Kyoukai no Kanata

I have a slight suspicion that Hiroomi was incorrect when he said he'd be able to kill Akihito, so it may turn out that Mirai is literally the only one capable of stopping him.

Man, that fourth episode was horrible. On average every two minutes there was a thing that didn't make sense if you spent more than ten seconds thinking about it. There's actually too much to list, I'm afraid bringing up just a few examples would give the wrong impression. This series is nitpicker heaven.

So roughly twelve things? Feel free to list.

Alright, challenge accepted. I'll skim trough the episode again and list my thoughts. I'm sure it'll totally be worth all of our time

edited 25th Oct '13 1:59:11 PM by GabrieltheThird

I'm interested to hear this, as my opinion could not be more different to yours if it tried.

Sorry for it being all in spoilers, I know it makes it even more uncomfortable to read but can't be helped. And sorry for all the typos and sentences I start with "And...".

00:05 Wait, where's the little sister? Last episode ended with Akihito pushing her away but that was just a shove. I mean he didn't knock her into the next dimension or anything. Why is she waiting for them to get up and run?

00:30 How DID he get there? Even if he has a way to get into the pocket dimension, wasn't she well outside the city, waiting for the Hollow Shadow thing before she got sucked in? That's where they end up when they get out of the hollow realm later. How did the little sister find her?

00:42 Wait, now that blast that earlier barely dented the wall caves in the ceiling? Besides, buildings don't collapse like that. This is an internal realm of a youmu, sure, but what's beyond that ceiling, a large pile of rubble just big enough to block her path?

Also they should really stop drawing attention to that spear of sis'. Even if we accept that it works by magic it just raises way too many questions. How does she operate it, telepathy? Has to be, since she never pulls a trigger and if the triggers are hidden in the shaft, then it'd keep going off while she waves it about. What does it shoot anyway? Half of the time we can see no projectiles, but in ep 3 we saw Mirai corroding a bullet and she's deflecting the grenades now. It's apparently capable of fast firing without reloading too, based on the last episode, but... Yeah, I was supposed to nitpick this episode.

4:45 Yeah, those thins lil' sis shoots interact with the matter here in the strangest ways. Her earlier shots at the same conveyer belt did nothing or she'd just destroyed her path to her target, but now that a blast hits ahead of them it disintegrates the whole stairs? Also I feel the escalator should stop working now, but yeah, not reality.

04:50 So he jumps from one conveyer belt to the next, but the conveyer belt he lands on, unlike any of the other hundred conveyer belts in the space, isn't running, so he can conveniently turn around an offer his hand to her.

Also what's up with the bullet time style slow here when they jump? I mean not like they're doing anything supremely cool, they're just jumping over a railing without even falling much.

Why isn't lil' sis shooting at them? We've already established that she doesn't need to reload. Where did she disapper to?

04:55 Ooh, the escalator is moving now! Maaybe, this is really unclear with the animation. It's also impossible to determine which direction the stairs are running, earlier shots have all of the stairs going up, but can't tell now.

Still, why run up the stairs? Going up the stairs actually brings you temporarily closer the one chasing you and since her bombs can apparently make the stairs disappaer, what's to prevent her from shooting at you from below and making you fall? It would also still probably be faster to run down rather than up even if the stairs were going up.

05:12 Akihito, you can't do that without ripping your pants. And other things. Besides, these stairs weren't THAT steep before.

Motoi doing that kind of sliding on that kind of a surface doesn't make all kinds of sense.

5:30 Nice stockings and all but shouldn't they be all kinds of torn right now if for no other reason than the sliding you did ealier? And stockings aren't that fast to take off without breaking them and you're really taking the time to carefully do that now? This whole chase seriously lacks any sense of urgency.

06:50 Wait, they're at the back of the train, they jump back a few meters when Hollow hits it. It takes 3 seconds for the second blow on the train to land from when they're shown to be lying on the floor in the exposed part of the carriage, the Hollow hits the carriage well behind the exposed part, at a roofed section, but they fly up from the roofed section where the roof nicely tears now to let them out.

I also call BS on that ring. It's some kind of a limiter thing that when removed, she got dangerous to be close to, right? Except she spends most of the episode not wearing it, so isn't she like dangerous to offer a hand to to get over that escalator railing and stuff? So is it necessary then?

