Kino's Journey -- This Beautiful World.

I'm not even sure how to review this. This is the first anime that ever made me cry. Really, after watching this series, I want to ask... This beautiful world -- What's so beautiful about it? Actually, the very first words we see in this series, before even the title is a short green screen with the words: The world... is not beautiful.

All right, a little low-down. This series is about a traveller named Kino, who journeys from country to country visiting the main town. There, she stays for exactly 3 days, out of fear that otherwise, she'll settle down and never leave. She also rides a talking motercycle named Hermes, who is a "sounding board" of sorts. This is useful because it allows her to speak without lots of monologues, since she spends much of the series alone, or at least isolated. It also acts like "us", trying to understand why she makes some of the choices she makes.

This series uses some very creative and original things. For one thing, it's not a connected series. Since each episode Kino is in a different town, the only things that stay the same are Kino and Hermes. Everything else changes every episode, sometimes two or three times in an episode. It feels more like watching a collection of related short stories than watching an anime. Also, every so often, a green screen with words will pop up. These words are usually the "Moral" of the story, or some other important thing.

This series however, has to be a collection of some of the most horrifying and terrible people ever
collected into a series. This is a very cynical series, which will, at the end, leave you screaming
long into the night "Is there balsam in Gilead???" Part of one episode (1/3 of it) involved these three men who worked the railroad. The first one had been working for 30 years laying rails. He'd just started building the rails and had never gone home. He didn't even know if the company was still in business, or if they'd ever use the rails. After going about 10 more miles, Kino finds another guy, who's been polishing the rails for 29 years, with basically the same story as the first. Then Kino went 10 more miles, to find a man dismantling the rails, and had been for 28 years. (I may have the numbers wrong) The sad thing is, this is one of the happiest stories in the series.

On the other hand, I finally found a series with a worthy ending. But I really wish I had not. The ending was wonderful, and it fit. But it was horrifyingly sad.

The music is great, and the art is gorgeous. It truly felt like watching a series made of impressionist paintings. If I can make it give me screen shots, I'll post a few up here so you can see what I mean. The art is like nothing I've ever seen. It's not the most realistic, but it truly is a beautiful world. A beautiful world, filled with very ugly-hearted people.

Art: 10/10 -- Gorgeous
Music -- 8/10 -- The intro is beautiful, the other music is good in that it's so subtle you hardly notice it, but you'd certainly notice if there was none.
Plot -- 10/10 -- A lot of people will hate this series, I'm sure. I'm not even sure that I like it. But it's one of the most original plot ideas I've seen, so I'm scoring it high.
Characters -- 9/10 -- This series is primarily character. It's all about the people Kino meets. They may all be horrible people, but they're all developed nicely.

In all this is one of the most original series out there. The fact that there's such a small fanbase both shocks me, and at the same time, makes total sense.

My quote for this series:
"Have you ever found the 'real blue sky,' traveller?"
"I think, there's no such thing. There's too many blue skies, how do I know which one is the real one?"


Did you like this series?
What did you like or dislike about it?