Kara no Kyoukai’s third chapter takes the story to July 1998. As is the norm in this series, more bizarre murders are happening in the city. On his way home one rainy evening Mikiya happens upon a girl named Fujino Asagami, and being the naive guy he is, he brings her home for the night. Meanwhile, Tohko and Shiki undertake a job to find the murderer and bring her back dead or alive.

Mikiya borrows some money from a friend who in return requests that he look for an old acquaintance that has gone missing, one Keita Minato. While delivering a message to Mikiya’s sister Azaka in a restaurant, Shiki immediately suspects something strange about Fujino. Mikiya puts his superb detective skills to work and goes around the whole city looking for Keita and soon learns that Keita is hiding from a murderer.

Fujino continues to kill people related to Keita in her seach for him too. Shiki watches Fujino brutally torture and kill a man and the two prepare to fight. Suddenly something happens within Fujino and Shiki loses interest in fighting Fujino in her current state of mind. Mikiya learns that Keita is the sole surviving member of the gang that repeatedly violated Fujino and reawakened her sense of pain, and Fujino who now seeks to complete her revenge with his death.

Though Fujino had previously only murdered with a motive, she soon starts to kill indiscriminately. It is gradually revealed that she used to be able to feel pain normally, but it was taken away to seal her power to bend objects, and she now has a very abnormal sense of pain. Tohko puts all of the pieces together and explains to Mikiya that Fujino’s chronic pain is from appendicitis, not from a stab wound as Fujino believes. At any rate, Fujino is doomed both mentally and physically; She has the mindset of a serial killer and her appendicitis will eventually kill her.

Shiki finally faces off with Fujino on a deserted bridge in the middle of a typhoon. During the battle, Shiki sacrifices her left arm for an unsuccessful shot at Fujino. As the battle goes on, Shiki sees the flaw in Fujino’s power and counters it with help from the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. As Shiki prepares to finish the fight, Fujino suddenly lets loose a burst of power and destroys all the infrastructure around them. In the end Shiki only kills the disease in Fujino’s stomach and lets her live.

Thoughts:
Definitely a return to form for Kara no Kyoukai. Plenty of everything you could ask for- Mystery, action, and suspense. The fight scene on the bridge was nothing short of epic. The movie did a pretty good job of eliciting sympathy for Fujino’s character. Shiki and she have a striking similarity as both enjoy murder, yet their methodologies are so different. Shiki accepts her identity as a murderer and only kills out of necessity. Whereas Fujino keeps denying her murderous impulses but subconsciously gets pleasure from killing. It’s also slightly amusing how Shiki’s crazy fighting style kept freaking out Fujino.

Fujino: OMG I just destroyed your arm!
Shiki: lolwut arm?

After three movies I’ll maintain that Maaya Sakamoto is an excellent Shiki. Minor spoilers here, but there really are subtle nuances in the way she voices each of Shiki’s three personalities. Fans that already know KnK’s story will know what I’m talking about. If you started from the movies, the next movie will get you all caught up no problem.

Mamiko Noto was excellent in portraying this movie’s antagonist. The performance was delightfully creepy and psychotic. Fujino is royally messed up. I would like to see her pick up more roles like this since she does it so well. I know all you guys out there probably think, “Hell no, Mamiko is best as moe!”. Moe is easy to do but creepy is substantially harder to do well.

The one thing that continues to bug me is Mikiya’s sheer naivety. He seems to be a magnet for strange psychotic women but doesn’t fully realize it. Hmph. Perhaps that idiot is better off in the dark.

I’ll go ahead and give Remaining Sense of Pain a 9/10.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Anime, Kara no Kyoukai, Reviews.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.