On it falling: OK, so maybe it was in her pocket (if someone can remember where she put it when she removed it, let me know), so it could have been knocked out when she flew up, but the way Hollow grabs her should actually prevent her from losing stuff from her pockets for it to fly with that timing and even if she dropped it, it'd land on a moving train next to Akihito's feet. Plus then, when he later throws it at her from behind her it ends up falling straight down in front of her face?

7:20 Wait, she's there now? Of course she is. Can't help but note how her projectiles again selectively decide they're not gonna destroy the scenery this time.

OK, at least she's holding her weapon a bit more like a gun now. Still keep expecting her to get into an accident where one of those things she shoots hits the poit of her spear though.

Wait, lil' sis' plan is to chase Mirai around while shooting her hoping that she'd... what? Fight Hollow and kill it? Get killed fighting it? We've been given how she's related to the situation but none of that helps to explain why she's acting like the way she is at the moment or what her motivation is. Now unclear motivations can be good when well used in a narrative but here it comes off as a massive WTH. Chase target around violently, then stop and let things randomly play out.

I mean if you'd remove her from the whole Hollow Shadow storyline, the story wouldn't chase one bit. Mirai would get caught in the other realm and meet the Hollow thing there. She's completely unecessary if not for setting stuff up for the future and stretching the run time with the pointless and unexciting chasing.

08:19 This is the Hollow Shadow's true form? Really? (Well, not really, as we later find out but it's still a part of him that they can harm so it makes equally little sense.)

So, the creature capable of posessing people and creating vast otherdimensional labyriths to protect itself and trap victims, for no reason, shows the vulnrable part of itself to those it has trapped just so that they can blast it away? Combined with some other behavior we see from it later, this creature clearly can't be as bit of a threat, a supernatural natural disaster that no one can do anything about, as it was painted up to be. It's killed by the ”no plan”-tactic.

I mean how incompetent would those who fought it before have to be to lose, considering that they clearly get plenty of warning before it shows up and have the time to prepare?

Also: This is already two pages and I'm less than 10 minutes in? Gods. Cutting it here, since this can't be entertaining for anyone to read. Apologies for inflicting it upon the populace. Promise you though, I still have plenty of material left about big stuff like the inconsistencies in Mirai's power and that bloody Cool Down Hug.

I can continue if there's overwhelming interest, but I somewhat doubt it

edited 25th Oct '13 2:06:29 PM by GabrieltheThird

As for the action, well, I had just watched Coppelion before (though I posted about that later), which is far more straining on Willing Suspension of Disbelief. I usually don't even bother to justify what's going on, beyond, "They fight. It's cool." So mostly I agree that it's a lot of nonsense.

By the way, it's much faster to run up if the stairs go up. Personal experience. Well, if you expect not to trip...

I find it amusing to read, though, so don't worry about that.

That stuff is pretty nitpicky. I mean, it's true that Hollow Shadow didn't really live up to the hype, and they could've done a tad more to justify the cooldown hug, but I don't think many of shows could stand up to the level of scrutiny you just put the episode through.

Yeah, I just discovered Kill La Kill that day so my realism detector was crying in a corner at the time.

You mean you watched that and left it on? You poor soul...

Of course. It means you get to watch two fireworks shows simultaneously; one from the episode, and one from the realism detector.

Kill la Kill has nothing to do with realism though and neither do my nitpicks. Internal consistency is the god that we all should bow down to.

That's why the ring bit annoys me, for instance. The world isn't full of magitech, but still the chainsawshotgunspear works, has an unending clip, shoots both disintegration rounds and flashbangs on repeat, yet is still affordable enough to be owned by a schoolgirl.

I've yet to see anything not internally consistent in Kill la Kill, but that's because unlike this series it gave itself a larger, anything goes framework.

This is also something where the increased animation quality actually works against the series. We're more likely to forgive crimes of consistency to series where they're obviously trying to compensate for the lack of budget. It's harder when they could've afforded to do things properly but just didn't.

The disappearing and appearing as the plot demands it little sister is quite jarring on multiple levels as well, and speaks of hardships adapting stuff that was written to screen. A scene with talking and undressing while being chased might work on paper, yet is very hard to adapt. Making it into moving pictures brings the inherent issues to fore where mere words could smudge the lines.

