The second chapter of KnK may seem like one of the weaker sections since it’s so heavy on exposition and concepts that don’t gain much from the transition from print to screen; even in novel form it doesn’t have many exciting moments. The novel has a ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ thing going on though, and the character study of this chapter is one of the main reasons why it feels that way. If you’re patient and take the time with this part, it’s easier to appreciate the rest.
By which I mean: it’s important in understanding how the two protagonists’ minds work and what drives them to make the decisions they make later on. I guess the narrative also needs time to pause and offer something character-driven before leaping headlong into the next action-orientated arc. After reading this chapter through, the first one feels like a ‘cold open’ to get the reader’s/viewer’s attention while the heart of the story lies elsewhere.
This is the ‘proper’ start to the proceedings but it’s also the one that contains that figurative heart. I referred to it as a ‘personal’ tale in my earlier article but this portion, and the second half of the ‘Murder Speculation’ arc that makes up part #7, highlights that point most clearly. The fact that everything else is concerned with violence, magic and mayhem makes this even more obvious and important to me because the contrast between these two themes is so stark.
It’s an odd take on the old star-crossed lovers idea, featuring a romance that makes the voices of conventional wisdom and common sense scream “this shouldn’t be happening!” but as they say, there’s nothing conventional about wisdom and nothing common about sense…especially where matters of the heart are concerned. I suppose the circumstances surrounding this unusual pairing make it a gothic romance but it somehow manages to take itself seriously yet avoids being overwrought or insincere.
The male lead’s ordinary-ness could be the heroine’s ruin, but at the same time I don’t think it should be hard to believe that it’s also her potential salvation. As we see in the fifth chapter, the one thing that undoes the mage’s plan is something from the mortal realm – just as magic can transcend the physical laws of normality, normality can launch an off-the-wall hit onto magic. Looking back, knowing how the full story pans out, it’s heartening to see how a meticulously-crafted supernatural plan gets trumped by the devotion and conviction of an ordinary human who has no magical powers at all.
Once you get your head around the weirdness of Shiki’s dual personalities, you get a remarkably sentimental tale that’s in sharp contrast to the side-story of a serial killer and the possibility that one of the protagonists is responsible. Nasu makes a very deliberate effort to point the reader down a certain path, stacking the evidence up and even throwing in her ‘unreliable narrator’ status to muddy the waters further.
On a rewatch I noticed that the movie drops one hint that supports Shiki’s innocence: a lone figure is seen walking away from the murder scene (the point where a passing vehicle unknowingly drives through a pool of blood, spattering a vending machine), which shows, unequivocally if not clearly, that she was not the only one at the scene. The novel describes her following a man into an alley but cleverly it’s not specified whether this man is the victim, a witness or indeed the murderer. In both versions, you can interpret what you see/read in more than one way thanks to this narrative ambiguity.
A production-related observation I made during the second movie was that the character designs of the two leads are depicted as being visibly younger than they are in the others. I know this sounds obvious but it’s not often we see differences in characters’ ages in an animated movie, especially when the difference is only that of three or four years and is past the age when they’re getting taller. The medium of cel animation, along with the simplistic rendering of facial features that often goes with the territory, makes it tricky to do successfully but the trailer for the Mirai Fukuin epilogue movie – which shows them a few years later still – also highlighted this to me and left me impressed at how the animators took on the challenge of this subtle yet noticeable change and did it so well.
As an aside, an interesting aspect to Touko’s organisation, such as it is, was hinted at right back in the previous chapter, but since I forgot it at the time and the article was long enough as it was, I might as well point it out here. Touko divides people into two types, each with two attributes: “those who craft and search, and those who use and destroy.”
It struck me as appropriate given the nature of the four people who make up her small organisation cover those respective bases: Touko crafts dolls among other things (more on that later, especially part 5); Mikiya is adept at searching and often helps out Daisuke; his sister trains as a mage to use magic; and Shiki is of course second to none in destroying things at their most fundamental level. General world-building in fiction is cool, but when a writer makes even the small details fit together and refer back to other ones, it requires even more thought and care. I suspect that in certain aspects of this story Nasu was making things up as he went along, but at times like this it’s easy to be convinced otherwise.
Something else I ought to have dropped in at the end of my previous article is the source of the extra background info relating to things like underlying themes and neat writer’s tricks connected to wordplays and unusual use of kanji. Sadly my knowledge of kana is next-to-nonexistent and kanji is completely beyond me, so I – and everyone who has read or is reading the English translation of the novel – owes thanks one certain individual, whose efforts are online for the whole internet to enjoy.
I was fortunate enough to be involved in a number of e-mail communications while the translator was going through the arduous task, which included numerous details concerned with the translation process, Nasu’s inventive use of kanji and small details that had to be lost in translation. I won’t pretend that I was able to offer much help at the time, but hopefully I’ll be able to reproduce some of the discussions we had for the benefit of the rest of you.
And finally, here’s the musical easter egg. There’s an AMV Hell waiting to happen with those lyrics. >_<
Tags: Anime, feature film, Kara no Kyoukai, nasuverse