English Dub Series Review: Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World-

A return to Kino’s classic travels, only with more SPARTAAAAAAA…

Overview

A re-imagining of the 2003 series of the same name, Kino’s Journey follows… the journey… of Kino. Kino is a young… well, biologically girl, but there is some conversations that reveals gender may be meaningless to her. Kino drives across the world on her talking motorcycle Hermes. The world is filled with a multitude of countries, each with their own unique cultures and governments. She has a simple rule, only stay in each place three days. Along the way, she meets many interesting people, including the rebellious, swordsman prince Shizu and his talking dog Riku. Each episode features a new locale, and new stories to discover.

Courtesy: Funimation

Our Take

So, I guess you could figure out from the extremely short overview, this series is light on plot. Really, the only thing linking the episodes are the characters. Some episodes switch over to Shizu as the viewpoint character, but largely, we follow Kino. Each place visited in this show is a commentary on various viewpoints. Like a town where murder is legal, so the populace handles any threats to the community. Or a country full of complete pacifists. Many of these stories were covered by the original series but were done so very differently.

And better. This series has a serious problem with ultraviolence and ham-fisted philosophy. The writers of this adaptation may have seen the original, but all they took away from it was a few scenes where Kino got to fighting. As a result, about one-third of her interactions result in mass murder, and rather than merely observing her environs, she tends to instigate revolution. Episode two has her say she doesn’t want to kill anyone but then turns the entire country into a bloodbath. The final episode (and no, this really doesn’t spoil anything) is merely her going to extreme lengths to kill a flock of sheep.

Courtesy: Funimation

The stories aren’t all that subtle with its moral plays, often heavily favoring certain points of view. Typically, those points of view that Kino isn’t going to kill. Where once we had a gentle show filled with wonder at strange lands, we now have an action show that tries to justify its main characters actions by making her victims out as evil people. The best example of this is an episode where the country is on tank treads. During it, the country runs over the borders and farmlands of another country. Why? Because they can’t stop, and they aren’t interested in going around. Kino instantly takes their side and is even willing to snipe out the other country’s weapons. Why? Well, even though the mobile country is pretty much invulnerable, the victim country’s rocket launchers might damage the mural that the children were painting on the back. The amount of damage being done by the mobile country, and with no reparations, is shocking. But Kino is okay with this because the victim country was charging exorbitant tolls to cross them. Was what they were doing bad? Sure. Bad enough to warrant their country getting run over? Apparently, Kino thinks so.

One of the saving graces is that this show is well animated, on the whole. The crew created a CG animated Kino and Hermes for use in longer shots where the two are riding or performing complex actions together. This pair of models is well crafted and works with the traditional animation that we see. The environments are quite lovely and varied, and the animation is error free. On average, there isn’t much going on with the voice acting. There is one exception, and that is Derrick Snow’s Hermes. He has incredible comedic timing and great sarcastic wit.

Courtesy: Funimation

How To Watch

Honestly, if you are going to watch this over the original, you should do so bit by bit. Grab yourself a cold drink on a night where you need to relax and not think about much. Don’t feel like you have to run through the entire series. Alternately, watch it in the background while you do some other things. The plot of each episode tends to be slow enough that you can miss a few scenes and still get what is going on.

Score

Summary

I've often enjoyed the visuals of this show, and had high hopes for it. Unfortunately, the concept of subtlety is lost on the writers of this show. Its average score would normally be about 6.8, but I feel like the whole is a bit less than the individual parts. Therefore, I give it 6.5 out of 10.

6.5/10