Loliliciousness

What Do Ya’ Mean You Can’t Fly?!

An overlooking view from the Empire State Building in New York City.

“Themes! Themes!!! THEMESSSS!!!!!”

“Themes? Quit kiddin’ yourself sonny, IT AIN’T DEERP.”

Or so go the two sides on 4chan.

I’m going to attempt to argue for the former. This is also going to be heavily dependent on TakaJun’s fansub translation.

Snippet: If you don’t know what SparkNotes is, it is God’s gift to high school English students.

Detailed Summary and Explanations of Dialogue

(This is an accompaniment summary. If you didn’t watch the movie, you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about.)

Overlooking View

The movie opens with the introduction of two of the main characters of the story through some blatant product placement and everyday banter. From their conversation, you can tell that they have a pretty decent friendship (though not romantically). There’s the typical “normal”, nice guy Kokutou Mikiya with the glasses. Then there’s the Ryougi Shiki, the kimono wearing girl with the Strawberry leather jacket. You can tell right off the bat that she’s going to be the one doing much of the ass kicking for Kara no Kyoukai.

“Delivery! I brought the tampons you ordered.”

“……………”

The scene now switches to an event that actually happens later. We see Fujou Kirie walking up to the edge of the Fujou building.

“Hey! I can see my hospital room from here!”

Credits now roll in. We hear the theme song for this movie that’s going to be played repeatedly throughout the next 45 or so minutes in various forms and on different instruments. (Editor’s note: But, it sure is damn catchy. That’s Kajiura Yuki for you.) With the music, we are treated to various scenes of a butterfly and dragonfly fluttering around. It seems the director had fun playing with an orange filter that makes it look like it is being played on an old projector. We find out later this is actually the dream Mikiya has while he’s trapped. At the end of the opening credits, we see Kirie’s (eventual) glorious bloody demise from jumping off the Fujou building.

The effects used in the dream sequence are quite nice, actually.

Poor Kirie…

It’s morning. Shiki wakes. She strips, puts on the same kimono she was wearing the night before, opens up her fridge, and all we see is a bunch of water bottles. (Editor’s note: IIt must be that new diet everyone is raving about.) She frowns when she notices that there’s a new message on her phone. Instead of listening to it, she leaves her apartment, not bothering to lock the door.

Mmmmm. Nakkid shoulders.

We get a voice over from a newscaster about how there was a suicide from jumping off the Fujou Building. Shiki is inside a rather messy office looking room having a conversation about the suicide with a red haired woman. She’s Aozaki Touko, but we don’t really know who she is or what she does, and we don’t find out in this movie.

“Hi. My name’s Aozaki Touko. They only thing you’ll learn about me in this movie is that I have big boobs, make dolls, and live on cancer sticks.”

Touko states that this is the fourth suicide from jumping off the same building and goes on to explain that there’s a common link between all of them: that none of them left a suicide note, none of the girls are related, none of them had problems in their personal lives, and that their families and friends have no idea why they would kill themselves. Touko concludes sarcastically that it’s an “obvious” case of the girls secretively feeling uneasy about their lives and killing themselves without telling anyone about their problems. Shiki notices what Touko is hinting at. The contradiction is this: if the girls really had personal problems that they didn’t care for anyone to know, they would not have chosen to kill themselves in the spectacular fashion that they did. But since they “chose” to die by jumping off of a building, they obviously did want the world to know. And if they wanted the world to know, they would have also left a suicide note. But they didn’t. So what does it mean? Touko states it means that the cases are not mere suicides, that the girls really didn’t intend to die. Touko gives these cases an analogy: “It’s as if they went out shopping and got into a traffic accident.” Made up by Mikiya who now is sitting completely still on the sofa in front of the wall of TVs. Touko wonders when he’s “going to come back”. Shiki doesn’t think much of her strange comment. For now at least.

Shiki isn’t even a bit curious as to why Mikiya’s stock still?

