Jaded people like me bitch and moan about every new season of anime, lamenting low-quality work cranked out in gigantic quantities. Boo hoo this is formulaic, wahhhh this is based on a porn game, whine whine that's such a crap robot design. We can't level those complaints about Kaiba, because Kaiba is something else entirely. Anime fans, as indoctrinated to cliche as we are, might not even want to call it anime. I mean, there isn't a super robot, or guys who know special moves, or targets to project one's Japanophilia on. There's not even a school uniform in sight. Heavens! It is because of these things that you should watch Kaiba. Kaiba, you see, is artsy.
The director is Masaaki Yuasa, a dude with a clear track record for the unconventional: among others, he's directed the cult favorites Cat Soup, Mind Game, and Kemonozume. His style is wildly kinetic, free-flowing, rough around the edges. His brain, I'm certain, is a wonderful place. To this end, the character design is about as simple and clean as possible-- something like Tezuka by way of superflat-- and is in full service of the animation. While it's very pretty, this isn't really a show to look at in single frames: you want to see it in motion.
With that in mind, I'm not entirely sure what Kaiba is about, and I don't think anybody who isn't working on the show knows yet either. Our unnamed hero is an amnesiac-- but not the whining angsty 15-year-old-boy kind-- who wakes up somewhere with nothing on him but pants and a locket containing a picture of somebody who we are led to assume that he (though "his" gender is uncertain: he's played by Houko Kuwashima, but women voicing young boys is pretty common, so....) loved. Naturally, he is in search of this person, but before he can worry about that, he needs to deal with the very many people and things who are chasing him for reasons that he and we are unaware of.
We eventually find out that he lives in a world where bodies and their corresponding memories are interchangeable: all people have a cone-shaped "chip" somewhere on their body that can be unplugged and put into some other body at any time, thus transferring their conscious. Bodies without chips just stand, immobile, until a chip is plugged into them. Bodies are bought up by the rich, it's explained, to extend their lives. Needless chips, meanwhile, end up in junk heaps or imprisoned in bizarre spinning-wheel contraptions. Our hero is an exception to the chipless body rule: he can move and talk just fine, but it's plain to see that he's got a gaping hole you could fit a tennis ball through inside of his chest.
To tell you much more about what happens might be to spoil your enjoyment, but suffice to say that a lot of people do a lot of running around a lot of fascinating scenery. I don't know where they're going, and honestly, that's fine with me.
I'll probably wait for a batch, since a) I'm watching too much this season and b) It'll be subbed at snail's pace, not dissimilar to Dennou Coil.
Posted by: wildarmsheero | April 21, 2008 at 09:57 AM