Kino no Tabi
Jul. 13th, 2007 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanetSo much for writing once a week! I took an intensive Japanese class and then a road trip across Canada. But that didn't stop me from watching anime! So here are a few quick thoughts on a very beautiful series: Kino no Tabi, or Kino's Journey.
This deceptively simple series follows a traveller named Kino, who journeys to different "countries" (more like city-states or villages) and gets into all sorts of surreal, poignant or disturbing situations. There is one country that collects copies of all the books in the world, but then censors them so that the public libraries stand practically empty. There is another where the people have discovered how to become empaths and can feel each other's emotions -only to find they can't tolerate living close to anyone, even the people they love, without the white lies and withheld criticisms they normally use to get along. Each story plays like a little allegory, suggesting some deeper meaning without actually spelling out a moral.
The art is spare but soft, with watercolour-style backgrounds and a minimum of detail. Kino is also a sort of abstract character who doesn't identify with a particular gender, age, creed or nation, but is first and foremost a traveller (the androgynous character design helps a lot here.) S/he's friendly enough, but somehow a little distant -appropriate for a traveller! More endearing is Kino's sidekick Hermes, a loyal and slightly scatterbrained talking motorcycle. Not a robot motorcycle -just an ordinary motorcycle that happens to be able to talk. Considering that the director of this series, Ryutaro Nakamura, also directed the bizarre and innovative Serial Experiments Lain, it's no wonder that Kino's Journey is a little odd. But this is slower, more speculative work than Lain, something more like the gentle psychological drama of Hainbane Renmei. In fact, the only thing Kino lacks is the character designer from Lain and Haibane, Yoshitoshi ABe. Kino is clearly aiming for ABe's signature minimalism, but doesn't quite reach his level of skill, so that the simplicity of secondary characters sometimes looks more cut-rate than stylized. For me, the story more than makes up for that, but be forewarned.
Theoretically, I found a few elements of the story interesting. One of my favourite aspects was the friendship between Kino and Hermes. I've been on a Donna Haraway kick lately, looking into her work on cyborgs and human relationships with machines, objects and animals. Kino is not a cyborg in the typical Ghost in the Shell sense, but she does have a sort of mutually beneficial relationship with Hermes: as Kino's first mentor explains, the motorcycle provides speed, and the rider provides balance, so that both of them can actually go places. They become a part of each other's way of living and moving, mutually self-constructing their traveller identities. In Haraway's terms, they form a bond of "kinship," which is a strong and supportive connection they can choose to share, even though they're not biologically related or even the same species. The series often shows how Kino treats Hermes as a partner instead of a tool: even when they stay in hotels or houses, Hermes isn't left outside or in a garage, but can come into the rooms, sit by the table and participate in conversations if he wants. It's not really reasonable (how does she get him up stairs, I wonder?) but it is making a good point about how we can think of the world, not through hierarchies (humans on top, then animals, then plants, and then lowly objects on the bottom) but through connections. And that's just one of the many things I liked about Kino's Journey!
This deceptively simple series follows a traveller named Kino, who journeys to different "countries" (more like city-states or villages) and gets into all sorts of surreal, poignant or disturbing situations. There is one country that collects copies of all the books in the world, but then censors them so that the public libraries stand practically empty. There is another where the people have discovered how to become empaths and can feel each other's emotions -only to find they can't tolerate living close to anyone, even the people they love, without the white lies and withheld criticisms they normally use to get along. Each story plays like a little allegory, suggesting some deeper meaning without actually spelling out a moral.
The art is spare but soft, with watercolour-style backgrounds and a minimum of detail. Kino is also a sort of abstract character who doesn't identify with a particular gender, age, creed or nation, but is first and foremost a traveller (the androgynous character design helps a lot here.) S/he's friendly enough, but somehow a little distant -appropriate for a traveller! More endearing is Kino's sidekick Hermes, a loyal and slightly scatterbrained talking motorcycle. Not a robot motorcycle -just an ordinary motorcycle that happens to be able to talk. Considering that the director of this series, Ryutaro Nakamura, also directed the bizarre and innovative Serial Experiments Lain, it's no wonder that Kino's Journey is a little odd. But this is slower, more speculative work than Lain, something more like the gentle psychological drama of Hainbane Renmei. In fact, the only thing Kino lacks is the character designer from Lain and Haibane, Yoshitoshi ABe. Kino is clearly aiming for ABe's signature minimalism, but doesn't quite reach his level of skill, so that the simplicity of secondary characters sometimes looks more cut-rate than stylized. For me, the story more than makes up for that, but be forewarned.
Theoretically, I found a few elements of the story interesting. One of my favourite aspects was the friendship between Kino and Hermes. I've been on a Donna Haraway kick lately, looking into her work on cyborgs and human relationships with machines, objects and animals. Kino is not a cyborg in the typical Ghost in the Shell sense, but she does have a sort of mutually beneficial relationship with Hermes: as Kino's first mentor explains, the motorcycle provides speed, and the rider provides balance, so that both of them can actually go places. They become a part of each other's way of living and moving, mutually self-constructing their traveller identities. In Haraway's terms, they form a bond of "kinship," which is a strong and supportive connection they can choose to share, even though they're not biologically related or even the same species. The series often shows how Kino treats Hermes as a partner instead of a tool: even when they stay in hotels or houses, Hermes isn't left outside or in a garage, but can come into the rooms, sit by the table and participate in conversations if he wants. It's not really reasonable (how does she get him up stairs, I wonder?) but it is making a good point about how we can think of the world, not through hierarchies (humans on top, then animals, then plants, and then lowly objects on the bottom) but through connections. And that's just one of the many things I liked about Kino's Journey!
