#1.5.18

Well, I finished Kino’s Journey, and it was one of the more interesting things I’ve watched.

Every episode manages to contain its own themes that, while they don’t necessarily explore the themes in massive depth, they’re all explored just that right amount to get you thinking about them. And aside from every episode’s individual theme, the whole show explores the idea of travelling and culture very well and in a variety of ways. The locations we visit and the people we meet are all pretty distinct and, while some are definitely more memorable than others, they all leave an impact.

Kino herself is also an interesting character, and the show does a good job at simultaneously giving us a great understanding of her yet making her mysterious. She’s also surprisingly badass, much as I feel weird using that word to describe a travelling 15-year-old somewhat androgynous cute girl. And she’s not just competent for the sake of competence either, her skills are explained and justified. Plus, her backstory, while quite simple, is effective in establishing who she is and why she acts the way she does.

Slight tangent here since I just mentioned her backstory which the first movie explores a little more, can I just say how well the horror in the situation between Kino and “Kino’s mother” was captured? Everything about that lady’s general design was unsettling enough, but the intensity of the camera circling between her and Kino, combined with the subdued reds for colour palette was legitimately disturbing.

On the topic of movies, which I suppose makes this a further tangent, the second one felt somewhat superfluous to me. While I praised the show earlier for how every episode is pretty hecking good, it’s a very formulaic show, and this movie was effectively a regular episode down to the tee but without nearly as many interesting things going on. God damn you could tell it was Shaft behind it though. The directing is completely unlike everything before it, and the art and colour palette are different too. Gotta say, it was actually quite weird seeing movie 2 since everything before was the same studio and had that filter over it that made it kinda look like a CRT.

Back to the show at last, yeah, it’s pretty formulaic. Kino goes to a country, there’s a conflict of some sort, Kino leaves, and that’s it for most episodes. It was fine later on when the formula was well-established and refined and each episode managed to say lots of legitimately interesting things, but it was a bit of a bore early on.

The other aspect of this show that I wasn’t super fond of was Hermes. I liked his (can I even use gendered pronouns?) voice and what comedy he provided was fine enough, but he felt very much there as a way to get more dialogue out of Kino and not have it be jarring. Kino benefits from it, definitely, but Hermes himself didn’t really stand out to me.

Good show all around though, even in spite of my few problems. I said I’d watch the 2017 series today, but I’m gonna save that for a later date since I’m desperate for that K-On rewatch. And hey if the 2017 series is bad anyway then what do I even have to worry about?

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“Contradictions”