Kara No Kyoukai (The Garden Of Sinners) | A Full Anthology P.6

Productions Aspects - Film By Film  [Cinematography | Art | Sound Direction | OST]

Oblivion Recording VI | Cinematography 

Clever Use of Reflective Surfaces To Change Perspective Of The Viewer

After the 5th films rather climatic resolution, the next entry Oblivion recording came out to the scene, with Takihiro Miura’s directed film. It served as a more light hearted contrast to Kara No Kyoukai’s previous film, and while people somehow complained about it not being as action packed as the others that came before, for me just coming off of the last film, I really didn’t mind, though as you already know my problems with this film really lie elsewhere. The 6th film is rather comedic and lighthearted, and is far more subject to a more biased way of storytelling. Being that it’s mainly focussed on Azaka & her fickle mind, since this film is more or less her own personal Vignette, with Shiki somehow involved. And for me I thought it was a great step in the right direction, because in my eyes, I really didn’t want every film within the Kara No Kyoukai series to have such dense and heavy subject matter, and that Kara No Kyoukai as a whole was missing a bit of comedic relief, as it’s pretty rare and far between to find it within the film series. Though this film, Oblivion Recording is just that, a little small vacation from the fundamental story the series was collectively trying to tell, whilst being able to still connect to it in some forms or another through Shiki’s presence within the story.

[Framed In Conjunction with Set Geometry]

Takahiro Miura
[VI Film Director]

If anything stands out in Kara No Kyoukai is it’s sequential editing, being that in order to produce the gags in the film, they have to be able to keep you on your toes, but also have the structure and pattern of editing composition to sell the gag. A lot of which follow question & answer patterns, where you suggest a question or rather an expectation through a scene, and next, you provide an answer or rather subvert the original expectation or assumption, producing the gag - Through misunderstanding and the dynamics of subverting expectations. This is where the two shot comes in - being that you’ll find Azaka playing the straight man, while Shiki plays the banana man of sorts, always clueless and in her own world whilst unknowingly provoking outrage in her uptight and supposed rival in love Azaka. While other productions such as the Monogatari series & Konosuba emphasize frontality and distance to emphasize character reactions and perspective, this film Oblivion Recording opts for a less slap stick approach to the genre, that’s more cross pollinated to what seemingly resembles something like a drama with comedy mixed in - In that while Takahiro does has a fair amount of frontal framings, in addition to that he also balances a use of adjacent shots, that get up close and personal to his subjects, usually through more subjective framings of a given subject.

Flat & Centralist Framing in Conjunction W/ Set Geometry & Keen Lighting

Though as you might imagine, the sixth film plays out like something out of a crime drama as well, being through the story, Shika & Azaka are set to partner up to solve the mysteries regarding rumours of fairies and how they might relate to the death of one of the campuses students. This is kind of where the film sort of falls flat, though while not entirely boring, comparatively speaking, we’ve already been spoiled by the fifth, first and second films for having been exposed to fantastically composed murder investigations throughout the course of these films, & this film, at least in terms of film grammar and cinematography falls flat. While comedy and plush scenes of daily character interactions seem to be it's strength, on the other hand, the use of allusion, counterpoint storytelling and layered subliminal messaging through visual metaphors and symbolism is simply not something to look forward to in this film, as you might in others - So lets take a look at how he handles a mystery shall we?

High Angle Tilt Framed in Conjunction With Set Geometry & Keen Lighting

First and foremost framing, Takahiro’s framings and visual compositions just flat out lack diversity and variation, and the potential complexity of his story is lost, not only that but his transitions are quite basic and not as creatively inspired as in other films such as the fifth, much less his use of various lenses, or how he correlates the immediate foreground with other various planes of motion. Such as the middle ground and background or perhaps the geometry of the shot, & how to lead the eyes. In these situations, since his sequential editing compositions are so facile and monophonic in what they imply, any suspicions we might have had are instantly gratified with the expected results, so it more or less really fails as a mystery, and more so chalks up to be a quite lame attempt at a crime drama, which was otherwise a pretty enjoyable and sweet comedy - In the end, regarding the conflict resolution, it really just felt like just another monotonous shuffle of needless episodic events and cheapened visual spectacles, rather than an evolution to the story.

[Lateral Tracking Dolly Shot W/ Fantastical Post Production Visual FX] - [ Rule of Thirds & Golden Ratio Applied Framed in Conjunction W/ Adjacent Set Geometry & Keen Lighting]
Because I say, if your not going to go all out in terms of creativity for a film production, you shouldn’t try to emulate the other films, and perhaps make the investigation less of a focus, and hone in more on where his characters may be at, which the second film was more surprisingly about, much less of a “Who Dunnit” investigation. What I’m saying is that you should build upon characters and relating story first, then connect the dots to the murder investigation - Because at this point, the film while decently enjoyable, felt somewhat overly vague and passive in the message it was trying to send.

