Customer Reviews

Kino's Journey: Complete Collection

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kino's Journey deals with Kino and her motorrad, Hermes, journeying to various locations and exploring the culture of their inhabitants. The story lines of each episode (13 in all and approximately 30 minutes each) are independent of each other and tend to be slowly-paced and have philosophical undertones.

The episodes themselves are presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen format as opposed to 1.33:1 listed on the product details of this page (as of December 2010). The audio tracks consist of 2.0 Japanese and 5.1 English. There is no setup option for subtitles - Japanese audio defaults with English subtitles and English audio defaults with no subtitles. Most dvd players can specify whether or not to turn subtitles on independently of what is selected in the menus. Therefore, it will most likely not be a problem if you want to watch an episode with, say, Japanese audio and no subtitles. However, do note that you will not be able to do this within the menus of the disc themselves.

Despite being labeled as the "complete" collection, the extras that accompanied the 4 volume box set (character sketches, intro and closing themes) are NOT present on this 3 disc set. The only extra is a few advertisement previews for other anime on disc 1.

If you enjoyed Serial Experiments Lain and/or Haibane Renmei, then I would highly recommend this anime as well! I wouldn't recommend Kino's Journey for fans of action-oriented anime.

This is simply my favorite anime of all time. It has just enough action episodes, and the perfect amount of episodes that really make you think. It has a wonderful English dub and wonderful animation. The only problem I ever had was I don't think there were enough episodes about the main character Kino. I would like to have known more of were she got were she is today. But defiantly check this anime out if your looking for something different than you're typical shonen or shojo.

Kino's journey is perhaps the most thought provoking anime I've watched in a while. It totally lacks the violence and sexual content that anime has gained something of a reputation for and chooses to show through exaggeration the various different attitudes of different groups of people. It does a rather objective job of it too. The main character travels around a fictional world, choosing not to interfere at all in the affairs of these groups and merely observes and provides some interesting commentary. The lessons of the stories are perhaps not as original as they could have been, but sometimes lessons need to be retaught.

The only unfortunate thing about this Anime was that hasn't gone beyond these thirteen episodes and it doesn't look like anyone plans to start making more. Which is a pity since the light Novels that it was based on and have gone on much farther by now are only in Japanese.

I love everything about this anime, the fantastic and philosophical aspects of it. But I gave it a 4 out of 5 because I am a fan of the cover art on the other DVD set. I'm almost tempted to buy the other one just for that reason...

I thought that this anime would be about a traveler going on a journey to lots of interesting locales and observing the uniqueness of different cultures. It was about this exactly, however the locales were just too weird. I don't want to spoil any of them but just know that the different cities and towns she observes have traditions, histories, cultures and personalities that could never occur in any sane society. This isn't as apparent in the first couple of episodes but as the show progresses things just get weirder and weirder. If you like your shows to be realistic this isn't for you.

The music and animation are both well done. Especially the opening theme.

Okay, I'll tell you about one small part of an episode to give you an idea of the type of wackyness the main character encounters. At the end of an episode Kino (the main character) Visits a city that seems abandoned. She wanders around the city for three days searching for life because she stays at all the cities for exactly three days. On the third day she runs into a man that tells her the history of the city. There was a monarch who executed anyone who opposed him and led the country to an economic ruin. So eventually his people overthrew him and started a new government. It was ruled by majority voting. It started out fine but then a minority of voters wanted to revive the monarchy because the majority rule system took too long. The majority ruled that the minority should be sentenced to death. After this decision all the voters in the minority of any decision get the death penalty in all future votes. One minority emerges that wants to abolish the death penalty but they're killed as well. Eventually there are only three people left in the city. One of them insists on leaving and is opposed by the other two and is put to death. Out of the two remaining one dies of a cold. The last man left is the one who told this story to Kino. After he finishes telling the story he asks Kino to stay. She refuses and he threatens her with a gun. She and her motorcycle (who talks) vote that anyone threatening someone with a gun be put to death. The man then asks her to leave and she complies.

The storie arcs are all unrelated to each other. Some stories last multiple episodes and some only last half an episode.

I enjoyed this anime a little but the weirdness made it kind of unsatisfying. It's definitely a unique anime though.

This is a curious little anime series, a little bit different from the norm, but I'm not entirely sure it works. The complete series is only 13 episodes long, but rather than the usual extended storyline, Kino's Journey is made up of distinct standalone episodes, each of them seeing the traveller Kino with speaking motorrad Hermes arriving in a new country in an alternate world where the laws that govern society are very different from our own and from one another.

One thing that almost all the countries have in common is that they welcome travellers visiting their country - a fairly infrequent occurrence - and are keen to explain how their society works and show them around. Not in every case - occasionally, the country that Kino visits has been subjected to profound changes caused by experiments on consciousness or technology, that leaves them paranoid not just of outsiders, but of each other. These are interesting fables - a world where each person can read the others' minds, a world where mechanical dolls look and act exactly like humans - but, compressed into 20 minutes of fairly static scenes, they don't really explore the issues raised in any great depth and settle for simple moral solutions. It's an approach that resembles the original Star Trek series and their encounters with alien societies, with a similar reset button at the end to start things afresh next episode.

Each of those episodes is fairly flatly delivered in terms of ideas, animation and voice-acting (the English dub even more dry than the Japanese version), but there are one or two episodes that stand out. One more threatening world sees Kino have to face opponents in deadly battle tournaments before she can leave (a fairly conventional device nonetheless that brings to mind Pokemon and Dragonball Z), and surprisingly, an intriguing and violent background episode on Kino's origins. None of this really adds up to anything significant or really pushes the anime into any new areas, but Kino's Journey does have a definite mood and character of its own.