Kara no Kyoukai 4 – The Hollow Notes

December 18th/28th, 2013.

imgur album here.

So now we’ll talk of how Shiki was an empty doll for a while, and how Kokuto is drawn to empty dolls who remind him of her? Well, continuing the whole body and soul motif, now we have a body without a soul.
The music is really good, again, in the beginning, that chant.
of course the operating room is green, with dark hues. Of course.
Why isn’t Shiki coming back to her body? Look at her, fetal position, her spirit is helf as if in a womb.
But she is reaching for the light, only to fall back into the darkness. Overall, I’m not too impressed with such “dreamscapes”, who are waking men trying to create a feeling we have when asleep. It never feels organic and natural enough. I mean, look at how overt the symbolism is.
And just before she awakens, two Shikis, a mirror image, separate from one another. Shiki and SHIKI, but which one came back?
And so, at long last, after brushing with death, Shiki’s Eyes of Deathsight awaken.
And again, Touko serves to tell us how things “really are” – Shiki has a hole in her chest, in her heart, in her soul, which needs filling. She needs a reason to live.
In nature, there are no vacancies. If an open spot is left, something is sure to want to capitalize and move in. Something wants into Shiki. Where’s Keima when you need him? (TWGOK)
Two people, with different desires, who take the same actions. Raises an interesting philosophical question – if the two of us contain the same body, and take the same actions, can we be different people, if one of us does things “honestly” and the other “sarcastically”? To a behaviorist, there’d be no difference. To the outside world, there is no difference.
“A rose is a rose by any other name,” and also a reference to The Ugly Duckling. Shiki is Shiki, even if she doesn’t realize it, but that’s now. If we lose all memories of ourselves, are we we? Heh.
So, her soul is indeed empty, missing, what she’s lacking is her sense of self, and the desire to live. Some would say our “Self” is the composite of how we perceive and desire everyone around us to see us. So yes, she needs others to build her self, which seems backward, but isn’t that ridiculous.
Why did SHIKI desire to disappear? Well, look at my episode 2 write-up, he said so himself – the only emotion he knows is murder. He feels others wanted to murder him, he wanted to murder others, but also his form of love, considering self-love, is to murder himself, for that is the only emotion he can employ. Love or hate someone, doesn’t matter, murder is how he shows it. Except of course, if we listen to SHIKI, he has that feeling because others directed it toward him, Shiki and SHIKI felt each other, so Shiki wanted him gone, perhaps.
Also, due to the supernatural aspect of the show, we know these spirits truly are trying to enter Shiki, but it could also be a metaphor for something much simpler, nightmares, feeling you don’t know who you are and what you’re there for. “Nightly visitations”.
Heh, that symbol on the door is like an aztec symbol, or one of those symbols drawn on that plane which can be seen from up on high, which some claim have been drawn by/for aliens. The Nezca Lines
BTW, you know what eyes Shiki has? Raistlin Majere’s eyes, from Dragonlance, which always showed him things withering.
“Did SHIKI really die for nothing, Ryougi Shiki?” – If this is a movie about nothing, then that statement could be seen as another way – did he die for the sake of the nothingness within you, or for you to fill it up?
Well, yeah, Shiki can fall from buildings and survive, and later she can float, or fly.
Also, the whole segment with Singing in the Rain was well done, both to feel some emotions for Kokutou, from a directorial point of view how its quiet understated nature clashed with Shiki’s struggle for life, and as the song says – the sun is inside of him, as Touko had said, there must be an engine, a life-giving engine, within Shiki.
“So what if it’s dead? It’s a living corpse. I’ll kill it, no matter what it is!” – Just as she told us in a previous movie – anything can die, and she is willing to kill anything. Even gods.
Shiki is the elegance of death incarnate, in 31:52.
Ah, metaphysics, don’t you love it when you can thus turn a literal act into a deeply symbolic one? She drove a knife into her chest, declaring she is killing her weaker self, to which she will not surrender her self. The spirits could only come because she’d been weak, but no more of that.
And Shiki wants to kill people, which makes you wonder – is this SHIKI, the murderer, or as I kept saying – SHIKI felt murderous because he felt murder directed at him from another, from Shiki.
“To be hollow means you can be filled without limit. You lucky bastard, where else can you find a better future?” – In other words, she can keep filling herself with experiences, she will forever keep looking for the future, for more things. Also, within herself, the present, not the past.
“Ah, so there are things that won’t disappear.” – With her sight, some permanence is very important, for she is drawn to the impermanence of things.
That Araya Souren really reminded me of Kotomine Kirei :P Some might wonder why we see the what/how of things happening, while this is supposed to be a thriller, but it’s not that kind of thriller, we never wondered who did killings or why, it’s more a thriller in the sense of us trying to piece the chrono-pieces, and some psychological, and just because it’s hard to find another genre for these movies, but in the end thrillers are a sub-genre of action, which fits here.
Interesting, Touko is always calm, but next movie she seems out of balance. Also, we’re getting chrono-fragmentation within one film.