Another good example of the poor writing is the complete irrelevance of the little sister. You could completely remove her from the events and not only would things play out the same, the emotional impact would be the same as well.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that this thing is REALLY REALLY badly written. I'm expecting the original light novels to be utter offal. Not much Kyo Ani can do to save it with their Marvelous Production Quality (though the direction has some issues as well and what in regular movies I'd name editing, but I'm still willing to lay almost all of this on the feet of the original material).

I've said in other conversations about this that basically Kn K reads like it was written by a 15 year old or your average fanfic writer. This is an issue of both story elements and execution.

For a random sample, lets start with the characters. Their concepts are all so... juvenile.

(Tried to write it like an energetic teenager trying to explain his totes incredible idea to his friend but it's not really my forte so not happy with the result, apologies. I'm not that good a writer either )

"It's, like, a super great story! The male lead is a teenage high-schooler, totally nice and normal, except that he's IMMORTAL. That's because he's secretly a half DEMON! I know what you're thinking, just immortally isn't like cool 'cause it doesn't let him wreck HAVOC, but see, when he gets hurt he goes BERSERK and starts transforming into this thing with big CLAWS and glowing eyes and he starts shooting like hundreds of FIREBALLS! blowing up buildings and stuff. But he doesn't really want to hurt anyone, though, and feels like totally guilty for rampaging and stuff.

Then like he meets this girl who is the CURSED heir of this super powerful monster killer family with CURSED BLOOD. Like literally, she uses her CURSED BLOOD as a SWORD and she fights like a total badass! And like when they first meet she STABS HIM IN THE CHEST. Talk about first meeting! And then she like totally chases him around trying to finish the job but IMMORTAL! and they fall in love! But its not that easy, since she's afraid to commit 'cause her power it like melts people and she killed her best friend with the blood. TRAGIC BACKSTORY!

And they fight these monsters who can be all shapes and sizes and there's like this whole SECRET HUNTER ORGANIZATION hunting these demons but all of them like hate the main pair 'cause they CURSED and HALF DEMON. Except for this chick that's like daughter of the head family of hunters who totally has the hots for the dude. So, you know, awesome fight scenes, lots of blood and witty back and forth dialog and TRAGEDY follows."

That's not all that's trite in this either. High school setting, surrounding world unaware of invisible struggles are other big offenders. I really dislike using the Masquerade setting when there's no attempt to tie the conflicts influencing the characters into the world they live in. In Kn K the implementation is the most bare-bones and lazy one where the reason for the Masquerade in the story is just so that the writer doesn't actually have to bother with how the changes from our world would affect theirs. This allows everything to be completely normal and safe except with BATTLES and TRAGIC BACKSTORIES. This is the easiest way to have those in the story without actually having them affect anything on the bigger scale.

Now I'll acknowledge that these problems aren't actually all that unique to Kn K, but are fairly prevalent in contemporary anime. Firstly, this doesn't actually fix the problems, just shifts the blame, and secondly in Kn K they are exacerbated by the other issue with writing, the execution.

I get the feeling that the creator of Kn K is primarily concerned with scenes. A good example of this is the first one. It's rather dynamic and actually has a good degree of impact. Boy sees a girl about to jump off a roof. Boy runs to the roof to stop her and shouts something we can't hear to the girl. Girl leaps back to the roof over the guard fence and stabs the boy in the heart with a sword of blood. Impact.

He's less concerned with tying these scenes together which is obvious because the work starts to fall apart right after. What the boy shouted was stupid and illogical. Why was the girl at the roof anyway? That jump probably wouldn't have killed her so suicide seems unlikely. Their motivations are all over the place and their following actions don't instinctively follow from the establishing scene.

Also there's the whole big question of how we get from the scene with the boy stabbed to her chasing after her on another day. I mean the work cuts away with both of the characters still on the roof. How did they part? If she really wanted to kill him, did she then try to chop him down to see if it stuck? Did he run away and she chase her? How did that end? The reason she had for chasing him now that its later doesn't sound too convincing either. The characters just jump from scene to scene acting with justifications for their actions following behind and usually not making sense. What's important are those scenes.

At times like these I hope I was a lit major, since I'm sure this way of writing has been codified and has an useful shorthand I could use without having to try and explain it. Anyway, the series is littered with this. Lil' sis from the recent episodes is the embodiment of this.

