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May 14 2008

Categories: anime
Tagged: kaiba

11 Comments »

Making amends.

Usually, unless the anime features an “Anime Production Sunrise” tagline, I won’t suspect the creators to be on LSD or be licking poisonous toads. For Kaiba, I strongly feel that the Madhouse production team is on LSD and are licking toads. The animation style is trippy enough. Ever try playing Wind Waker after playing eight straight hours of Halo 3? Well, that’s what trying to watch Kaiba is like after watching Daughter of Twenty Faces. The animation is a cross between cartoonish, sci-fi-ish, retro-ish, and poison toad inspired-ish.

That’s only the first reaction. There’s more. The main gut of Kaiba is the Ghost in the Shell nature of how technology now allows people to download and upload their memories onto chips like Kogarashi and a Xerox multifunction copier. It takes a step further than GitS in the sense that there’s no technological barriers– people can play around with memories like they do anime fansub downloads. The easy accessibility of memories leads to a civilization where privacy and self worth just do not exist. It also leads to wondrous possibilities like body theft, Sweeny Todd-ish scenarios, and selfcest.

Of course, we’re not told any of this information on the outset. It is inferred from the actions and the unfolding drama, with the viewer parked at the 50 yard line. In that sense, Kaiba does a remarkable job at presenting a sci-fi world with the trappings we all know– i.e. cars, guns, sex)– but not the way we know them. It’s almost like someone who can read Chinese trying to read a Japanese newspaper. The words look familiar, but the assembly and kana are unfamiliar, but not to the point that the reader can’t get a basic grasp of the situation.

The story is wrapped around a protagonist who just doesn’t speak much and doesn’t know much. Instead, he’s carried along by a river of events as he struggles to figure out who he is. But that’s not the point of Kaiba. Everything– from the memory manipulation to the protagonist’s plight– is just a table setter for the main course: the morality play.

I wrote in a post about Shigofumi about the three basic types of morality plays in anime: the artistic, the scholarly, and the emotional. Kaiba squarely falls into the scholarly. Much like Kino’s Travels, the main protagonist and his random “animal” helper planet hops and finds moral dilemmas, all stemming from the abuse of being able to access memory like USB thumb drives. Also like Kino’s Travels, the main protagonist approaches each situation methodically, but unlike Kino, the protagonist of Kaiba tries to do the right thing morally and is frustrated when he cannot.

As I wrote in the earlier post, artistic, scholarly, and emotional has nothing to do with the series or series presentation itself by how the morality is explained and hammered home. So don’t get fooled that just because the art is inspired by poison toads that it’s artistic. For Kaiba, it’s simple. A leads to B which leads to consequences. It leads the viewer to digest that on the same level that we digest directions on a box of microwavable pizza. It is very different from something like Shigofumi which presents its morality through emotional pleas– it doesn’t grasp at one’s intellect but instead one’s tears– and really ingrains itself with sobbing. And, despite the trippy art, Kaiba‘s not in Mushishi‘s class in terms of appealing the morality through art. Kaiba‘s main strength is that the sci-fi element allows a different class of morality stories to be told, one that impacts who we really are in a GitS-type of way, but even more philosophical.

I think Kaiba tries to do a bit too much in presenting an expansive background story and then adds in the random morality stories as filler. I think Kaiba‘s main story is strong enough to stand alone and be a grand sweeping morality play bigger than what Shigofumi or Kino has done, but it ops instead for moral fillers. One thing that baffled me was there was a random story about “be happy with what you’ve got” that didn’t really need the sci-fi trappings of the setup nor did it really add value to rest of the story. To me, it’s a waste to see Kaiba go planet of the week route.

I also felt that Kaiba was a victim of its own good ideas. It has some great moments but also some really pedantic moments. When the good ideas of Kaiba worked, they really worked. However, when they didn’t work, I was checking e-mail hoping for the next indecent Tomoyo image to find its way to my inbox. It’s feast or famine, and I’m sure people will either focus on the feast or the famine but forget that this series has both.

Footnote 1: I was almost in despair over the lack of Engrish this season. Thank you Kaiba! Best Engrish since Ringo Hiyori (but not better… very difficult to top apple eyes).

Footnote 2: The selfcest sex scene was so over the top, I felt like I was watching the final battle of Gundam 00 rather than Kouta being dry humped by Chizuru. Similar eye twitching to when I was watching Graham fight Setsuna at the very least.

Footnote 3: In the first few episodes, the protagonist spends most of his time in either the body of a little DFC girl who is lusted after by all the creepy old guys or an oversized stuffed hippo. I feel you should know these things.

Footnote 4: Wait, all we got was bawling? What happened to my Fumi x Mika selfcest? Anyway, Shigofumi does a much, much better job at filler than Kaiba. Though depending on how you feel about Kirameki’s story and selfcest, Kaiba might have an edge on the overall arc. I personally enjoyed the ridiculous bawling and hope that Suzaku and Lulu will recreate the scene after Nunnally dies, but your mileage may vary.

Footnote 5: The animation style kinda looks like if Cartoon Network originals like Samurai Jack and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends made mad love to Steamboat Mickey and had kids.