(GRIM AND SUNLESS EVENING SET)

/1

Panorama.
Perspective.
Thanatos.

『俯瞰風景』。。。

Overlooking View

And overlooking view is entirely conceptual as well as literal in it’s usage during the first installment of the Kara no Kyoukai series. Fukan Fuukei, translated to mean “Overlooking View” is captivating simply when considering the ideas presented. Literal or figurative, this idea of an overlooking view can be applied to understand the themes of the story.

We want to understand ourselves, but oftentimes we come to learn that we ourselves are a stranger. The closer you are to something might make it easier to understand, but perhaps that lack of distance paradoxically obfuscates our understanding of it. We like to think we understand our friends or family, but we might be deluding ourselves in thinking this way. It is said that siblings are the closest strangers living with you after all, because you think you know them but really only understand what you know. Keeping your eye trained on a fixed point will make you unaware of everything happening around it and thus make your understanding limited to what you can interpret. Your view is limited to the point at which you stand, and if you are closer to the object in question the view you have is limited in scope. Thus, you think you know everything because you understand everything, but is only what you can see. 

So we take a step back.

/2

From an overlooking view we gain a broader understanding. If you’ve ever visited a tall building in a city it’s almost a given to take the time to look out the window and look at the world below. It’s an intoxicating feeling that you feel when being able to look down on everything you thought you knew. But in doing so we accept our own insignificance. 

“Here, in this window, the world that I view from on
high actually makes me feel secure. A view of a world that I can’t reach
doesn’t make me entertain any illusions of reaching it.” 
- Shiki, Murder Speculation (Part 1)

In a literal sense, we can gain an overlooking view from reaching a measurably higher place upon which to stand. Going up to the top floor of your house does this. On the ground the world is familiar to you and you can understand what surrounds you to an extent. The ground is roughly one and a half meters away, the ground feels firm, my feet touch the ground, the sky is above and the perspective is familiar. Reaching a higher level you alter this view but being able to take things into a new perspective. On the observation deck of a skyscraper the world is alien to you despite nothing changing. The people are mere dots on the pavement, the vehicles move like matchbox cars and everything seems less significant.

This makes jumping down all the more alluring.

/3

The subtitle of Overlooking View was “Thanatos”, the embodiment of death as well as a topic in Freudian psychology. This drive of death is described as “Thanatos, from the Greek word for "death" is the drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death.  At the conclusion of C&D, Freud notes (in 1930-31) that human beings, following Thanatos, have invented the tools to completely exterminate themselves…” (1). The creeping feeling you try to suppress when at the top of a high place is Thanatos, it’s unfathomable to even consider the thought of suicide but the height just makes it all the more alluring. It’s the human desire to return to where it belongs, the unrest of being able to view their world as insignificant and the morbid curiosity of “what would it feel like to fly, albeit for only a moment?”

/4

Either we fly, or float. But sometimes we fall. What matters is the intent

Aozaki Touko concludes that “we humans can’t fly by ourselves. And yet, as expected of men, the more we forget this.” The concept of the flight and floating as inextricably tied to one another, and likewise plays with the theme of falling. To begin, flight is implied to have a destination or reason, while float implies stagnation and aimless in it’s purpose. People who fly know where they are going and expend energy to reach their goal while the latter simply wait idly. 

Sitting on the side of the road on day, I started to think about the direction of my life as I watched cars drive past me. Everyone always appears to be in a hurry to go one place or another and can never stand when the driver in front of them do not share the same haste. However, I sat idly on the side of the road watching everything and wondered how I appeared to them. Perhaps they were flying and I was floating, but of course it’s not that simple. It’s a matter of perspective afterall. Understanding one’s purpose isn’t as clear to see as recklessly driving down a busy street, nor is floating necessarily meaning doing nothing. Our aim is to move towards a direction that satisfies us in the end.

<An overlooking view>

/5

“It’s how far everything is. A view too wide makes clear the boundary between you and the world. People can only rest easy with things they are familiar with. Even with an accurate map telling you your exact location, you know that’s only information. To us, the world only amounts to something we understand and feel from experience. The boundaries and connections of the world, and of countries, and of cities, are only constructs of the mind, not something we feel ourselves. But with a view too wide, there appear gaps in our understanding.”
-Aozaki Touko
The concept of boundaries surfaces to the forefront this time. Kara no Kyoukai is written with the kanji for  Empty "空"  and Boundary  "境界"  conjoined with the possessive particle “の", roughly meaning (The) Empty Boundaries. Ironically, the kanji "空" read as “kara” can also be read as “sora”, or sky. The sky is a boundary between mortality and gods, a barrier we can never breach but get infinitely close to.

“Our mental perceptions, on the other hand, also stand perched on its
own vantage point. Different minds perceive different things, but all are
imprisoned, asleep in a paradigm of material reality. Awakened minds
bearing a more malleable paradigm, such as those of mages, can bend its
rules, but never truly break them. To cross that boundary is to become
something more and less human. A god, but absent the restraint. And so
Hypnos becomes Thanatos.”

Curiously I find the idea of boundaries, both conceptual and literal, to be the most interesting idea present in this story. Touko explains how “A view too wide makes clear the boundary between you and the world.” in which the view from a high place would both literally separate you from the world with an impassable barrier of empty sky, but also separate you from the reality you thought you knew. “Viewing the city from up here sure puts it into perspective.”  Understanding the significance of everything puts your life into question, the monumental issues you face seem to fade as the world shrinks below you and you are no longer connected to it. Similarly, you dissociate from reality. This becomes a prevalent theme later on, but the idea of disconnecting from yourself and reality is played with in the duality of Shiki and SHIKI as well as in Paradox Spiral. Boundaries erect between two extremes; high and low, light and dark, but crossing them is not impossible. Reaching a figurative overlooking view separates you from society. You fall down the slippery slope of thinking those around you are insignificant, unimportant and this cease to associate with them. This in turn begins your descent into dissociating with reality. “These people mean nothing to me”, “I’m better than them” and raise yourself to a high place to justify the feelings you internalize as truth to feel more comfortable. This is but a mere illusion of what you want to believe, only your perspective if you will. Similarly, a literal high place is only a shift in perspective and what determines its impact is how you view the view from above. “But you don’t choose these paths because of the weight on your soul. We don’t choose the path we take because of the sins we carry. But we carry our sins on the path we choose.”

But to fall or to fly.

“She had no reason to kill herself,” I say finally. “She just wasn’t able to fly.”

The irony lies within both being the same, a fall with intent. Flight is a prolonged fall with a destination to reach, falling is a failure to reach the destination. Unlike floating, in which there is no fall. Those that float do not even attempt to fly, so they never had a chance to succeed or fail.

/Final

“Do or do not, there is no try.”


References:
1. https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/definitions/deathdrive.html
2. https://www.geneseo.edu/~easton/humanities/Freud.htm
Etc; Kara no Kyoukai - Kinoko Nasu