The Garden of Sinners: Future Gospel

Nearly three years after the release of Kara no Kyoukai: Epilogue comes its sequel, Mirai Fukuin. A franchise that came about over 15 years ago as a light novel series, Kara no Kyoukai has been a prominent figure within Type-Moon. The first anime adaption was released back in 2007 with great success, and six years later the latest movie still lives up to that hype. The Mirai Fukuin movie adapts two of the five short light novel stories released back in 2008: Möbius ring and Möbius link. The first half of the movie, Möbius ring, portrays two people possessing similar abilities of precognition. However, one triesto live her life as a normal schoolgirl and the other utilizes his foresight ability and becomes a professional bomber. The second half, Möbius link, fast forwards to over a decade where Mikiya’s and Shiki’s daughter Mana plays the role of the main character where she and her partner investigate anomalies in the city. What I enjoy about these premises is the fact that though they may seem unrelated, the stories intertwine with one another. Similar themes of precognition and questioning what the future holds are present in both chronicles. Though there is much less action in Mirai Fukuin compared to the previous movies, what made up for it was how beautifully executed the stories were. Along with magnificently adapted stories, Mirai Fukuin possessed beautiful animations. As always, ufotable is able to make every scene come to life, whether it is rain droplets falling from the sky, Shiki’s Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, or even bomb explosions. Ufotable’s unique animation style is what makes Kara no Kyoukai stand out. And coupled with the beautiful animations is the beautiful music. With Yuki Kajiura as the composer and Kalafina performing the ending theme like the previous movies, one can expect that each song completely fits the atmosphere. The trinity of story, animation, and music is overall spectacular, each category supporting the other two to make it look even more stunning. However, one cannot create a great story unless the characters themselves are equally as good. Mirai Fukuin introduces two new prominent characters, Mitsuru Kamemura and Mana Ryougi. Seo Shizune was previously seen in the sixth movie, Oblivion Recorder, but has been expanded greatly in the latest installment. Seo and Mitsuru both possess the power of precognition, but differ greatly on how they use it. As previously stated, one tries to become a regular schoolgirl, which is Seo, and another becoming a professional bomber, which is Mitsuru. Mana of course is the daughter of the two most prominent characters of the series. The three character’s personalities were fleshed out quite nicely in just one movie. Of course, characters such as Mikiya, Shiki, and Touko play a role in Mirai Fukuin. Overall, I found this to be a very enjoyable movie. I did, however, find it slightly disappointing that there was next to no action in Mirai Fukuin, but when it did, it was spectacular. Though three years was a long wait to watch the next installment, it was worth it. Type-Moon, Nasu Kinoko, and ufotable did an incredible job with this series and I hope they will provide more high quality features in the future. The movie ending quite nicely, and I am glad that the Kara no Kyoukai franchise ended in such a manner.

