddenly are rid of their problems due to magic. Yes kids! If you have some sort of incurable ailment, just hope that a person with magic will arrive and wave these problems away!

Anyway, it’s been more than a year now since I watched all of Miyazaki’s major movies. Looking back, his movie that turned out the most memorable for me was Porco Rosso, which probably was his most mature movie. Ponyo, his least mature movie, probably isn’t going to take that place, but yet it is a very charming movie to behold and definitely worth the watch unless you absolutely can’t stand childish stuff.

Oh, I love how incredibly subtle this series can be. This episode again was simple slice of life while it developed the various romances around. It’s your average Cross Game episode, but I just can’t get enough of it.

A lot of this episode was spent on Kou vs Mizuki vs Aoba, as Kou kept bickering with Aoba, and get jealous of Mizuki, Mizuki tried very hard to make his advances on Aoba while looking down in a superior way on Kou and Aoba who kept bickering with Kou and never seemed to realize that Mizuki has her eyes on her.

I especially loved the way the creators showed the bond that exists between Kou and Aoba: at the end of the episode, Mizuki invites Aoba to see a movie. Aoba picks a rather romantic movie which doesn’t seem to suit her tastes, and yet while watching it she’s touched by the storyline. I first thought that this reflected the feelings about Kou she might have, but no: it turns out that that was Wakaba’s favourite movie. Yet, in the end it turns out that she forgot about most of the movie aside from one particular scene. Later, we learn that Kou also went to see the movie when he was a kid (along with Wakaba, obviously), and he too only can remember one scene: the exact same one that Aoba just quoted.

They obviously say these things when they’re not together. During the times that they do run into each other, they were constantly trying to out-wit each other throughout this episode, resulting into a bunch of hilarious situations, like Kou mysteriously hanging out at the Four Leaf Clover while Aoba was around (in the end, he was waiting for Aoba’s sister for her napolitan dishes), or the practice match in which Aoba, while often letting people hit her pitch made sure no point made it through, while Kou, who handled the final four innings ended up giving away one point.

In other small things, I’m surprised that a rivalry is developing not between Kou and Azuma, but instead between Azuma and Akaishi, who are both meant to be batters, and yet Akaishi’s track record is far from perfect. The romance between Azuma’s brother and Ichiyou is also developing very nicely.
Rating: ** (Excellent)