Kaiba is a very visually strange series- this is good. In an era of increasingly cookie-cutter animation styles, it's easy to appreciate a visual style that can be roughly approximated as Osamu Tezuka meets Robert Crumb. The coloring style is simple but very distinctive, and even characters drawn with the same basic template are quite easy to distinguish.
The plot as well is ominous but at the same time incredibly intriguing. The first episode begins with the amnesiac Kaiba not having any idea what's going on, with the only clue he has of anything the locket he wears around his neck with a blurry picture of a girl in it. The viewer is dragged along with him as he's chased through a destructive, dystopian world where we soon learn that memories are king, and the main outlay of the upper class. s Kaiba leaves the planet, he doesn't know what's going on- but neither do we. But we'll likely soon find out.
The next several episodes have Kaiba exploring various planets where we get a strong sense of good worldbuilding. Some of them are dumps, other are tourist paradises. All of them revolve around memories as a discrete transferrable quantity, some moreso than others, and all of them have disturbing implications. But in spite of the largely self-contained nature of these episodes, the viewer gets a strong emotional impact from watching the characters deal with their issues.
Simply as a matter of visual spectacle and short storytelling, it's hard to understate the value of the first half of this series. It's Walking The Earth, but with the odd twist that the character doing the walking is nearly entirely helpless and at the mercy of others. Kaiba is forced to do some morally underhanded things in order to survive, with the only positive point being that the people he undercuts really aren't very good people, either. At the end of the sixth episode, we're left wanting for more, as it definitely seems something must be done- but as of yet neither the viewer nor Kaiba has any idea what that might be.
Kaiba (episodes 1-6)
Kaiba is a very visually strange series- this is good. In an era of increasingly cookie-cutter animation styles, it's easy to appreciate a visual style that can be roughly approximated as Osamu Tezuka meets Robert Crumb. The coloring style is simple but very distinctive, and even characters drawn with the same basic template are quite easy to distinguish.
The plot as well is ominous but at the same time incredibly intriguing. The first episode begins with the amnesiac Kaiba not having any idea what's going on, with the only clue he has of anything the locket he wears around his neck with a blurry picture of a girl in it. The viewer is dragged along with him as he's chased through a destructive, dystopian world where we soon learn that memories are king, and the main outlay of the upper class. s Kaiba leaves the planet, he doesn't know what's going on- but neither do we. But we'll likely soon find out.
The next several episodes have Kaiba exploring various planets where we get a strong sense of good worldbuilding. Some of them are dumps, other are tourist paradises. All of them revolve around memories as a discrete transferrable quantity, some moreso than others, and all of them have disturbing implications. But in spite of the largely self-contained nature of these episodes, the viewer gets a strong emotional impact from watching the characters deal with their issues.
Simply as a matter of visual spectacle and short storytelling, it's hard to understate the value of the first half of this series. It's Walking The Earth, but with the odd twist that the character doing the walking is nearly entirely helpless and at the mercy of others. Kaiba is forced to do some morally underhanded things in order to survive, with the only positive point being that the people he undercuts really aren't very good people, either. At the end of the sixth episode, we're left wanting for more, as it definitely seems something must be done- but as of yet neither the viewer nor Kaiba has any idea what that might be.