This is the last and concluding film of the Kara no Kyoukai franchise. Kara no Kyoukai holds a special place in my heart, in that it doesn’t conform into many conventional anime tropes that we are all familiar with; it is not afraid to being radical in its of direction of filming and storytelling. I find this particularly admirable in an age when a significant number of anime released every year is based on plain-adaptations that are restricted by their faithfulness to the original material. Kara no Kyoukai is unique amongst the crowd in that most of the films in the series are not interestedin telling a story so much as plunging into philosophical discussions of human’s perception of their world, plot only used to further drive such discussions. The 8th film of Kara no Kyoukai: Future Gospel, follows a similar trend, and this time it deals with human’s perception of future and its ambiguous and ever-changing form. Future Gospel starts off in a time preceding all previous events in the series except of the second and fourth film, and it introduces us to two new characters who are capable of some form of future prediction. Mitsuru Kamekura, is a teenage occupational explosive planter who uses his ability to manipulate the future to bomb public settings for terroristic purpose. To Mitsuru, the future that he manipulates is nothing more than a form of crudely-made reality that cannot be avoided. That being said, though, he goes into obsessive length to convert every miniscule detail he envisions in his future into reality, as evident in the letter of responsibility he leaves in the crime scene, in which he details the time, aftermath and even the number of casualties and the degree of their injury to pinpointing accuracy. The other character, Shizune is an innocent, teenage girl who sees spontaneous flashes of future events that may range from answers to tests, activities with her friends, and the demise of the people around her. Like Mitsuru, Shizune has come to accept her future as unchangeable, but unlike Mitsuru, Shizune is incapable of altering the future, which also generates an element of fear and powerlessness in Shizune’s life (more on that later). Apart from their supernatural abilities, there is no personal or physical connection between these two characters. Future Gospel designed these characters for the purpose of exploring the effect their supernatural abilities have on their life, and to accomplish this, the film used the main casts, Shiki and Mikiya, as the characters who will ultimately drive the children forward in their life. We then come to learn that both of them are at a point in their life where their individualities and skills can grow but stunted by the invisible restrictions placed upon them by their knowledge of future. In the case of Shizune, she forsook a lot of her life's happiness because she was constantly afraid that something bad will happen to her. There was that one scene when she encountered a dog on her way to the bus stop, but at the last second she stopped herself from getting too attached to the dog because she used to own a dog that died after she predicted its death. That one scene basically sums up her life: not being able to do what she wants to do because of fear of failure and death. Mitsuru was not better off because he already accepted his fate as being sealed by the futures he predicted. As a result he grew up to be an emotionless kid who didn’t seem to care about many things. Shiki kicking his ass was probably the best thing that ever happened to him. After the time skip the movie showed him as a sympathetic human being, a marked improvement over his former terrorist self. In terms of Future Gospel’s animation, it is business as usual for ufotable. The amount of effort that went into depicting the miniscule information of the background is really out of this world. Examples off the top of my head are Touko’s messy and gloomy looking office and the abandoned and aged alleyway where Mifune’s Mother conducts her business. The movements of the characters are generally smooth, except of the few times when the characters make hand movements, in which case they look slow and unnecessary. Another minus is the use of CG for cars. Future Gospel only has one fight scene, and in comparison to all of the fight scenes in the franchise, it is not extravagant or mundane. I have been a fan of Yuki Kaijura’s music ever since when I first watched Kara no Kyoukai, and this episode does not disappoint. I especially loved Shizune’s theme, which were modified into numerous versions in Future Gospel to perfectly match the tone of the setting and give us the feel that Shizune is a girl in blossom despite her unoptimistic view on life. If I am to summarize the music of Future Gospel, these are the ideal background music for when things are not too boisterous. Again, the fighting theme is not fancy or lacking, but it does its job well. It is reminiscent of some of the tune used in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, another title helmed by Yuki Kajiura. In summary, Future Gospel tells a mature and endearing tale of how two teenagers overcame the constriction their future placed upon them through realizing that living the present is a worthwhile and rewarding way of life. I watched this show back when I was in a situation similar to what Shizune and Mitsuru encountered, so I guess that is why I decided to write so much on this film. In a sense, this last film felt like a parting gift from Nasu Kinoko. Upon concluding the main stories of Garden of Sinner with Book #7, he probably felt that it was necessary to remind the readers that life is not so full of darkness, and god bless him for reminding us that after all the blood, death, and psychological trauma we witnessed in all of his previous installments of Garden of Sinners. It is a very easy watch other than the fact that the order of events happening in this film is not chronological, but things are presented to you in logical way as if it is trying to explain the message it is trying to get across. Watch this if you are ever feeling depressed from all the burdens society has placed on you, it will encourage you a lot.

More poorly planned achronological scenes jumping between prologues and much later. This series would be better off watched in chronological order. There is 1 singular 1-note plot (Shiki fighting precog guy) crammed in alongside 3 goddamn side-stories in this movie: (precogschoolgirl SoL, antag+loli+baba conversation, SHIKI+baba conversation). I cannot think of a worse, dumber way to conclude this plot. Introduction: "Within the box of 20 minutes I am God." Oh cool, so either they'll have other precogs try to out maneuver you or they just have to setup a scenario where you've been unavoidably trapped no matter what you did for longer than that so that even ifyou see it coming you can't avoid it. NOPE. THE SOLUTION IS "Naw, I'd win." Why? No reason. The protagonists just have plot armor and therefore cannot die even when bombs blow up on top of them, and can simply walk right up and beat him, precog is powerless against the authorial hand of absolute plot armor. Jesus Christ this author is dumb. This whole series is dumb. We wasted an entire sideplot on a precog schoolgirl slice of life side plot having absolutely no interaction with the main plot for the sole real reason of the author wanting to include another schoolgirl immediately wanting to get the MC's dick, just like the other tacked on at the end epilogues that don't belong in this movie and are here solely because his daughter needs to explain that she wants his dick just like SHIKI, just like his sister. And goddamn the amount of either poor translation or just idiotic nonsense dialogue this series continues to spew. 2/10 (where 5/10 is average)