While it strengthened the day to day comedic aspects of the film, everything about the film felt indecisive and vague - The vague adjacent framings, the lack of variation and dynamics regarding the distance of the shot, the almost complete lack of camera movement at all other than high action scenes, and absolutely no variation in the use of different transitions. It’s funny because while these scenes of pivotal confrontation which are important to the investigation are just so bland and uninspired to the point where it just feels like they shoehorned the conspiracy element to the story in last minute, the other parts are actually great and refreshing, I’m just scratching my head why the same amount of creative standards and inspiration wasn’t applied to this film as well. In the end the film never sticks to any particular rule, or any particular style, it just feels indistinct and almost as if a robot was in charge of the film direction, there’s just no distinction/indication to the film that makes it feel like a creative individual or group was in charge of film’s grammar and cinematography - it’s just another extra film, just vanilla. A shame for an otherwise very picturesque and wonderfully rendered film.

Art Direction |

The great thing about the film, as I've mentioned before however is how picturesque and beautifully rendered it is. Being that Oblivion Recording is set primarily on one location (Reien Girls Acadamy), a large amount of the films scenery is on a campus, & it's beautiful as you might expect. Where the other films are quite dark & on the edge, this film is actually quite the opposite, housing the lush greenery of a soon to come autumn, soft unassuming hue's for the principle architecture and decor for the school, with a large amount of windows to let in the blue skies & natural lighting. The scenery is just as inviting & well kept as you imagine a high end private boarding school to be, which Reien is. In that the colour designer Emi Chiba played a huge role in actually achieving that look, along side director of photography Yuichi Terao. In that I personally think the rendering quality of micro details & textures from background composites are quite a bit better, as this film is quite clear, defined & clean, with little to no aliasing or particular grain. As colour pigmentation of scenery was particularly excellent, a strong suit of the films visual component.

In terms of colour, the majority of the film that's set in daylight anyway has quite a bit of split complementary, quadratic & tetradic colour schemes. And Although despite using 4 hue colour scheme's, her general palette almost always applies the rule of thirds here, so while the colour intervals between hue's resemble one of these 4 hue colour scheme's she always leaves one out, usually being the darkest hue of the four, to simplify & lighten the look of the series, which is the whole point in achieving the softer more pleasant look. In that it's a very balanced and consonant looking film, however in scene's that are at midnight this often changes to an monochrome colour scheme. When Emi Chiba does use all 4 colours within such a 4 colour scheme, it's only during the climax of the film, where the main conflict ensues, where magic is used, allowing a bit more headroom to actually do so. In that such spells are always fantastical & open to different colour opportunities, allowing Emi Chiba to utilize the harder contrasts that complete tetradic colour schemes have to offer.  However unlike the 5th and other darker films within the series, the strong contrast of triadic & complimentary scheme's are rarely used if ever.

Sound Direction | 

With the story being set mainly on campus, there really wasn't much diegetic material or information to add regarding sound, at least comparatively speaking. In that, although we could compare this film to the 5th, which was absolutely fantastic, it'd be somewhat unfair to do so. However I digress, in that this film is definitely more of a standard job, however I think with Miura as director with the shot flow composition regarding editing also really didn't allow for creative opportunities to do something interesting with the sound or make it tell a story on it's own like the fifth film did. Diegetic sound information indeed was well recorded however minimalistic, in that I found acoustics were well depicted regarding the spatially of rooms and the source of such information relative to the camera. However it really is the editing & the emotional context I feel isn't present here, as there's little dynamics or particular use of the sound component, other than just delivering basic contextual information to a scene, such as dialogue or perhaps the main action.

However I will say that the film lacks the atmosphere & "room" tone if you will that was applied in other Kara No Kyoukai films such as the fifth, as character dialogue often exists in complete isolation. I think where the sound department shines a little however is it's use of music and how it's cued however, with all the upbeat waltz and fugue's you my find in the score, in addition to music cued and synced with a cut to produce a gag. Also with a few mood pieces here & there to accompany a montage of shots, in addition to inner dialogue scene being recorded over it, giving the film an obviously subjective take on it's perspective. A standard job, with some added value to comedic moments.




