English Dub Review: Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- “Country of Radio Waves”

Denial is its own reward… and punishment.

Overview (Spoilers)

Shizu, Riku, and Ti are packing up to leave the beach. Shizu is mostly healed from the stabbing he took, and Ti got some fish on the road… using hand grenades. Well, that’s cute. They pile into the dune buggy and head to the next country. It’s pretty civilized, for the most part. They’re a representative democracy, crime is low, and the economy is up. They’re also accepting immigrants, which is good for the trio. As the gang gasses up the buggy, a blood-soaked man carrying a girl’s head walks across the road to them. Shizu knocks him out when he starts talking like he might just go after them too. The police commend Shizu on his fast action. Apparently, the man was a teacher at a local university, and he had killed his entire class. The authorities aren’t going to charge him with anything, though. You see, this town has a history of random acts like this. They believe that every once in a while, a bad radio signal will get out, and force someone to go berserk. Shizu has some misgivings about this superstition, but they shut him down. Ultimately, though, nothing can be done about it, since anyone going anywhere near the old radio tower goes crazy. Shizu offers to go over and destroy the tower for them since he would be immune as a foreigner. When he arrives, he finds he doesn’t even have to destroy it! It had crumbled to wreckage decades ago. He shows the police the photos… and they claim he’s lying, under the effects of the radio waves! The crowd turns into an angry mob, and they to take Shizu down, but they are stopped by a frightened mother. Ti took her baby… And has a hand grenade. Well, that’s cute. Using the panic to their advantage, they trade up from the child to the police chief and flee the town. Before releasing the police chief, Shizu tells him that they built a new radio tower, even worse than the last, and that the whole town would go crazy the next day. Riku asks him later what that was all about. Was he just trying something else to make the town give up its silly beliefs? Nah, he was just messing with the guy.

Afterwards, they roll into another town, and Shizu leaves Riku and Ti alone as he goes out to earn some money. This is the first time the two have been alone with each other, and Riku isn’t sure what is going on in her head. As soon as she woke up, she gave him a big hug. Then, at breakfast, she is about to eat her croissant and marmalade separate. Afterwards, she decides to go for a walk. After a while, she comes to a stop, steps on her shadow, and mutters stuff Riku doesn’t really understand. Then, she heads back. Croissant and marmalade for dinner, and this time, she only eats a third of it. One chunk, she feeds to Riku, and the other, she leaves on the plate. When Shizu returns, he explains the girl’s rationale. She was raised by AI’s and they didn’t tell her everything about living. They also weren’t very nice. Since their bodies were all black, she associated black with them. Shadows are black, so she stomps on her shadows to prove that those AIs are still gone. She shared her food for a very simple reason: The two of them are her friends, and she wanted to make sure they had food, too. Well, that’s cute.

Our Take

Okay, I enjoyed today’s episode. Again, the back-plot was about an oppressive regime that got overthrown, and its aftermath. Yeah, the writers don’t have much else to work with but the specifics, but that wasn’t the focus of the episode. Instead, we had more time with Team RST, and we’ve built up Ti’s character a considerable bit. It is really disconcerting that her weapon of choice is now hand grenades. Itty, bitty kid likes explosions, and uses them to solve most problems. However, we also get to see how she thinks. I had been expecting the episode to end as they left the Country of Radio Waves, and I think most writers would have ended there. The side bit of a day in Ti’s life was welcome character development, especially since we’ve been getting less and less of that from this show these days. Interestingly enough, the side story is told from Riku’s perspective. This means that we have to try and understand her thought processes just the same as he does. At the same time, it draws the viewers in for the ride. The episode’s theme of living in blind denial of the truth is interesting. We are left with a society that may have even invented an entire mythos of being cyber-slaves just to avoid the unfortunate truth that they were all just murder-prone.

To be honest, I felt like the episode was all right when it came to more technical qualities. The animation wasn’t bad. I didn’t see any errors at all, and they kept pretty good fidelity throughout. I feel like the way they animate Riku’s speech is a bit off. It doesn’t look like he’s really talking. And that’s taking into account that he’s really speaking Japanese. It looks simply like a cycled animation of the mouth opening and closing, like a video game. This may have been an active choice. After all, we don’t exactly know where Hermes talks from. This may be the animators’ way of showing us that his voice doesn’t necessarily come from his mouth. Though the episode was more about Ti, we got a great amount of time with Riku (Christopher Sabat), who had great comedic timing throughout the episode. I love how refined his patterns of speech are. They are Sabat through and through, and it works great for this doggo. Personally, I wish my cat could talk in Sabat’s voice.