I mean I'm sure you all have noticed by now that Mirai has no personality. She has her power, tragic backstory, she's occasionally clumsy, tsun or weepy but that's it and it doesn't a person make. Most of the things she does seem completely random. She doesn't want to fight the youmu in her room because she doesn't want to kill but now that Akihito tells her to do that does. Because she doesn't want to kill anything, not even strange looking monsters she runs around the school trying to stab a boy of her age. She just does the random thing she needs to get trough a scene.

I feel like I should have a proper closing thought here but I'm drawing empty. Even saying all this I feel like there's a more fundamental problem with this work that I wish I could rip out and show you, I'm just lacking the skill.

There's an interesting comparison to be drawn between Kn K and Strike the Blood, another series airing this season. Maybe ask me to write a rant about that some other day. But now this post is like ten times longer than I thought it'd ever be, so gonna peace out.

edited 26th Oct '13 9:51:11 AM by GabrieltheThird

.... You nit too much and need to pick less. No offense, just a very sincere suggestion. I can guarantee you won't like anything if such view keeps up.

Thanks. Exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for. Who doesn't like the "Dude, think less, It's just a movie" answer I read a good blog/post a while back explaining in detail why that's such an offensive sentiment but can't find it with a quick search. Shame.

I admit that my second post in the thread was nitpicky. I never portrayed it as anything else. The one after that was criticism on the work at a larger scale, however.

I like plenty of things, thank you.

Well, like 80% of the episode was a dream sequence inside either the hollow shadow or their minds, so I wouldn't nitpick that to hard. Same with the little sister. I'm not sure she was actually there, I think she was just something pulled from Mirai's mind. She sort of implies this later when she mentions that Sakura isn't a spirit warrior.

It might be just an adaption thing. I remember it happening pretty badly with Date A Live. Animation adaptions tend to focus on scenes like you say, but they drop small bits that can help tie everything together. Never read the novel here, so I can't really say. But you do seem to get that "scene" thing you mention in anime versions of light novels unless they try really hard to make a faithfull adaption (which usually ends as like 6 episodes per LN....so that doesn't usually happen).

Also, you should totally watch Coppellion.

edited 25th Oct '13 5:21:09 PM by kiukiuclk

I've only heard this through a few secondhand sources, so I might be misinformed, but, er...you're right on the money here. Well done.

She's an anime original character, apparently.

I like the show—mostly because the protagonists are questionably sane wallflowers—but yeah, it has it's flaw. I'm willing to overlook inconsistent scenery destruction and the unrealistic durability of Kuriyama's leggings, though.

edited 25th Oct '13 11:04:52 PM by Rem

A few things about the previous rant, though I agree with some of it.

Trying to make something sound silly with randomly capitalised words is easy. It also says nothing about whether the thing you're describing actually is silly.

Them being juvenile is something that's often lacking in stories. They are juveniles, after all, and most creators tend to forget that.

That jump would have killed her, had she been normal. I mean, sure, there's always a chance, as you can survive from greater heights, but you can also die from far lower.

I've personally very rarely had trouble with jumping from scene to scene. In books and fanfics, I more often find it tedious to read about the transitions from scene to scene. Sure, they explicitly tie stuff together, but not everything needs to be explicit. There's a lot to be found by reading between the lines or making connections of your own.

To pick one thing, sure, she could've finished him off. And she did want to kill him. But we've also seen that she had trouble actually finishing a youmu off, which to me explains enough. And to say she doesn't have a personality at all is plain wrong, but considering the previous paragraph I can see why you'd think so.

I feel the burning urge to clarify myself which, as we saw from the previous example, hardly ever ends up helping anyone. Numbered in no particular order whatsoever.

1. You're misunderstanding how I use the word "juvenile". I'm not saying that the teenagers in the series are acting too teenagery. That'd obviously be a good thing, worthy of praise. What I mean is that the writing itself for the series isn't mature. It has flaws in its structure which a better creator in the field of narrative art would easily avoid.

Since this is a Kyo Ani series I'm going to assume that people are somewhat familiar with their previous work and thus will use one as an example. Remember those delusions the characters Chuunibyou had about Dark Flame Masters, Wicked Eyes and Ethereal Horizons Kyo Ani mined for comedy so we viewers could roll our eyes and go "those silly teenagers"? That's roughly the quality of writing here, which was the point I was trying to get across with the random caps thing but obviously failed.

I could be told that Rikka was the author of this series and I wouldn't bat an aye.

2. Yes, the jump from the top of the roof would kill a normal person. But the whole setup of Mirai on the ledge so she can be noticed by Akihito is another good example of how the series is concerned with creating an impacting scene but being unable to back it up.

Question: Why was Mirai on the edge of the rooftop? The show never actually gives us the reason, we are just led to the same initial conclusion as Akihito, that she's trying to kill herself. But the rest of the series doesn't really back that up with further characterization. It takes a special kind of mind to contemplate ending its own existence.

Mirai is depressed, sure, but nothing in her behavior speaks of suicidal tendencies after the initial scene. She's not closed off, ready to cut herself the world and the suffering. Nothing in her behavior says that she's rejecting the world. Instead the next action she takes once we're off the rooftop is an active one, chasing around her schoolmate and trying to playfully stab him to death as practice.

So if that option doesn't work, why was she there? The most obvious answer would be "because the plot needed her to be". Or alternatively, why was she suicidal for that one scene? So we could have it.

(Plus throwing around a heavy concept such as suicide with no ability to back it up is another example of juvenile writing.)

3. Those who draw attention to me nitpicking are, I think, misunderstanding why I dislike the series. I do not dislike this because this has so many minor things to pick apart. There are plenty of works out there that I think are great that have minor (or sometimes less than) flaws that don't prevent them from being enjoyable and great. The original Star Wars trilogy is an oft quoted example. Sure, the series is poorer for having these minor flaws in it than it would be if it did not, but such things never singlehandedly sink a piece.

I dislike this because of flaws in structure, characterization and pacing. Due to these flaws, even with the magnificent animation, I'm not sucked in when watching it and thus my attention is drawn into the problems. Nostalgia Critic probably explains this better than I could.

I think some of you have a hard time differentiating where I'm nitpicking and where I'm criticizing. My slapdash presentation is probably party to blame for this. Some of the more important points are symptoms of other problems and do illuminate the core issues of the work though.

I'll try to keep this as the last wall of text without proofreading that I'll inflict on people on this topic. Thank you for tolerating.

edited 26th Oct '13 7:58:55 AM by GabrieltheThird

It was pretty clear to me she was on the roof just because she was a loner looking at the sky. She wasn't going to jump(and was just doing that because it was safe for her). It was clear to me that Akihito just thought she was going to jump and she wasn't actually going to.

If you mean that the writing is juvenile and not the characters, say that the writing is juvenile and not that the characters are juvenile.

And it's not even close to what Rikka would write. That's just exaggerating. If you're nitpicking, exaggerating stuff is rather bad, since that's saying you're not picking at small details, which nitpicking is, but making larger attacks on huge faults. I don't mind nitpicking, or I wouldn't ask you in the first place, but at least be honest about what you're doing.

This a great show so far! You can tell it comes from the same teams that created Free and 8th Grader Syndrome (forgot the actual name). Looking forward to the rest.

I'm laughing pretty hard right now because we just had this massive page of nitpicking and then you just showed up and were all like "Hey! This show's great!"

So, apparently, this "opinion" thing is somehow subjective.

1: I'm not sure Sakura (the little sis) was actually there. We only saw her inside the Hollow Shadow, and she just disappeared once the Hollow Shadow was defeated. Seems more likely that she was just something created by the Hollow Shadow from Mirai's mind. Almost all of your nitpicks go away if Sakura is some kind of illusion.

2: "I've said in other conversations about this that basically Kn K reads like it was written by a 15 year old"

Ummm.... wasn't it? I thought this was based on the light novel that was written by a new young writer still in high school who won some kind of contest, which is why her novel was published.

It's not that bad. It has flaws, but it's nowhere near as bad as Eragon. Now that was a bad series.

edited 26th Oct '13 12:41:18 PM by Sackett

Sakura can be seen several times in episode 3. She's watching while Mirai rejects Mitsuki's offer of charity. She's shown just after Mitsuki tells the story of Yui and Mirai to Akihito. Are you suggesting she was never present at all, or merely that her appearance at the end of episode 3 and in 4 is illusory?