Kaiba

Kaiba is a piece of art. This work by Masaaki Yuasa is a gem, the kind of which only few examples can be found in every art... We already owe to Studio Madhouse some of the finest animation works like Satoshi Kon's "Paranoia Agent" and "Paprika", Hiroshi Hamasaki's "Texhnolyze" and "Shigurui", Rintaro's "Metropolis" and many more. But with Masaaki Yuasa, Madhouse has discovered a true genius of this time and age.

Kaiba is a poetic and philosophical tale packed with so much emotion and brilliantly imaginative conceptual and visual ideas, it is absolutely breathtaking. The graphical style reminds of Osamu Tezuka, the father of Japanese manga, but just as in the latter's work "Phoenix", the innocent, child-like drawings serve a deep and dense reflection about mankind and human condition.

Revolving around the parallel concepts of time and loss, life and death, memories and oblivion, Kaiba succeeds in creating a whole coherent universe, characterized by its overwhelming melancholy. It is truly comforting to see that such ambitious and groundbreaking projects can still see the light of day today, regardless of their chances at commercial success. Thank you Masao Maruyama, co-founder of Madhouse studio and producer of the series, for having made Kaiba happen!

It will be so hard for Kaiba to find its public, a million miles away from commercial animated series that most of time have little to offer to the heart and mind... While art lovers have long learned to distinguish between meaningless blockbusters and personal independent cinema, Japanese animation hasn't yet achieved to be widely considered in its diversity, even in Japan.

Kaiba is pure art and emotion, a brilliant masterpiece and a unique experience that will leave an everlasting imprint in its viewers' heart.

Created and directed by Masaaki Yuasa (Crayon Shin-Chan), Kaiba has been long on my list and I'm so glad I finally got to it, it was very fun. Following Warp in a futuristic dystopia where minds can be implanted into chips then moved from body to body (a la Altered Carbon), Kaiba's animation feels new and refreshing among the rest of its genre, and its surreal, abstract narratives fit perfectly in its art direction. For something gorgeous to watch with a good bit of philosophical thought behind it I would highly recommend this series, although would warn even with its friendly demeanour it is not a series for young kids, it does contain adult themes. Again, I loved the series, but the plot and meaning gets quite heady towards the end and the narrative of it all tends to fall apart. Something that's obviously deliberately abstract and opaque in its conclusions, I'm still struggling to exactly follow the overarching narrative and world building, but I'm sure there's a million "Kaiba Explained" videos out there. Similar to Evangelion, scoring this feels like grading the by far most talented kid in the class who unfortunately just didn't quite understand the assignment. Still would recommend, especially for fans of anime that haven't seen.

Kaiba is an unusually animated anime. In fact it doesn't look like an anime at all. It looks more like a 1970s European cartoon with it's rounded shapes and distorted characters.

The story takes place in a world and galaxy where a person's memory is encapsulated in a small cone shaped device that can be placed into the head of another body. Also, using a special ray gun a person can open and step into another person's memories. The story features a boy with no memory and a hole in his chest who finds himself being attacked by strange creatures for no apparent reason. With help from a few others, he has to figure out how to survive and who he is. It's one of those series that is hard to explain. You just have to watch it.

I love how this had some of the most original animation of any show I have seen, but most of all, this is one of my favorite sci fi shows. Even though some of the scifi concepts explored here are not original for today, it was very original for the time I think and for an anime it pretty much was pretty original. I don't like much japanese voice acting and I would say this show was more tolerable for my ears with subtitles. I had to watch this twice because I couldn't fully focus on the anime because of where I used to live, but it was worth it for me. There is hardly any guts so the blood which was colured not red for the most part is less intense than some shows. The ending made me feel mixed emotions more than any other show before and there could for sure be some conspiracies made about this show, but for the most part it's pretty straight forward if you read the subtitles well or if you know japanese. I also loved the ending and intro which are so far the only anime intros and outros I like fully. I am so glad I rewatched this show. The dvd is expensive (over 100 bucks) and I rember it's on the Amarican Amazon Prime too. I might check out more of Masaaki Yuasa's stuff some time, maybe not Cat Soup again though.

Kaiba tells the story of a young man named Kaiba who has no memory of who he is other than a locket with a photograph of who the viewer can assume was his girlfriend. In addition, memories can be stored like computer data and passed from body to body on some form of a chip.

Now to start off I really loved the soundtrack to this anime. The opening soundtrack and music used throughout really played well into the overall feel of the anime. In addition, I like the retro-type or animation used on the characters. It created a different atmosphere of viewing the anime.

My issue with the anime is that it was a bit too complex for my liking. Maybe that is my fault as I am not a huge Sci-Fi fan. The plot just seems too convoluted with the number of body switches and sub-plots that it took me out of the anime. I also felt that due to the number of body switches it was somewhat hard to really feel attached to the characters outside of Kaiba. With that being said, if you like Sci-Fi films and/or shows this would likely be a good watch. For me, it was a nice show to binge while traveling but not something I totally loved - 5/10.