The third movie of The Garden of Sinners takes place between the first and the second. It continues the tradition of the second movie by shedding light on the unanswered questions that the first movie left behind, as it shows another stage in Shiki and Mikiya’s life. The story is about yet another string of mysterious gruesome murders, but despite this, it was the best movie of Kara no Kyoukai yet in my opinion.

The antagonist for this movie is the biggest reason for this. This movie really looks into the question: “what could someone drive to commit these gruesome murders?” And it comes up with a fascinating character study with a bit of supernatural elements here and there. Shiki and Mikiya also benefit from the second movie, which fleshed out their characters a bit, so they too make this a highly enjoyable movie.

There are a couple of bugs in the storyline, though. I’m not sure whether it was a good idea to have the major antagonist turn out to be a friend of Mikiya, of all people. It makes no sense, could have easily be omitted without affecting the rest of the movie and the movie can’t seem to decide what kind of relationship the two exactly have. It feels like some sort of cheap plot-device, especially for such a short 50-minute movie. The ending is also a bit of a downer-ending, with its Deus ex Machina-ish plot twist.

The plot feels a bit weird, but nevertheless the characters keep improving with every movie. It’ll be interesting to see this trend continue for the rest of the seven movies of the Garden of Sinners. Remaining Sense of Pain isn’t the most visually stunning instalment of Kara no Kyoukai, and the mystery isn’t as impressive as in chapter 1, but it makes up for this with great and solid characters.

Apologies for the delay of this review of the second movie, I totally forgot about it until the third one suddenly popped up. The second chapter of the Garden of Sinners tells how everything started, and how Shiki and Mikiya first met with each other. It’s obviously a chapter that’s more about building up and establishing its characters than about its stories. Overall, I liked the first chapter more, but at least A Study in Murder Part 1 is a lot more solid.

The whole setting is a lot more down-to-earth, as the entire story is just about two rather strange high-school kids. The graphics look as good as ever, but that’s to be expected with a movie-budget, and the strange emphasises on different foods are still there. The best thing about this movie is the cast of characters. They’re well fleshed out throughout the hour of airtime and even though they won’t hit any heights, they remain enjoyable to watch, and add depth to their versions that we saw in the first movie.

The story is a bit hard to believe, though. It’s impossible to accurately describe this without going into spoilers, but let’s just say that this movie tells about a series of gruesome murders, and the motives of the eventual killer will feel rather strange, and especially the way that Mikiya reacts to this gives Elfen Lied-flashbacks. The message of this episode was a rather weird one: “it’s okay to murder, you won’t get put in jail for it, everyone will love you anyway.” Now that’s going to stop the children from stabbing their parents.

Nevertheless, the movie served its purpose: the characters are fleshed out now and they have a background, which makes them more than just a bunch of cardboard boxes. Now all that’s left to see is how the rest of the movies will use this.

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.