“What are memories? Souls? Spirits? This is a world where memories can be turned into data and stored. Even if the body dies, its memories live on, and can be transferred to another body. Bad memories can be erased, and good ones downloaded. However, this is something only the privileged can do. In a world like this, our protagonist, Kaiba, is travelling in another body with no memories of his own.”
Kaiba is a 12 episode series that came out in Japan spring last year, from Masaaki Yuasa (MindGame, Cat Soup) and Madhouse, which won the Excellence Prize for animation 2008. After the first 3 episodes, I can see why. Aside from the fact it’s like someone mashed together 50’s Japanese animation, the Yellow Submarine film and Richard Morgan’s harsh, ubernoir cyberpunk novel Altered Carbon (and its sequels), it’s a unique and surreal show brimming with emotion as well as a surprising amount of intelligence. And can’t wait to see more.
Before I carry on, I should say: If you are into surreal psychological SF, or interesting retro animation styles, go and watch the first three episodes of this now. I’m going to be giving some spoilers in this review and I think this is one of those shows best watched without knowing too much. A word of warning though, Kaiba is not a children’s show, despite the cute and cartoony character designs.
After seeing how much acclaim Kaiba had been getting, I took a look at the opening episodes and was completely sold. The story drops us in the middle of a surreal, colourful dystopia, juxtaposing character designs that look half Osamu Tezuka, half extra-vintage kids cartoon with some really quite bleak and twisted writing. It works fantastically, the highly stylised art style letting the show do things that would be incredibly harsh if done realistically. People die brutally, characters have their minds torn apart, and there’s even been what could be classed as rape during the second episode. Despite that, it’s only when you stop to think about it what you’ve just seen that the horribleness of what has been happening really sinks in, letting it all pass by like some kind of dream or nightmare while you watch it. The mash of tones can be unsettling, but the lightness the animation style brings also helps break up the more serious, cerebral elements of the story while giving the added bonus of making the show completely stand out from everything else released in the last couple of years.
Our story opens as a young man wakes up with no name or memories, his only clues to his identity being an odd symbol on his stomach, a locket with the blurred photo of a girl inside, and a perfectly round hole in the middle of his chest. And things get stranger from there on out. Our hero, soon dubbed ‘Warp’, is thrown into a world where strange flying machines can suck out people’s minds on small cone shaped chips—reminiscent of Altered Carbon‘s ‘cortical stacks’—or steal their bodies to be used by the rich and privileged. With the help of some of the strange people he meets along the way, the protagonist stows away on a space ship and begins his journey through the stars to try and track down his identity. The world caught my imagination quickly, and in the three episodes I’ve seen the central idea of separating minds and bodies has been used fantastically. Warp has had 3 different bodies by the end of the third episode, one of which was a completely silent, toy hippo who’s form he had been put in so he could pretend to be luggage. Meanwhile, his benefactor had taken a shine to his first body, but realising she wouldn’t get anywhere with him, uploaded a copy of herself into it so she could have some ‘fun’. It does not end well. There’s some other very interesting ideas at play in it already, like what really counts as death if your mind and soul is always backed up, and what happens to people in a world where you can sell your own memories or body for money.
If this sounds like a lot of weird issues for a series to have raised so early on, that’s because it is… but it’s also a large part of why this show has made such a big impression on me. The art style is odd and taking a lot of getting used to, but it’s really growing on me, and works with the story far better than it looks like it should. To be honest, the sex scene in episode 2 really threw me and I almost stopped watching, as it cranked the weirdometer up a bit high even for me… but I’m very glad I continued watching. Episode 3 is a little more sane, but beautifully, brutally tragic and with a fantastic use of the soundtrack to boot. If these episodes are anything to go by, Kaiba is looking to be a really stand out show with some stunning ideas and fantastic visuals, on top of an emotional core that grabs you and doesn’t let go. The plot that is starting to develop is intriguing, but even the little stories of Warp’s travels have been more than interesting to keep me watching the rest of the series.
Tea and White Noise 
