On the Road
"The world is not beautiful. Therefore, it is."
So says the gender-nonconforming title character of Kino's Journey, by far the most challenging anime show of the year. "The world is not beautiful: And that, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty." Kino shows us that world by traveling through it on Hermes, a talking "motorrad" (German for "motorcyle" - there's no other German in the story, so I have no idea why everyone calls Hermes that). It's mostly a lush, green, peaceful-looking place, but it's dotted by mostly walled city-states whose citizens can do the most awful things. Kino's visits last three days and two nights, all the time needed, supposedly, to find out the country's character.
(And now I'll do the obligatory aside about pronoun usage. Kino was born a girl named Sakura - more on that in a moment - but now presents as male and is often taken to be male. On the anime discussion board I frequent, the consensus is to refer to Kino as "she." Meanwhile, I've run across at least one blogger who's peeved that people aren't referring to Kino with the singular "they." Personally, though, using "he" feels most natural. Kino uses the pronoun "boku", which in Japanese is the informal masculine first-person singular. Not exclusively used by men, but the women who use it are typically trying to appear cute, and Kino isn't doing that. So for the purposes of this blog, I will refer to Kino as "he." If you don't like it, go write your own blog post.)
My first question about Kino's Journey is, "Why didn't anyone tell me about it sooner?" The first light novel came out in 2000, and there was a previous anime adaptation in 2003. Fortunately, due to the episodic nature of the story, the new anime is adapting almost a completely different set of chapters, meaning I now get two shows for the price of one. In each episode, Kino and Hermes reach a new country or come across someone on the road, which invariably leads to some kind of exploration into the human soul. The show uses science fiction and fantasy ideas to create places like, "the country where everyone has telepathy" or "the country where machines do all the work" - and then shows us some of the unintended consequences that human nature brings up. In the country where everyone has telepathy, for example, the people ended up living alone, far apart from each other, because no one could stand to feel everyone else's emotional pain. In the country where machines do all the work, the people ended up creating futile busywork jobs for themselves, because they couldn't stand not having stress in their lives.
Many of the countries can be violent and cruel, including Kino's own homeland. The girl Sakura was born in a realm where everyone went to the hospital on their twelfth birthday and had an operation done on their brains to turn them into "adults" - that is, people who could do anything, even jobs they hate, with a smile on their faces. And so they do, with only one exception. Anyone who questions the need to have the operation is instantly turned on and killed. Sakura makes the mistake of asking the question, and her own parents pull a knife on her - while still smiling, of course. She is rescued by a traveler named Kino, who lets himself be stabbed in her place, and she escapes on the motorrad he just finished restoring, Hermes. The story of how Sakura went from that beginning to his current life as the heir to the original Kino's name and lifestyle is something I haven't gotten to yet.
The show's not quite in the same league as Mushishi, which told the story of another traveler's strange and wondrous journey through the world, but that's a pretty high bar to clear. Kino's Journey, in both its incarnations, will give me plenty to see and think about for the rest of this season, and perhaps longer.
So says the gender-nonconforming title character of Kino's Journey, by far the most challenging anime show of the year. "The world is not beautiful: And that, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty." Kino shows us that world by traveling through it on Hermes, a talking "motorrad" (German for "motorcyle" - there's no other German in the story, so I have no idea why everyone calls Hermes that). It's mostly a lush, green, peaceful-looking place, but it's dotted by mostly walled city-states whose citizens can do the most awful things. Kino's visits last three days and two nights, all the time needed, supposedly, to find out the country's character.
(And now I'll do the obligatory aside about pronoun usage. Kino was born a girl named Sakura - more on that in a moment - but now presents as male and is often taken to be male. On the anime discussion board I frequent, the consensus is to refer to Kino as "she." Meanwhile, I've run across at least one blogger who's peeved that people aren't referring to Kino with the singular "they." Personally, though, using "he" feels most natural. Kino uses the pronoun "boku", which in Japanese is the informal masculine first-person singular. Not exclusively used by men, but the women who use it are typically trying to appear cute, and Kino isn't doing that. So for the purposes of this blog, I will refer to Kino as "he." If you don't like it, go write your own blog post.)
My first question about Kino's Journey is, "Why didn't anyone tell me about it sooner?" The first light novel came out in 2000, and there was a previous anime adaptation in 2003. Fortunately, due to the episodic nature of the story, the new anime is adapting almost a completely different set of chapters, meaning I now get two shows for the price of one. In each episode, Kino and Hermes reach a new country or come across someone on the road, which invariably leads to some kind of exploration into the human soul. The show uses science fiction and fantasy ideas to create places like, "the country where everyone has telepathy" or "the country where machines do all the work" - and then shows us some of the unintended consequences that human nature brings up. In the country where everyone has telepathy, for example, the people ended up living alone, far apart from each other, because no one could stand to feel everyone else's emotional pain. In the country where machines do all the work, the people ended up creating futile busywork jobs for themselves, because they couldn't stand not having stress in their lives.
Many of the countries can be violent and cruel, including Kino's own homeland. The girl Sakura was born in a realm where everyone went to the hospital on their twelfth birthday and had an operation done on their brains to turn them into "adults" - that is, people who could do anything, even jobs they hate, with a smile on their faces. And so they do, with only one exception. Anyone who questions the need to have the operation is instantly turned on and killed. Sakura makes the mistake of asking the question, and her own parents pull a knife on her - while still smiling, of course. She is rescued by a traveler named Kino, who lets himself be stabbed in her place, and she escapes on the motorrad he just finished restoring, Hermes. The story of how Sakura went from that beginning to his current life as the heir to the original Kino's name and lifestyle is something I haven't gotten to yet.
The show's not quite in the same league as Mushishi, which told the story of another traveler's strange and wondrous journey through the world, but that's a pretty high bar to clear. Kino's Journey, in both its incarnations, will give me plenty to see and think about for the rest of this season, and perhaps longer.
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