Although I was intrigued by the first two Kara no Kyoukai movie outings I wasn’t totally sold until I’d seen the third one. The brutal and shocking opening scene made me sit up and take notice, but the way the whole film was constructed convinced me of how unusual and special this story is. This is I think the point where Nasu really started to hit his stride as a writer.
Part 3 of the original novel begins with a different scene from the film adaptation, although I can understand why Ufotable took the route they did because it has more dramatic impact. The Gate of Seventh Heaven remix movie includes the deleted scene though, and I sort-of wish that it had found its way into the theatrical version somewhere; it dramatises the conversation between Mikiya and the university professor when they’re discussing parapsychology related to the Fujino Asagami case, and adds some useful background details in the process.
Before I go any further: I hope the fan-translator forgives me for reproducing these here, but there were several technicalities in his manuscript that he explained to me, and they’re interesting enough to be worth discussing.
When describing the nature of the occult and magical in the Nasuverse, the novel uses a certain analogy to highlight the unique nature of people with paranormal abilities. It goes something like this: human brains are able to perceive the world in many ways, like a TV that’s able to receive many different channels. Most people experience the world through the ‘consensus’ of common sense: in that example, they are tuned into the one most popular TV station. Someone who is a psychic, on the other hand, may be tuned into some other channel, but that person wouldn’t be able to interact with the ‘normal’ world like the rest of us can.
Nasu’s original Japanese text, and its literal translation, also states:
他のチャンネルにはそのチャンネル独自の“番組《ルール》”が流れているんだから。
“Other channels have different TV shows of their own.”
This is an example of Nasu’s penchant for wordplay, which crops up a lot in his writing. The kanji for ‘TV show’, highlighted in bold above, is in this case supposed to be pronounced as the Japanese word for ‘rule’, which is quite significant.
In the newest fan translation, the analogy of card games is used instead. While most of us play the most popular card game, a minority play other games that have different sets of rules. The reason for this editorial decision was that card games are universal among most English-speaking readers, unlike popular TV channels, which differ from country to country. The ‘card game’ analogy also includes the allusion to that ‘rule’-related wordplay.
The outcome of this lengthy and complex digression is this: abnormal individuals, who are seen as mentally damaged or insane, are playing a different game, or tuned into the world on a different channel. The likes of Fujino Asagami and Shiki Ryougi on the other hand can access more than one channel, switching between them at will. In Shiki’s case, it’s even more literal since she’s uniquely able to see the fundamental flaws and seams that hold everything together by using her Eyes as well as being able to interact with the normal world the rest of us see.
There are other turns of phrase hidden away in the prose of KnK that, more often than not, went over my English-speaking head. Fujino’s ability to bend physical objects, for example, is accompanied by a spoken invocation that we hear in the film as “magare!” The written text can be read in Japanese as ‘curse’ but also as ‘bend’. When she refers to her troubled home life she declares, “Home, each and every part of it, is a lie,” and that “the lie is over now.” This is a topic that I am utterly ignorant of due to my background being scientific rather than literary or religious, but it’s a reference to Gnosticism, which is another subject that Nasu likes to toss into his writing on occasion.
Gnosticism states that the world we live in is flawed, and that enlightenment/supreme knowledge is perfection. For Fujino, the awakening of her supernatural power feels to her like true knowledge and experience; she has left this flawed normal reality behind for a higher state of awareness. In being able to once again feel physical pain, the lie of her insensitivity, brought about by her family’s sealing of her ability through drug administration, has been replaced by the truth of real feeling.
If this subtext isn’t enough, Part 3 contains what I view as particularly obvious nods to the work of Natsuhiko Kyougoku, who as I mentioned in earlier articles was cited by Nasu to be a major influence; he’s a great writer in his own right so if you dig Nasu’s idiosyncratic style, check him out. Kyougoku’s novel The Summer of the Ubume, which was published just four or five years before KnK was serialised, features a character whose family name is, funnily enough, Fujino. Hmm.
Nasu also shares Kyougoku’s habit of writing long-winded, self-indulgent digressions into obscure territory: The Summer of the Ubume and Mouryou no Hako go off on youkai-related tangents, and require the same sort of patience from the reader that KnK and Fate sometimes do.
Playing with the reader’s/viewer’s expectations by being deliberately vague occurs once again when the real setup of Fujino’s predicament turns out to be totally different from how it appears. Nasu employs this sleight of hand/misdirection device when he conceals the identity of the serial killer in part 2 and the underlying cause of Fujino’s insensitivity to pain in this part, just as Kyougoku constructs convoluted murder-mysteries with locked room murders and disappearing corpses in a more traditional context (i.e. that of the murder-mystery novel).
The shape of the red-and-green spell might be significant too; I’m not sure. It reminds me a bit of the double-helical shape of DNA, and I’ve always had a fascination with that
Now I’ve bored you to death with puns and other trivia, I ought to point out that The Remaining Sense of Pain is also very significant from the characterisation and thematic standpoints. Not only are the underlying mechanics of magic in the Nasuverse set out for the first time, but we also get to see a particularly interesting antagonist who forms a more telling contrast with the heroine than Kirie did earlier in the story.
Pitting Shiki against someone who behaves so differently yet is in other ways so similar makes for a conflict that’s fun to see play out, but that set of similarities and differences also tells us a more about the two of them. In fact, the point where the similarities end and the differences begin forms the crux of the whole thing because, for the first time, our girl has met her match.
Much to the surprise of Touko, Shiki cannot however sympathise with Fujino; in fact, she despises the other girl’s lack of self-restraint and declares the intial on-and-off progression of Fujino’s descent into violence to be a nuisance because, during Fujino’s moments of calm lucidity, the thrill of the chase momentarily disappears. Above all, the fact that Fujino lies to herself about her own motives is what I think annoys Shiki most. Dishing out your own brand of justice with violence? Fair enough. Scrunching people up like twigs just for fun? Not cool.
What’s also telling at this point of the story are Mikiya’s personal views. He is important in the sense that he’s the romantic interest, but his take on the events that unfold in this part of the story provides a moral ‘anchor’ and a sense of normality…which is pretty important when the other protagonist’s morals are those of a killer, and when Touko views it all with the mage’s cold, pragmatic detachment. Most impressively of all, he’s a rare specimen: an anime male lead that is likeable and deserves your respect.
In a conversation with a friend of mine a while back, we tried to make a list of Anime Male Leads who weren’t pathetic, annoying or stupid.
It was a very short list.
In KnK Part 2, we get the first hints of the extent of Mikiya’s devotion to Shiki and his faith in her better nature…sure, it flies in the face of the circumstantial evidence that’s revealed to us, but the poor guy is in love after all. What’s really refreshing though is how he stands by his convictions in general – not in a blind, stupid way, but in a resolute and convincing one. He has his principles, which are at best admirable and at least understandable.
He makes no secret of disapproving of a serial killer running loose around town, but never loses sight of why that person did those terrible things either. Similarly, he rescues Keita from becoming Fujino’s next victim because Keita is in his eyes just another human being who doesn’t deserve to die at the hands of a crazed killer…even though Keita is an accessory to the sadistic violence that pushed Fujino over the edge in the first place. The point where Mikiya impatiently tells Keita to spare him the most gruesome details of the violence the gang committed jumped out at me: here is a Nice Guy who is willing to give everyone a fair chance but still has a firm opinion of what’s right and wrong.
It makes you want to shake the guy by the hand and buy him a beer, doesn’t it?
Also: Pink Floyd. ^_^