That night, Shiki goes to investigate the site of the suicides in the Fujou Buildings district of the city. This entire portion of the city looks decrepit and literally rotting. We can see why there aren’t many cars around and why no one would want to live there. Up ahead, she sees a dog making bloody footprints walking towards her. Turns out there another girl just committed suicide, making it the fifth one. Shiki looks up towards the building and sees nine ghosts floating above it.

Now this certainly is a nice neighborhood.

Ouch.

Yep. I count nine.

The next day, Shiki is back at Touko’s office. We see Mikiya is still in the same position as he was in yesterday. Shiki tells Touko that the suicides will end at eight deaths since she saw eight ghosts flying around. Apparently, she can tell apart Kirie from the rest of the ghost cronies. Touko seems to be highly amused at the fact that Shiki went to investigate. Shiki asks her what exactly that Fujou Building is. Touko gives a textbook history speech on the Fujou Buildings noting that they were famous for their high observation decks overlooking the city from above. But now, the buildings fell out of use and are to be demolished.

Shiki rebuffs that that’s not what she’s asking. Of course, Shiki wants to know about the ghosts.  Touko consents and goes on to a rather short Nasuverse magic explanation on how the ghosts exist there. She says that time is distorted in that building, that time goes slower there. Thus, the “records” there are “not up to date”. (This meaning that the building’s timeline and reality are out of synch with the rest of the world’s.) Because of this lapse, the “memories” of (as in the reality of) the girls being alive linger in the building. Giving another analogy (Editor’s note: Nasu sure likes analogies), it’s like how smoke lingers even when a fire goes out. (Editor’s note: It’s rather an apt analogy at that, since ghosts are smoky existences having none of the flare their original counterpart human beings had.)

Touko continues onto her next topic, asking Shiki about that certain emotion a person feels when he looks at a landscape from above. She calls this emotion “far”. From an overlooking view, that person knows that what he’s seeing is the world that he lives in; but if the view is too high, because of the distance and grandeur that the view would give, he cannot feel it (that what he’s seeing is the world that he lives in). Eventually, from this conflict between what he knows and what he feels, he’ll meet his demise. Thus, Touko concludes, that humans cannot live in special surroundings without some serious repercussions. “Under normal circumstances at least.”

“Far”? What’s the Japanese word she uses? Anyone?

On cue with the end of this dialogue, the newscaster on TV announces that another girl has just committed suicide at the Fujou building. Having fun keeping count, Touko says it’s the sixth one, meaning that there will be two more. Shiki seems to have finally noticed Mikiya’s strange condition. Upon trying to wake him up, he simply falls over. Going home, Shiki listens to the message left on her phone. Though we only hear the message after the fact, Mikiya tells her that Touko wanted to talk about the suicides at the Fujou Building (and to buy some coffee when coming over). Shiki realizes that Mikiya went to the Fujou Building to investigate the suicides himself, thus somehow becoming psychically trapped. Fearing that Mikiya would meet the same fate as the other suicide girls, Shiki rushes over to the Fujou Building.

“OH NOES!”

Upon arriving on scene, Shiki meets another suicide girl (that makes this the seventh one). Thinking it’s Mikiya, Shiki runs over to the girl whereupon she hears some creepy laughter coming from the Fujou Building. Drawing her knife, Shiki goes into the building to investigate. Following the laughter around the decrepit building, Shiki eventually meets Kirie’s ghost. Kirie’s ghost issues some type of psychic attack that makes Shiki’s left arm (as it turns out, a synthetic arm) attack Shiki. Kirie’s ghost states that Kokuto is one that is able to fly anywhere he pleases and that she wants him to take her. Shiki is eventually able to subdue her arm by turning on and using (apparently in some way magical) sparkly blue eyes and cutting her artificial left hand off. Kirie’s ghost then disappears.

“Wwwwweeeeeeeee!!!!”

