Kaiba Series Review

For those of you who don’t yet know about Kaiba, I suggest you read my first impressions post on it, or probably watching it may be a good idea too.

The main character of the story; Kaiba

Engrossing, touching and definitely very disturbing, in words just plain awesome. It’s really been a long time since I’ve watched an anime of Kaiba’s caliber; an anime with a grand plot, engrossing mystery, a really vast setting and with a romance to beat many, many others.

Succeeding in evoking moral contradictions and disgust in me where many other anime have failed, at times the shock and absurdness of it’s worlds depraved state made me hit the pause button to think before continuing it. However, it’s not an anime without hope, and definitely not without love. Definitely a candidate for best anime of the year.

Warp and Kaiba; villain and king

Looking back at when I first picked it up, a long 3 months ago, I have to be honest and say that I wasn’t expecting too much from it. “Just another experimental anime”, or so I thought. However, as the series progressed and transitioned from the first few confusing episodes, I was hooked. The setting of the world of Kaiba was just immense with so many worlds to visit and points of view to consider. From the mass producing body factories of abipa to that underwater ghost town, just awesome. Another thing about Kaiba is it’s obvious delight in making weird objects, of which most we’re really very ingenious and fun to watch, that helped add to it’s alien feel.

Kaiba, Chroniko and Vanilla

The characters of this anime also played a great part in making it a favourite of mine. Don’t be fooled, it’s definitely not their conversations that define who they are, seeing that the main character, Kaiba doesn’t say more than 5 lines per episode from episode 1 – 5. Instead as the old proverb goes, their actions speak louder than their words. Kaiba’s gentleness and persistence in looking for Neiro, Neiro’s confusion, Popo’s ruthlessness, the ever cute, ever helpful hyo-hyo and a host of other characters all played  very very important roles in defining the feel of the series.

The art direction of Kaiba is wonderfully simplistic but yet sureally chaotic as well. It’s definitely hard to explain, but thats why I put pictures in my reviews. My only advice is this; don’t let the character designs turn you off, cause If you do you’re making a very bad decision. Instead of detracting from the story, I’d say the art complements it extremely well, so much so that I can’t think of any other design or style that would work so well with the setting. The background music, with its electrofunk and synthesized tune generally manages to build upon that fearful alien atmosphere Kaiba exudes.

Neiro and Popo; confused lover & lonely schemer

So all in all how would I rate Kaiba? Well, as per my usual rating system of;

Awesome – Best of the best, saved for my favourites
Great – Way above the normal, worth keeping
Good – A few problems here and there but still nice
Average – Baseline level anime, watch if you have the time
Mediocre – Mediocre
Bad – I doubt there would be any of these on my blog since i’d probably have dropped them.

Kaiba scores unsurprisingly, an awesome for its great take on the science fiction genre. As for it’s character attachment factor, I’d give it a 7 since the characters develop the story and not the other way round.

So I hope I managed to do this great series justice with my review. Do give it a try if you haven’t watched it yet. God bless! =)

Kaiba First Impressions

As with my Macross Frontier first impressions post I’ve already watched a few episodes of Kaiba, so I don’t know if my standpoint on this anime will be based solely on the first episode. So, forgive me if I add references from other episodes (so far I’m up to episode 4).

If you’ve seen the first episode you may find that its very vague. Vague in the sense that they plunge us into the thick of the series without much of any exposition. In fact the only real explanation we get in the first episode is the fact that people can swap bodies. This is because their memories are stored in chips which they plug into their heads.

Like I said earlier, I’ll try to make this as first-episode centric as possible but since the bulk of series (so far) is in the later episodes. Anyway, we’re introduced to Kaiba, our protagonist who wakes up without any memories of his own. The only thing left on him is a locket containing a picture of a girl. In later episodes the cast increases (though temporarily with the introduction of people like Vanilla and Chroniko).

Okay, on to the art. Now, I won’t say the art is bad; cause its not. However, it may turn off some people whose taste in anime is dependent on its art. The designs are very unique and animation is smooth at times. I feel the art serves its purpose though, especially since this show is more an alternative watch than not.

On to the theme. Though a bit hard to grasp at first, the world of ‘Kaiba’ is a very harsh world in which the society which we’re all very comfortable with is absent. In its place is a chaotic mess of a world. Since the anime is in the viewpoint of Kaiba, we see a very brutal side of the community. Themes such as segregation by class, replacement of memories, trans-spacial love, unprompted violence and sex are presented. The society in itself is portrayed in a very apocalyptic and dystopian way.

Musicwise, the soundtrack of Kaiba must have been tailor-made to strengthen the sentimental moments of the anime. Also, the opening and ending theme are done completely in english, done by artist Seira. Just watching through the opening and ending theme will be able to give you a rough impression of the story.

Now, after watching all the episodes up to now, even I have to admit that Kaiba is the most emotionally affecting series this season, though at first glance it seems very distant. Through the eyes of Kaiba we see tragic events unfold; most of them with startling resemblance to daily problems in the world and us like Kaiba; unable to do anything about it. Handled with subtlety and portrayed in an awfully brutal manner, it really managed to pull a few of my emotionally-hardened heartstrings.

So after all thats said, what do I think of Kaiba? Well, I think it has the potential to be the best series of the season. After all, since I consider anime like Kino No Tabi (Kino’s Travels) and Mushishi among the best and that I also love travel/philosophy anime, its no surprise that Kaiba is on my potential best anime list. My advice; watch it.