OST |

The soundtrack, while somewhat limited & short as the film is, actually adds quite a bit of value to the film's more comedic & subliminal moments. In the first 15 seconds we're greeted with a lullaby like track with gregorian chant from Kalafina, in addition to what sounds like sleigh bells & some reverberant high pitched synth wavering in the background. Slowly introducing the stringed section while a time-lapse of the stars spinning counter clock wise which is supposed to only seen at the earth's bottom axis of rotation, in other words the south pole, so the fact that you can see it in Japan seems like a creative oversight, however well meaning the staff was, however I guess you could get the same effect by flipping the image or perhaps rotating a camera skywards possibly while manipulating the frame rate. Anyways that's not really the point, as later on in the track it changes to a solo on the marimba, while accompanied by the harp, then slowly bringing back the strings once again as soon as the bridge hits. It's a beautiful track (M01) that's used as the main theme for the film, as it's repeated several time's for many of Azaka's dream sequences.

Another common track here on this film is the second used after M02, which is a waltz that's perfect for pomp & circumstance of the film, as well as Azaka's character, setting the happy go lucky mood right from the start. Also being accompanied by Azaka's personal narration at the start of the movie, as she winks right into the camera in an obviously stereo typical fashion. However, the score also contains some intimate piano arrangements as well, as the track M05 is used in a quick montage scene where Azaka & Shiki begin questioning students around campus of the recent incident, however find out about the strained and tight lipped atmosphere as they come across them.  The track is short however it also has vibraphone arrangement in addition to the long resonance of a synthesizer to depict the foreboding atmosphere the scene entails. The next scene after also presents a similar track "M06+M07" as Shiki & Azaka reconcile their day, Shiki's notices something for the first time, since the reveal is accompanied by the sparkling sound of synth, transitioning into a piano arrangement with stringed accompaniment, sounding somewhat disquiet as much as it does a think piece for the scene.

Shortly afterwords, a scene or two later is the gag I was talking about earlier, being that after Azaka gets punked the scene shows her embarrassment, then cutting to her furiously walking in the hallways to find who did it. In that the score (M08) very much resembles the Pokemon league theme I remember from playing Pokemon red back in the day, you know? like Dun, Da Da Da dun, Da Da Da dun da Dun... that one lol. As I find it's perfect for Azaka's charged mood and how suddenly it's cut & cued to is quite funny. Another short piano arrangement here is used between Shiki & Azaka, after Azaka makes a confession to Shiki and they begin to talk about it. It's a pretty decent and fragile arrangement, however it's somewhat watered down due to the pace of the conversation, as the dialogue and sound track overlap quite a bit. Being that the dialogue is too dominant in the scene, that you seemingly can't really pay attention to the score. Whereas I would rather have the scene be completely diegetic, without any music, and let the character acting do all the talking, to show the rawness and fragility of the moment that the scene lacks.


Approaching the climax of the film a suite is played "M15+M16+M17" to accompany the confrontation between Azaka & the culprit. Although it's kind of lame scene so stereo typical of what we've seen before, and the music really doesn't help here, as it's just loud and overly complicated, quite a low point within the film if you ask me. However when the film cuts to Shiki's end of the ranch the music is quite fitting for what soon transpires, as I think the synergy between the bowed upright bass arrangement and the battle scene was quite well received, in that the chant by Kalafina in particular is quite captivating, speaking volumes of the scene's mood and atmosphere.

During the resolution of the film though, comes with an equally resolving piece, as it's cued within the last scene of Azaka finally remembering what she'd forgotten. Track M18 starts off as a piano arrangement, though slowly introduces a stringed section, later taking off as the track rises into a crescendo. It's a good way to close off the film as the tone of the score is relieving and bittersweet, perfect for the nostalgic vibe that the memory entails. Overall a decent score, that's somewhat short and doesn't have much subject matter or as much of a prominent role as the other films do within the series.

The Garden of Sinners: Fairy Tale
[VI Film OST]

Musicians & Performances By -

Vocals : 

Kalafina - Main Group - 

Wakana Ōtaki, Keiko Kubota, Hikaru Masai

Supporting Vocalists - 

REMI, Yuriko Kaida, Hanae Tomaru

Former Members -

Maya Toyoshima (Left in 2009)

Yuriko Kaida

Musicians :

Keyboard & Programming - Yuki Kajiura

Strings - Kiyo Kido Strings (Group)

Rie Akagi, Yuriko Kaida

Viola - Sachie Oonuma, Kaori Naruse

Cello - Masami Horisawa

Flute - Rie Akagi

Guitar - Koichi Korenaga

Percussion - Tamao Fujii

Violin - Noriyo Ohbayashi

Page 6

Article Contents - Comments Section

1. Overlooking View 
2. Murder Speculation [Part 1]
3. Remaining Sense Of Pain
4. The Hollow
5. Paradox Spiral
6. Oblivion Recording
7. Murder Speculation [Part 2]
8. Epilogue
9. The Future Gospel
10. The Future Gospel [Extra Chorus]

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