“You know, high rises are strange.”

We are only reviewing one installment of The Garden of Sinners this week, but since that installment is Paradox Spiral, we basically have no choice, and it’s not even because this is one of the only Kara no Kyoukai films that runs a full two hours. It’s because Paradox Spiral is one of the best and most artistically audacious things we’ve ever reviewed in our many years of podcasting, a dense and complicated story told in even more dense and intricate fashion by Ufotable, with stunning animation, disturbing and provocative imagery, and maybe the most complex editorial schema we’ve ever seen in a commercial feature, animated or live-action. And it’s all in service of an incredibly powerful story arranged around themes of duality, of division and reflection, that builds to one of the single most impactful endings in the history of the medium.

Enjoy, and come back next week as we review the end of the original Kara no Kyoukai story with Parts 6 and 7– Oblivion Recording and A Study in Murder: Part 2.

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:14

Part 5 – Paradox Spiral: 0:01:14 – 1:19:44

Eyecatch: 1:19:44 – 1:20:04

Part 5 – Paradox Spiral (Cont.): 1:20:04 – 2:32:48

End Credits: 2:32:48 – 2:34:03

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“Welcome to Japanimation Station!” Lyrics by Sean Chapman, Music by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com