“Yummmy.”

“Can you fly?”

“You don’t understand!”

I hope the Tsukihime remake game will have the same awesome effect.

Back at Touko’s building, this time in her laboratory/doll making room, Touko starts preparing Shiki’s new arm while noting how Shiki just got owned.  Touko (Editor’s note: So who’s more talkative, Rin or Touko?) goes on to explain that an artificial body is like a real body in that if there is no soul inside, they’re just meaningless, empty containers. She states that’s how Shiki was like in the past. Touko then goes onto explain how she and Mikiya first met. Mikiya saw one of her dolls at an exhibition and was captivated by it. He then somehow found Touko without any sort of information and begged her to hire him. Touko speculates the reason he liked her dolls so much was he felt they had the same kind emptiness as Shiki’s. Apparently Shiki lacks a soul.

I wonder who that looks like. Touko can probably do well in the sex dolls business.

Before going home, Shiki takes one last look at Mikiya. After coming out of the shower, Shiki opens the fridge to take out a water bottle. Before she does however, she changes her mind and takes out the strawberry ice cream that Mikiya bought her from the freezer instead. She proceeds to eat it all the while looking like she’s not enjoying it one bit. But she’s hilariously serious about devouring the cup’s entirety.

“OM NOM NOM NOM.”

The next day, Shiki goes to Touko’s office to get her new arm. It’s apparently an upgraded version of her previous one. Of course, it’s ghost ass kicking time.

“I eat cancer sticks for breakfast, lunch, and supper. AND dinner.”

That night, Shiki visits the Fujou Building again. As if Kirie’s ghost was inviting her in, an elevator conveniently opens up for Shiki to use. Shiki takes it to the roof of the building where we meet Kirie’s ghost and her eight suicide girl cohorts who are waiting for her. I won’t stress on the details, but Shiki proceeds to finish all of the eight ghost cronies (with her sparkly blue eyes turned on) with relative ease leaving Kirie’s ghost for last. Kirie’s ghost tries to use a psychic attack on Shiki again but her artificial arm does not go crazy and attack Shiki like last time. Shiki calls the psychic attack a “suggestion” and says it does not work due to the fact that she does not know the feeling of being alive. Shiki uses her artificial arm to grab Kirie’s ghost’s throat and tells her to give Mikiya back to her (Editor’s note: Cat fight!). Shiki wrings Kirie’s ghost in and stabs her in the chest killing her.

No wonder she keeps them off. She can’t see jack with them on.

“People die when they… I mean, give him back to me!”

You know what I’d say if I was Jason Miao.

Stab.

In a hospital room somewhere, the real Kirie wakes up in panic. Touko pops out of nowhere and wants to know a few things of Kirie. Interestingly, Kirie knows that Touko is her “enemy”. Kirie tells Touko of her story of how she’s a bid ridden, terminally ill patient. Day in, day out, she would watch the same overlooking scenery from her window. She hated it, but since the scenery was the only thing she had, she embraced it. Eventually, however, she lost her sight. But, some person came along and gave her second floating body, giving her a “double existence”, with which she could continue to watch an overlooking view. Now, however, her other body has disappeared, leaving her in her “box”. As it turns out, the suicide girls were only an unfortunate circumstance in which Kirie “tried calling out to” them to make them “aware of her existence”. She did not mean to kill them. Mikiya, on the other hand, she wanted him. She met him in the hospital on a weekly basis (Editor’s note: Speculation – he was probably visiting Shiki during her stay after her “accident”). From her statements, we can probably say that she developed a crush on him. She wanted him to “take her away”, presumably from her really crappy life. (Editor’s note: It seems that Mikiya’s harem is even bigger in the anime.)

Is it just me, or is the animation for those pill bottles far inferior than the rest of the animation of the entire movie?

