Anime Book Club – Kino’s Journey ~The Beautiful World~ Wrap-up

Before I dive too deeply into anything, below you can find links to past weeks’ discussions of Kino’s Journey. As always, feel free to leave a comment on the posts or just enjoy them (hopefully!) as part of your own experience with the series.

Week 1 – Episodes 1 and 2

Week 2 – Episodes 3 and 4

Week 3 – Episodes 5 and 6

Break Week

Week 4 – Episodes 7 and 8

Week 5 – Episodes 9 and 10

Week 6 – Episodes 11 and 12 (END)

 

It’s late evening on a steamy Summer night in the upper Midwest, but as usual I’m safely inside and doing what I love best – sharing my thoughts about great anime. I spent the week thinking about how to close off the voyage we’ve taken over the past several weeks with Kino’s Journey, and realized that I didn’t have a good handle on how I wanted to sum-up the series. To inspire myself, I went looking for other reviews of the show at some of my favorite anime websites, which was probably not the best idea; there are times when I really like an anime series, only to realize that my feelings towards it are grossly out of step with the general consensus. A lot of the time this doesn’t bother me, but there are other times where the general reaction is so negative that my lack of confidence as a writer and a reviewer leads me to believe that my passion is somehow incorrect.

A few years ago I had a similar experience. I was writing weekly reviews of a series called The Perfect Insider, a series that I’ve reaffirmed my love for over multiple subsequent viewings but which I was obviously watching for the first time at that point. What I liked about the series was its philosophical handling of human nature through three characters who represented different points on a spectrum. I also thought its handling of a character whose genius far outweighed her social and emotional intelligence was curiously good; to assume someone with adult-like intelligence as an adult with life experience is a mistake and a crime, and I believe the consequences of that were put on full display in the series in a way that I’d describe as painful, poignant, and beautiful. Anyway, I spent eleven weeks ignoring other reviews and summaries to maintain my own focus, and when I was done writing I rushed out to read these other reviews only to discover that the show had very little love elsewhere on the internet. This was (and is still) immature on my part, but when I read these reviews I didn’t see a difference in opinion; what I saw was a criticism of myself through others’ revilement of a thing I really liked. I identified with what the series was saying and felt like other people didn’t understand it the way that I did, and therefore didn’t care to understand the person that I was (even though the realist in me knows that none of them know me personally or care).

Looking at it now I can see the effects of this sort of personal identification with fictional universes has manifested in truly toxic behavior on the part of large groups of people (*cough*TheLastJedi*cough*). While I wholeheartedly believe that my deeply personal identification with a tale of mental illness and sexual abuse is different in nature from people being angry that Luke Skywalker made bad life choices and women and people of color get to be heroes now, I do feel that geek fandom in general fosters an environment where passions are personal and disagreement equals an attack. My point is really that it’s difficult to disengage when people whose opinions you read and respect don’t share your same feelings.

Most opinions about new Kino I can understand because the original was so incredibly beloved, especially with fans around my same age and fandom experience level. While I didn’t have the language back then to speak more competently about gender as I do now (and I’m still always trying to improve!), what I remember thinking about Kino as a character was that they were a girl for whom gender never seemed to define them, if that makes sense. As someone for whom gender has always been an obvious defining trait (and who spent years and years downplaying and vilifying femininity before getting a clue), I was inspired by Kino’s non-adherence to gender norms. I did a panel at CONvergence many years ago (waaaay back in 2012, wow!) about heroines in anime, and I listed Kino as my favorite for similar reasons. What I learned through reading about the show recently was that 2003 Kino was important to a lot of gender non-conforming and transgender folks, and both Kino’s portrayal in the 2017 series, as well as some of Crunchyroll’s sloppier translation choices in regards to the character, came across as harmful. I can’t really argue against that; while my experience with the show was different, my life experiences are also different.

I can also respect criticism of the stories that this version chose to adapt (I hear they were voted-on by fans, a method which will never be without its problems), or technical things like animation and direction. Those tend not to be my top concerns most of the time, but for fans who are interested in the craft of animation I imagine they’re very “front-and-center.” What I found saddening, though, were the amount of comments and reviews I came across that amounted to “this interpretation of the story is not like the previous interpretation, which I liked a lot, so this one is therefore inferior in every way.” Obviously the commentary wasn’t so lacking in nuance, but I did see a trend in how many folks compared this new series to the original one as a major angle of critique. I think we’re all sort of exhausted by the number of sequels, prequels, and re-boots being produced nowadays, but I can think of at least some examples where they’ve been used to make improvements or correct blatant wrongdoings of their predecessors, so they at least have some value whether we ourselves believe them to be necessary or not. They also don’t have to upend and replace our nostalgic memories of the originals (though they should at least make us question whether those originals were as worthy of praise as we may have thought at the time). I feel like this new version of Kino might become a formative experience for some newer fans and that the older version may not hold the same appeal to them for any number of reasons, so I hope that they aren’t discouraged.

I don’t want to spend my remaining time feeling sad about what other people thought about the series, though. What I’d rather do is talk about what I enjoyed because, in the end, those are the feelings that I’m going to take with me. Aside from the vibrancy of the colors and the depictions of nature throughout the show, which I thought were beautiful to look at, I think what I’ll take away from the experience of watching this series a second time is how deeply it allowed me to think about the social situations of the people living in the various countries Kino encounters. This is probably partly a result of the “deep-dive” format of Anime Book Club, but I feel like even weaker episodes (like episode 12, which I think we can agree was the lightest and silliest of the bunch) still provided some food for thought. Often times I found myself relating aspects of the episodes to current events, which isn’t always something I want out of my anime when I’m using it to escape the harsh realities of the 24 hour news cycle. But sometimes seeing an issue portrayed fictionally helps me to solidify my real-life opinions on it, and that’s something I find valuable.

Ultimately, I hope that no one found their time to be wasted even if the series didn’t resonate with them. And even if it was a waste of time, well, there’s tons more anime out there that you might like more, so head out on your own journey of discovery and see what you can find!

I spent a lot of time thinking about what series I wanted to focus on next. I considered going back to the previous poll and picking something else that got a lot of votes, but instead I’m going to be selfish and pick a favorite of mine that I’ve been wanting to re-watch for quite a while.

Mononoke is an anime anthology series that follows a mysterious Medicine Seller, an individual who identifies mononoke (vengeful spirits) and exorcises them. In order to do so, he must learn the mononoke’s form, the truth of its existence, and the fundamental regret which helped it come into being. Though the series skews towards the horror and supernatural genres, all of the stories have some basis in human emotional reality. What I’ve always liked about the series is that I feel that it speaks to many of my own truths as a woman.

The anime series is based on a three-episode story called Bakeneko, which was a part of another anthology series called Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. That series was released on DVD here many years ago. I own a copy but I believe it to be exceedingly difficult to find since it’s long out of print. I’d like to start with Bakeneko the first week; for those who aren’t comfortable obtaining the show through “questionable means,” perhaps I can work out a stream. I will say that it’s relatively easy to find floating around if you google it.

The series itself is available on DVD for like $12 (or if you prefer not to buy from Amazon it’s only slightly more expensive from Rightstuf), or streaming on Crunchyroll.

I think I’d like to take a book club break next week, but below is a proposed schedule going forward:

Sunday, August 19th – Bakeneko episodes 1-3 (END)

Sunday, August 26th – Episodes 1-2 (Zashikiwarashi)

Sunday, September 2nd – