Kara no Kyoukai movie 5 recap

- Paradox Spiral -

The stop motion theatre thing at the beginning has some strange guy who uses his boundary field powers to cut off Arcueid's cell phone instead of Shiki doing anything this time...

The intro just shows this orange-haired kid hanging out at Shiki's house for some reason... and then it cuts back to a flashback showing this kid seeing some crazy demonic stuff going on with the people he lives with... I think I remember this from the book, that guy's parents keep dying and coming back to life, and this kid gets so freaked out he ends up killing his parents himself and then running away.

Some burglar comes across some dead people in an apartment that he's trying to rob, and when he comes back with a police officer to show him, that person is alive again.

Some investigators are talking about this... the burglar's story sounded too detailed to be made up... it shows the connection between those dead people that were found alive, and their son who wasn't in the apartment, the orange haired kid Enjoe Tomoe.. later that guy gets in a fight with some guys who he owes money to or something... then Shiki comes up to save this guy for some reason..

(btw I just noticed this movie is 114 minutes instead of the usual 45-60 minutes)

Tomoe convinces this girl to let him hide out at her place...

It seems this guy has recurring nightmares about being stabbed by his mom... That's what drove him to kill his parents and run away. whenever Tomoe looks at his apartment key, he gets flashbacks of that...

Shiki still agrees to let him stay with her, even after he told her he killed somebody. she doesn't care at all... "I'm the same."
Later, she says "Mikiya won't be coming any time soon anyway." to further justify how she doesn't care about him staying with her... Tomoe says he noticed Shiki doesn't have a lock for her house, so he changed the lock for her and gave her the key...

A house without a lock... isn't a house.

It starts showing repeated scenes of the two of them living together, as if they're stuck in a time loop...

One day, Ryougi comes home and just about kills Tomoe...

I was out to kill someone. But I couldn't find the person to kill. I thought that you might do, but I couldn't. It's meaningless.

I want to feel like I'm alive. I'll eventually kill someone meaninglessly.

He asks Shiki if she has any friends. She says yes, and he suggest he go to push all her problems onto them...

He's not here now. He went far away.

Then she gets mad thinking about him, and starts stabbing her bed... Tomoe says he doesn't believe that she's someone who would kill meaninglessly.

I guess they aren't in a time loop? Because the newscaster who said it was October 16th now says it's October 18th.
Suddenly Tomoe sees a strange guy dressed in a red suit and red hat, following Shinji outside... he looks at Tomoe and goes "Shhhh"... then disappears.

Tomoe tells her about this... says he's worried about her, then confesses is love to her.
Shiki considers his words... then jumps on him and asks if he loves her enough that he could die for her... he thinks about his recurring dream of being stabbed by his mom... he says yes, and then tells her about his dream...

It wasn't going to be long before that dream became reality. That's why on that night... I stabbed my mom on reflex when she opened the door.

This is where you normally would finally start to learn what was going on the beginning of the movie, just 23 minutes in.

Shiki just calls him stupid and then says she no longer wants to kill him... she asks him where his home is.. he tells her his address.

That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking where you want to go back to.

After that, Tomoe leaves Shiki and starts living on the street again... a week later, he sees his mom across the street and freaks out and goes back to Shiki... she agrees to go with him to his apartment to check out what's going on.

As they go up the building's elevator, Shiki notices that it goes up in a spiral...
When Tomoe tells her it's been 8 days since he last came to her place.. "The timing's too perfect."

Shiki asks for the key so they can go in without ringing the doorbell in order to see through the gimmick.... they go in.. and see Tomoe's parents talking about him as if he's just late getting home from work and they are still waiting for him to get home.

We didn't ring the doorbell, so they act as if there's no visitor.

Then they see another copy of Tomoe come home...

This scene is... something... The mom finally loses her shit after getting treated badly by the dad... she knocks him unconscious with a pan and then stabs him to death, then goes to Tomoe's room...

Tomoe... please die...

Then the mom cuts her own head off after killing her family...

Tomoe exclaims to the calm Shiki that he just died, pointing to his copy...

He'll wake up in the morning. there wasn't even a drop of blood.

It's a cycle where they're born in the morning and die at night.

Then Shiki says they'll go to his real home next... She explains how she noticed something strange about this building, and that the numbers must've been switched around, so his real home is in 410, not 405.

Everything began when that elevator was activated. It's all a gimmick to reverse everything. The loud sound serves as a distraction, so the people riding on the elevator won't realize they've been rotated 180 degrees. The stairs in here go in a spiral, right? The stairs must be displaced to match the elevator.

He says that they'd notice if the exit were on the opposite side of where it was normally, but she explains that the scenery around the building is full of similar looking rectangular apartment buildings, so they wouldn't notice.

You're surrounded by walls inside and strange patterns are inscribed all over the place, adding to your mental stress. It's a barrier. There aren't any small abnormalities. So you don't notice the large abnormality.

They get to 410...

To be accurate, this is the place you stayed in from when you moved in up until the elevator started working a month later.

They go into this apartment, and they see the corpse that the burglar saw at the beginning. Ryougi says it's been about half a year since their deaths... she sees someone come up behind Tomoe about to kill him, and saves him at the last second.

They aren't human. They're just puppets that want to die.

Now there's a scene where she kills a bunch of zombie people.. After that, the mage who created this barrier shows up... she can't see any lines on him.
Shiki:

I know you.

Yes, it's been about two years since we last met. Magus, Araya Souren. The one to kill Shiki.

I think the scene they're talking about here is something that has yet to be shown until a later movie?

She asks why he enjoys repetition so much... explains to Tomoe that this complex repeats the last day of all its residents.

They're born in the morning and die in the night. This side is the storage for their corpses, and that other side is where their daily lives occur. I don't know what kind of sorcery he's using though.

I've made a world that concludes in a day. I was curious to see if humans could reach a different death. I believe that a deviation will occur in the spiral if I repeat the same death thousands of times.

I see. So Enjou isn't the only one repeating death. That won't be enough for an experiment.

They were people who had everything destroyed. Within a mere month, everyone killed each other and died.

Shiki:

It's because of this apartment complex you set up. You pushed them into doing it. Then you shifted all the residents into puppets... Why do you want to kill me?

He mentions the names of two other supernatural characters from previous movies, then explains why he's now after Shiki...

Fujyou Kirie and Asagami Fujino were not effective. Being close to death, she chose death while you chose life. Putting an end to lives, she enjoyed murder while you respected killing. You should've realized... They're similar to you, yet at the same time, they're murderers who conflict with Ryougi Shiki. They were sacrifices who were prepared just for you. Enjoe Tomoe was a fortunate find. He made things easy for me.

Ryougi Shiki. Nothingness is your chaotic impulse and your origin. See that darkness, and recall your name.

Then they start fighting...

You are inexperienced. Sarira are embedded in my left hand. Not even Mystic Eyes of Death Perception would be able to see the parts prone to death.

Shiki manages to cut through his barriers and do some damage to him, and even stabs him in the next... but he uses some weird blood bending magic to through her out the window... then heals himself like it's nothing.

My origin is stillness. You can't kill the time of over two hundred years that I've been alive.

Tomoe is seeing all this and freaking out... his nightmare problem probably seems nothing to him now that he's seen this.... now Souren starts shaking his head around wildly... the same scene it showed earlier in the movie... Tomoe picks up the knife... next he's running away screaming...

Meanwhile Mikiya comes back into to wn and head to Shiki's apartment, and is locked out. He goes to Touko's office instead... he says that he's been out training to drive for the past month or something... Then he notices a picture of Araya and that red dressed guy along with some girl, maybe younger Touko? She says those are her aquaintances from when she lived in the academy in London.

I used puppets while he used the soul to reach the origin of humans. I gave up, but I'm sure he's still working on it.

Suddenly that red dressed guy comes to see Toko Aozaki out of nowhere...

Cornelius Alba. What business does the director-elect of the Sponheim Monastary have here?

Some weird scene is happening in a giant background monitor while they're talking... showing all of Touko's puppets or something?
Alba:

Don't value me so cheaply. My only skill is putting a brain into a puppet body, allowing the brain to continue living.

Toko:

That apartment complex is the ultimate barrier set up so that the magical experiment doesn't leak outside. As far as I know, there's only one person who can do such a thing.

Toko goes back to her office to get something.. and Azaka, Kokuto's sister, is there showing something to him..

I told you not to use sorcery in front of people.

She explains that magic looses its bite when people know about it.

Magi even go as far as to not reveal their research achievements to anyone.

Shiki speaks up and surprises everyone with her presence...

So they study for their own sake? That's the same as zero.

They do have a goal. The final goal of magi is... the spiral of origin. To reach what is called the Akashic Records, the source of every phenomenon, the cause of every event, the truth. According to one theory, it contains the past, the present, and the future of everything in this world.

Alba says that he doesn't care about that..

It's nonsense to pursue something if you don't even know if it exists.

Toko says that we know it exists, because some magi have obtained it... but all the past magi who have reached it disappeared.

Shiki leaves, and Azaka asks if Shiki is a man.. asks Kokuto if he thinks of her as a man or a girl... he says he would like Shiki either way.. Azaka gets jealous and runs away...

Toko just laughs, and says Shiki is cute for talking like a man because she wants Kokuto to remember the male Shiki that died... Then she starts talking to Kokuto about the yin yang symbol... more philosophy time...

The intertwined white and black semicircles symbolize yin and yang, light and darkness, positive and negative, man and woman... The small hole in both of them is a spiral of rivalry with contradictions. In the teachings of yin and yang, they call this Ryougi.

Then she tells him about the Ogawa apartment complex that she helped design, and suggest they go investigate that murder report...

I can't really follow this next part very well, it flips between scenes randomly... but I guess this is now after they investigated the building and went back to the office... Shiki is now talking to Kokuto about a sword that someone gave him, as Kokuto talks about what he found out...

This complex is two ten-story semicircular buildings standing next to each other.

Whoa I just got the yin/yang relevancy now...

He says the complex just opened up to residents a year ago, and the elevator only started working a month ago...

It's an unpleasant building.

Toko:

Small tweaks to the design can throw people off mental balance. Is worse for the residents using them every day.

They both notice the abnormality when they get out of the elevator and everything is reversed from what it's supposed to be...

You have to go around and behind the elevator to get through to the other building.

Now Toko is visiting Alba again.. this is the place where all those puppets in the windows are... Kokuto comes along and she gives him a ring to wear that will make him unnoticed... I'm not sure I understand what they're talking about here...

Aozaki, I've taken the Taiji.

You've put the Taiji in a Taiji? But the counter force would take action. We humans and the planet's united awareness. The wish for the survival of the world converges and appears in many forms. That's the counter called the counter force. Those blessed souls who appear during various eras, heroes, are a form of it. Many magi in the past tried to get to the origin and were killed by the counter force.

I'm not opening a new path, but merely tracing a path that is already open.

Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

It seems Araya died to capture Ryougi Shiki.

Kokuto drops the ring he's supposed to wear, making himself known to Alba..

More confusing scene flipping... now Toko and Kokuto are heading up the spiral staircase to where Shiki is...

She must be on the tenth floor in the west tower. Shiki is the yin, a woman.

And at the same time, I think it's showing an earlier scene where Toko and Alba are in the lobby about to fight each other?

Lines of death are seems of objects. Seeing them means learning the truth about them. In other words, its...

Kokuto:

The spiral of origin?

Alba seems to be in this for a different reason though... he just wants to kill Aozaki.

Now they're back in the office...

Maybe Shiki's dreaming inside the Taiji. A dream called the history of this world. Records of us, right now.

Toko goes out on her own to save Shiki.. or rather... okay I get it... it's flipping through between past, present and future with these scenes... Now it's back to where Kokuto decided to go to the building himself after Toko... and after Tomoe grabs the knife and runs away into his fake apartment... and Kokuto rings the doorbell, Tomoe answers and holds a knife to him... before realizing he's a good guy.

Araya:

I can't save anyone. If I can't save them, I shall at least clearly record their deaths. I shall collect deaths.

Toko takes out Alba easily with her cat demon familiar... then Araya confronts her...

I thought that the door to the origin exists at the end of this repetitious world which ends in a day. But I didn't find the door.

So that's why you took notice of Shiki?

Yes. I used Fujyou Kirie and Asagami Fujino so that the counter force wouldn't notice, and I made her realize that her body is connected to the origin.

He says he intends to take Shiki's body in order to access the origin.

Being here is like being inside of your body, and you can crush any space at will... So I've already walked into a large spell.

It looks like Araya just killed Toko with a mortal combat final move... but that was just a projection of her... I think?

Kokuto has joined up with Tomoe and told him about what he found out in his investigation... He takes Tomoe to his real home, a house, and he starts to remember his life before he moved into that building. How his dad was a bad driver who killed someone, and their family got bullied out of any place they moved to because of that... Kokuto manages to get him out of his depression so he can help him with his plan to rescue Shiki from the 10th floor of the building... Also Tomoe gives the key to Kokuto...

She doesn't need me. A person like you suits people like me and her.

Alba shows up in front of Kokuto caring Toko's living head.. and crushes it in front of him.. then he starts beating up Kokuto while screaming at Aozaki, about some petty rivalry they had at the academy...

Meanwhile, Tomoe goes to see his own corpse, and confirms that he is an artificial puppet created by Araya..

Another Toko suddenly shows up to fight Alba... saying she's her replacement.

A few years ago, I created a puppet that was exactly like myself.

Toko kills Alba and saves Kokuto, while Tomoe tries to stab Araya and it doesn't do anything... Araya comes down to fight Toko... but this Toko knows she stands no chance against him inside his own building.

Araya. The original purpose of this apartment complex is to represent the Taiji in order to take the Taiji, right?

Correct. I created this alien world to completely shut off Ryougi Shiki from the outside world.

Toko just starts laughing... saying he made a terrible mistake.

You threw Shiki into a barrier by secluding her from space. That's certainly perfect. But something like that is useless against her. We're a threat against common sense, but Shiki is the Death for the uncommon. Araya Souren, if you wanted to confine Shiki, you should've trapped her in a box made of concrete. She can easily cut through a barrier that closes her off from space.

Now it shows some hyper trippy sequence where Shiki goes through all her own memories in the Akashic records... then she finally wakes up and starts cutting up Araya's body/building/barrier with the sword she took from Mikiya.

I see. Self suggestion. You can change yourself by holding a weapon. I have been deceived. You weren't fighting with your full potential against Asagami Fujino.

An amazing battle scene... Araya is now collapsed on the ground... he explains his reasoning for what he did... the fact that he can't save everyone.

But if I can open the origin and end the world... If I can record and observe all deaths until the end of the world... If I can observe the ones who aren't recompensed for, who aren't saved, from the very start... The ones who died meaninglessly would obtain a meaning.

I'm nobody. I just want a conclusion. These ugly, filthy, ignorant humans. If that's all that'll be left in history after they die off, I would be relieved to know that the value of humans is in their ugliness.

Toko:

You lost against only one person, Tomoe's love for his family. Let me tell you something interesting. There's this thing called the group unconscious that a famous psychologist defined. It's a way of thinking that the pool deep inside everybody's mind is the same. It's the storage of all the selfishness in this world. In Buddhism, they call this Arayashiki.

She asks Araya if he's going to start again... he replies "I didn't create any spare bodies."

Araya, what do you seek?

True wisdom.

Araya, where do you seek it?

Only within myself.

Araya, where are you trying to reach?

That's obvious. To the end of this paradox spiral of a world.

After the credits... Kokuto lets himself into Shiki's place at night with they key... Shiki gets mad... then shyly asks him for the key to his place...

This movie was amazing, it's my favorite one in the series for sure.

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