Before leaving, Touko tells Kirie that there are two ways to escape, to “escape with a purpose” (to fly) and to “escape without a purpose” (to float). She (Kirie) is the one to decide which method to use, despite all else. Touko states: “We don’t choose our path depending on the sins we carry, but instead we must carry our sins on the path we choose”.

Kirie narrates her thoughts for her journey from the hospital to the Fujou Building. She states that even with Touko’s warning, she knows that she cannot “fly” even though she wants to, she can only “float”, because she’s a “weak” person. With that in mind, she continues to ponder about what kind of end she’d like. She concludes that it’s an obvious choice; it should be from an overlooking view. By the end of her monologue, we are back at the same scene we saw at the beginning of the movie. Kirie commits suicide and completes the set of eight suicides total.

Hmmm. This scene looks familiar.

The next morning, Kokuto finally wakes up. The TV reports that an eighth suicide has been discovered at the Fujou Building (and thus, the final one). Shiki and Touko have a little side discussion about the ramifications of trying to fly. Of course, Mikiya has no idea what they’re talking about.

I’d think the first thing he would’ve done is run to the restroom.

On their way to Shiki’s apartment, Shiki asks Mikiya if he thinks that suicide is right. He answers with neither a yes nor a no. Instead, by giving a rather lame example, he says that under certain conditions, he would choose death because it would be easier than the alternative, because he is a “weak” person.

Back at Shiki’s apartment, Mikiya tells Shiki about a dream he had (as shown in the opening credits). In the dream, there was a dragonfly and a butterfly. The dragonfly could fly, but the butterfly could only float around. The butterfly tried to follow the dragonfly by flying, but it couldn’t keep up and fell. Mikiya thinks that the butterfly could have stayed afloat longer if it didn’t try to fly, but since it “discovered something about flying”; it chose to stop just floating and to actually fly. Mikiya and Shiki have a lame anime lover’s moment and the credits scroll in. (Editor’s note: Wait a minute… there’s only one bed… that bastard…)

“Oh you tsundere.”

“Shaddup!”

After the credits, we’re treated to an Azaka cameo. They’re at the scene of Kirie’s suicide. Azaka asks Touko if she knows why anyone would want to commit suicide. Touko retorts that she (Kirie) didn’t want to, she just couldn’t “fly”.

Did they really have to have this AFTER the credits?

My Own Analysis, Interpretations, and Thoughts

Fly and Float

“Are you flying? Or are you floating?”

These two words get thrown around a lot in the movie and are used in both literally and figuratively. They don’t make a lot of sense if you put them in a general context, but their meanings start to shape up once you put them in the context of the movie, and more specifically, Kirie’s situation. As Touko explains it, flying would mean to “escape with a purpose” and floating would mean to “escape without a purpose”. The sense that we can get from these two words in Touko’s technical terms is quite easy to grasp. The basic idea behind the two words is that the word “fly” in her sense gives off a stronger, firmer, more decisive connotation than the word “float”.  As you can imagine, if you “fly” somewhere, you have a destination in mind, you have reason and meaning behind your actions, you are in active pursuit of something, therefore you are “with a purpose”. “Float” would of course be the opposite of that; you don’t have any destination in mind, you’re just going along with the flow, you are not active, and thus you are “without a purpose”.

“Escape”, then, can mean something along the lines of changing the current situation; and in Kirie’s case it would mean to change her way of living. After Kirie loses her second body, Touko presents her with those two options for “escaping”. She can either continue loitering around with herself not doing anything like she always has (to float), or she can actually do something with herself (to fly). The condition that Touko states for choosing, which way to go, however, is that “it’s a mistake to choose (a) path based on your sins”. “Sins” in this case (Editor’s note: Actually, I’d like to know the actual Japanese word that she uses. Can anyone help me out?), could refer to Kirie’s wrong doings, as in her making those girls jump off, but I think she was talking more about burdens that we carry, as in Kirie’s unfortunate health conditions. And so finally, when Touko’s lines are metaphorically untangled, we can see that she’s telling Kirie that it is completely her choice in determining how she should live her life, regardless of supposedly limiting factors.

