Anime OVA - Kara No Kyoukai (空の境界) AKA "The Garden of Sinners"

I've been really busy lately so havn't had much chances to update the blog. My apologies for that, especially to those people who do stop by on a daily basis.

BM2 finale review would be on its way soon. But for the time being, let's talk a bit about anime.

I used to be a big fan of Jap Anime before I moved onto Jap Drama. Back in Gundam SEED & SEED Destiny era was my golden years of anime time. Back then I used to watch up to 8 different animes a week. It was full on, and it was when I was still a Uni student (i.e. alot of time to kill XD)

More importantly, they were great quality animes back then. OK maybe not all, but most of the work I find interesting to watch with a decent plot. Nowadays I simply can't bear the type of anime which simply sells either "MOE", multiple girls have crash on one guy (and for no apparent reason too), or....just boobs, such as that in Queen's Blade or Ikkitousen series.

Good on you if you do like them, but I won't be writing anything for them. NEVER.

Instead what I'm going to introduce here is the 7 episode "Kara no Kyoukai" series. The whole 7 episodes were aired in Japan and had great feedback. It did took them 2 years to have everything aired though, which is a good thing to keep the quality but for the audience such as myself, it's a torture to wait.

Now a bit about the characters. There are three main characters in Kara No Kyoukai -
1. Main female protagonist - Ryougi Shiki (両儀 式)
2. Main male protagonist - Kokutou Mikiya (黒桐 幹也)
3. Sub female protagonist - Aozaki Touko (蒼崎 橙子)


Since it's a novel written by Nasu Kinoko (author of Fate/Stay Night, Tsukihime etc) the characters do have some special ability due to unique setting. In this work Touko is a magician, Shiki was originally an ordinary girl but later on gained "Chokushi no Magan" (直死の魔眼) which allows her to spot the line of death on virtually anything and proceed to kill them.

Did I miss someone? Oh, Kokutou Mikiya? Well he hasn't got any unique ability....and looks very ordinary too. But he does have substantial effect on Shiki and Touko, and you will discover about them when you either read the original novel or watch the OVA :)

One thing about the story - if you havn't read the novel you probably won't understand the whole concept with just watching the OVA. I would highly recommend going through the OVA along with the novel - overall the OVA do try to include all the main plots but due to time constraint there are still parts been missed out. Still the OVA itself is a very complete work of art by itself.

The story is also not in timeline order - like that in Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuuitsu. In EP1 the audience is presented with Shiki who has already obtained the Magan and then EP2 reverted all the way back to "Chapter 1" with her and Mikiya's high school life, how they initially met etc etc.

Thorough details are on wiki for those who are keen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_no_Kyōkai

Now you might ask what's attracting you? Well, quite a few things:
1. The matter of fact it's got interesting yet complicated storyline, you have to keep thinking about it to get the whole picture
2. Shiki's battle scene are excellent - the flow of movement and details are superb
3. Music and theme songs by Kajiura Yuki & Kalafina is simply stunning. Especially the theme songs - they fit so well I simply can't skip the staff roll (which I do for about 95% of the OVA I watch)
4. Sakamoto Maaya's voice acting for Shiki is awesome - it's a bit similar to that in Lightning for FFXIII, but for Shiki she has put in alot of effort to show the change in her.

All these add up together to 9/10 for an OVA of this quality. Highly recommended.

Here are all 7 DVD covers which was released in Japan

Useful links:
Official OVA website (Japanese)
English Wikipedia