Cat Soup
Found a copy, picked it up, watched it.
Healthy dose of WTF followed.
And I would like to back up the previous
Tsukihime recommendation with a
Kara no Kyoukai ("The Edge of Emptiness") one, since I didn't see it on the list...
(I would just dump whatever I wrote on my blog here, but it has no clear intro, so here we go...)
For those who have played
Tsukihime before,
Rakkyo (the series nickname) is sort of its prototype; similar characters, and the main character also has the same ability as Tohno Shiki but slightly different.
The story is anachronistic; the first chapter (it was originally a novel written before Nasu got involved with Visual Novels) takes place in 1998, but the story itself starts in 1995, so the beginning is pretty confusing.
Well, onto the meat of things. This movie has been hyped, and for good reason; it will be possibly the first time that a TYPE-MOON work gets an animated adaptation from a competent studio. It gained an almost messianic profile amongst fans of Nasu’s works. Outsiders wonder what’s the big deal.
The big deal turns out to be that not only is Kara no Kyoukai one of the earliest TYPE-MOON works, it is also one of the two most fundamental; the other being Notes. Much of the canonical concepts appear in this work, and it also sets a very serious tone, being text and not a visual novel that needs to attract audiences.
...
The story is lifted nigh-intact from the original novel, containing the same strange plot but with several revised moments. Being a movie, it was not constrained by visual censorship and is heavy on blood. The visuals are beautiful, the music is incredible, and the story is immersing. The action scenes are brief but excellent, being part of the natural story without hindering it. The voice actors and actresses are all big-name veterans and they all give quality performances.
Before I start losing myself in fanboyism, in short, it sets a perfect mood for the series to come. Mysterious, questioning, and a good introduction to Nasu’s multiverse. Really, unless you watch anime purely for the aesthetics, I find it hard to imagine anyone not enjoying this to some degree.
Screencaps here.The first film is about several seemingly unrelated suicides of high school girls; for some reason, they always leap off the same building. They don't leave suicide notes, but they kill themselves in such dramatic ways; most likely, they didn't even want to do it.
The series as a whole is rather brooding and has all the usual Nasu flavour; characters who double as philosophers and therapists, plots involving anger, fear, and the darker sides of people, and the struggle of life. People may be more familiar with a more famous work of his,
Fate/stay night.
Rakkyo manages to go much deeper, exploring the ideas of destiny and fate, human perception, and also sets up much of the multiverse's concepts, especially concerning the soul.
...Well, I hope that was somewhat adequate. I don't usually write stuff like this on forums. (And it's been hellishly long since I used this interface.)[/code]
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