As Kirie’s background story tells us, Kirie has been “floating” for the majority of her life, where she’s been stuck on a bed not really doing anything for herself. When Kirie was given her second body, as Shiki put it, she was able to “fly a little”. She was able to somewhat “escape” her hospital room and her really crappy and sickly life behind her. Though it’s only mentioned briefly, we can largely assume that it was first Mikiya that gave her some hope for life when the two of them first met at the hospital. Of course, when she was in her second body, she wasn’t exactly “flying” in the complete literal and metaphorical sense; as we can well see she was still “floating”, for the most part stationary, above the Fujou Building; she was still stuck there in one place. That is why she wanted to, and eventually was able to, trap Mikiya. Apparently, though unexplained in this movie, for some reason Mikiya is able to “fly” and Kirie, as she puts it, “want(s) him to take me”. This also explains the circumstance behind those suicide girls. In the movie, they’re described as “flying around her”, and Kirie herself says that she wanted to “reach out to them”; thus she wanted them in the same way she wanted Mikiya. But that didn’t turn out so well.

So in the end, what did Kirie choose? She didn’t choose to continue to “float” like the way she has been doing. She couldn’t go back to the way things were before. She wanted to “fly”, desperately so, but as she put it herself, she’s “a weak person”. “(She) couldn’t fly. (She) could only float”. So she chose a third option that Touko hadn’t mentioned. She wanted to come close to “flying”, to living, as possible. And of course there’s only one really obvious way for her to accomplish it, from when she was almost “flying” in her second body. We know the results from the scene at the beginning of the movie. So in the end, she chose to “fall”. Almost like “flying”. But not quite there yet. And it doesn’t really achieve the same results, does it? But in the end, it’s all the same, right?

Suicide

“do u thik suicide is right? durrrrrr.”

Admittedly, it’s quite a stupid and pompous question to ask in general. But, when Shiki’s asks this question to Mikiya on their way to Shiki’s house, it was in direct reference to Kirie’s decision to jump off the Fujou Building. That’s why Mikiya comes up with that retarded “retrovirus” example of his.  Kirie could have lived with her crippling disease until the day she died, or she could just kill herself. To answer Mikiya’s rhetorical question, of course the former requires more courage, a lot more than Kirie and, apparently, Mikiya have. So Mikiya justifies Kirie’s weakness. Somewhat.

Mikiya’s Dream

“Yeah. A dream about a dragonfly.”

As any astute viewer would have realized, Mikiya’s dream is analogous to the events of the movie. The dragonfly would be Mikiya and he’s flying around (apparently Mikiya can fly, remember?). The butterfly would be Kirie and she’s just floating around. The two of them meet (at the hospital). The butterfly (Kirie) learns to fly from the dragonfly (Mikiya). The butterfly tries to follow the dragonfly by flying (Kirie gets her second body and tries to trap Mikiya). The butterfly can’t keep up and falls (Kirie commits suicide). The important most important part of Mikiya’s dream comes at the end when he says: “But it could no longer put up with being merely light and floating. That’s why it flew. It stopped floating.” In other words, it’s my conclusion in the “Fly and Float” section spoken in three sentences.

Overlooking View

“Do all people meet that fate after they manage fly a bit?”

The title of this movie. Everyone has an “overlooking view”, even if their on the ground. Just look at your feet. Not much of an overlooking view, but a view none the less. But what does it mean in the context of the movie? I paraphrase, once again, Touko’s words: “To fly or float. You’re the one who decides which one your overlooking view will be.” Since we’ve already established what she means by “fly” and “float”, we can pretty much assume that she’s talking about the way that we live our lives (or something along those lines). Metaphorically, it works out quite well as you can probably already imagine. For example, if you’re a normal person, you’re “overlooking view” is a pretty small one with your surroundings towering over you while you’re stuck to the ground; if you’re an abnormal person (as in abnormally rich), you’ll be flying around in your own private jet looking down at us normal folk from your own “overlooking view” laughing.

