The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

It’s time to test blogging from Flock on the new system. If you’re seeing this, it’s working! SCORE!

So now, I’m going to review Kino’s Journey, the anime, also known as Kino No Tabi. I’ve got two episodes left. Short version, it’s really good. I’m happy to have paid money for it.

The story is a tale of a youngish girl named Kino, who rides around to all these various countries that are stora like City-States, on her talking motorcycle, Hermes. She’s got two guns and she sometimes kill people, but that’s not the point of the show. Basically she just goes and looks around, talking to people, and finding out how they live.
Most of the characters Kino meets have a decent amount of depth to them. They’re interesting, which is good, because a lot of the episodes involve these people just telling their tales. These tales are happy, these tales are sad, these tales are infuriating. Most stories don’t seem to have a point or a moral, they just how things are. It’s just sort of reporting on how things are in the world the show takes place in, and thus talking about how our lives work.
Most of the emotion, though, is very detached. Kino herself is a very deadpan, detached person, probably because of her past, and all the death she’s experienced. She’s a good person, but she does kill when she feels it appropriate. The book opens with her asking Hermes if she’s a bad person for all the people she’s shot. She’s not, really, but at the same time she shows very little remorse for the death she causes. The most remorse and sadness she’s shown in the show, really, has been over the deaths of three rabbits she killed to make food for some travellers that are stranded. The fact that most of the deaths are fairly graphic and not obscured combined with this sort of “That’s how life is” additude the show has towards death is kinda… refreshing and interesting. There are no dramatic deathbed speeches or crying over dead bodies. They’re just dead.
The whole show feels detached, and it leads to a more… distant feel than most shows. You really do feel like you’re, I dunno, looking through a camera at all this, and aren’t really a part of it. Even when Kino is involved, doing things to help, she’s very clearly just passing through. It’s just a small stop, an interesting story to tell others, and after three days she’ll be gone and likely never have any effect on these people. You watch, and very emotional things happen, and the show has real emotion behind it, but you can barely feel it, because you’re so far away. It’s like a little quiet echo of feeling. It’s kinda unsettling, but it fits the series perfectly. I might be over dramaticizing what I feel here, of course, but it’s a hard thing to explain.
In any case, I suggest you watch it if that sounds like something you could enjoy. The Light Novel this is based on is amazing too, which I think I’ve written about before. It was the reason I bought this, and I’m going to buy the rest of the Light Novels as they come out. Brer claims that the show is similar in feel to The Little Prince, which is something I’ve always wanted to read but never got around to it. I trust that he’s right, as he’s watched a couple episodes with me (though it didn’t keep his interest) so that might be a good thing to keep in mind if you’re thinking about watching it.

There you go. Another rambling review done. Man, I feel exhausted for no real reason… I should go take a nap.