Kino's Journey #1:
Idle Adventurer

100 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
Released: 02/24/2004
Reviewed: 12/06/2005

I believe you probably already know this, but I spend a lot of my time harping about anime. The general thrust of my arguments often has to do with its flagrant (and frequent!) violations of what should be basic human tenements of existence. Things like: You shouldn't rape a girl or: you shouldn't give a bunch of fat, smelly basement dwellers the idea that continuing to be fat, smelly, basement dwellers and waiting for their computer to come to life and give them a blowjob is a viable life path. Also, you probably shouldn't treat women like a totally malleable piece of meat that exists solely for the pleasure of you asocial mouth breathing audience.

I understand that all this pro-feminist claptrap sounds a little disingenuous coming from a guy like me, but what can I say? I know what I like, and also... I'm a hypocrite. So it goes!

Why I'm talking about this is because Kino's Journey works itself into very few of these sacrosanct anime tenements. Despite the appearance of a relatively well-endowed 14 year old (well endowed for real life, which means she's got mosquito bites on her chest by anime standards) there is little sexist behavior to be found in Kino's Journey. Oh don't get me wrong, there's a whole bunch of stupid melodramatic crap, it's just that it's nothing that will offend anything more than your sense of taste.

Kino is a girl (we think) who travels around the world just for the experience of traveling around the world. In this world towns (which they call 'countries') are so insular that a journey of a minute might as well drop you on a different planet. Some towns, like the one that tries to create traditions to attract the attention of travelers, are just plain silly while others, like the town that forcibly lobotomizes all children at age 12, is a bit too overpowered by its own melodrama to make its somewhat poignant statement carry any weight. But once in awhile, somewhere in the middle, Kino can actually find something worthwhile to say.

Throughout her(?) journeys Kino will come across all types of people. Human slave traders, telepathic people, a country plunged into eternal sadness, all as different from one another as the sun and the moon. The show is so convinced that its 'slice of life' attitude is enough to bring it through that it doesn't bother with silly things like establishing a continuity, or even a distinct style. Maybe that was the plan all along, but it can be a little disconcerting to see Kino seemingly teleport from place to place. Sometimes even during the span of a single episode our intrepid adventurer will visit two or three different 'countries'. The creators probably would've been better served entrenching themselves in one theme at a time rather than mixing and matching everything and trying to come up with something that fit all molds.

It's really a shame too, because Kino is a show that makes you want to believe. Introspection is a tough thing to do already, and most of these morals, some of which could be a big deal in Japan, are clearly not made for an American audience. The lobotomized town, for example, could be saying a lot about the stereotypical Japanese uber-adherence to traditional social mores. i.e.: just be a good boy, work hard, and everything will be alright. Maybe something subversive to Japan's older generation, but not so much for people not a product of weird Samurai honor codes. Also, most Americans probably aren't going to get the hating on organized religion. Stuff that's prima fasciae good just doesn't quite pull it through in the clutch.

Kino is one of these shows that wants so badly to be great that it physically hurts the viewer thinking about it. It manages to drag itself above the stinking morass that is the current crop of domestically released anime, and that in itself is a pretty big feat, but it just can't go the distance. Kino is a show that's very watchable, but no matter how hard it tries it just can't break the barrier and become great. I definitely have an interest in watching more of the show, just to see if it ever makes it across that line, but I'm not exactly clamoring for it.