Kirie’s view is an interesting one. Since she’s been stuck on a hospital bed, her “overlooking view” has been a bland and static one both literally and metaphorically (as you know, she’s been “floating”). Once she obtained her second body, however, her “overlooking view” changed. It was higher, she could see much farther, but most importantly, she was freer. Unfortunately, as Touko explains, a view that is too high will make bad things happen. For Kirie, it turned out to be a bloody death. That’s why, Touko continues, that “people cannot live outside their box”. Kirie certainly left her “box” floating around the Fujou Buildings with her second body; and when it was killed by Shiki, it “left (her) in (her) box” again. (Hmmm… The implications of this concept seem to be somewhat nostalgic. “Fly too high and your wings will burn.” Y halo thar Icarus!)

Sure, Kirie’s “overlooking view” from her second body was “higher” in ways, but was it really for the better, even for a bit? I’d have to go with no. After all, she wasn’t actually “flying”, she was still “floating” (well, pseudo-”flying”). And her new “view” sucked as well. Her surrounding was that rotting district of the city around the Fujou Buildings. It seems that even given unnatural circumstances, Kirie was unable to escape the decadence that was her life. Poor girl.

Emptiness

“The Boundary of Emptiness”

The title of the entire series. Personally, I’d rather translate it to something like “Boundaries of Oblivion”. I think it would get more sales. The meaning behind the title we do not find out in the movie (it’s the first of seven after all), but we do get snippets of hints. The first comes from Shiki and Touko’s conversation in Touko’s lab. Touko said that Mikiya saw Shiki’s “emptiness” in her dolls. The second comes from right before Shiki stabs Kirie. Shiki says that Kirie’s “suggestion” does not work because she does not know the feeling of living. Are these two related to each other? Probably, you’d have to be pretty “empty” to not be able to feel alive. Are these two related to the title of the series? Hopefully, this is anime after all, and if you know anime, you know it has a knack for screwing up just when everything comes together.

Conclusion

So what do you do when you’re on a five day cruise in the Bahamas? Watch Kara no Kyoukai over and over again and then write a 4700 word “analysis” of it of course! After watching it, I was definitely glad that it didn’t turn out to be something completely intangible like GitS: Innocence. The creepy atmosphere and awesome animation and music kept me engaged for the whole 50 minutes. The way that the plot unraveled, and the carefree way that the characters interacted with each other, made this movie definitely something to be seen more than once if you wanted to understand everything. Yes, it was an unnatural narrative and because of that, some folks out there crucify it for trying to be “deep”. But I rather liked the movie because of it. It keeps it synchronized with the atmosphere and makes it stand out from the rest of the usual anime for having a unique way of storytelling.

It’s far from being perfect, obviously. Rather than a movie, it’s more like a very long anime episode. We got to learn about Kirie and her story, but very little about the other characters. What about their “overlooking views”? Can they “fly”? I suppose I can’t complain. They had only about an hour to work with; and looking back, they did manage to throw in all the essential stuff; after watching it for the first time, even if I didn’t understand everything, the narrative felt completely satisfactory. I’ll definitely (like the 10,000 other leechers) be watching the next movie when it hits the internets. (TakaJun, please speed sub again!)

P.S.

And oh, while I was writing up the summary, I also went along with the subtitles and reworded some of the dialogue to make it make more sense. I also made some other changes but those are just different opinions in translation. They keep the original meaning…. I think. If you’re interested, you can grab it and remux it with mkvmerge GUI .

Update (06/04/08)

Well not really. Just putting it in the title. I figured that as more movies come out, as I learn more Japanese, and as more comments (haha, yea…) come in, I’ll update with new thoughts.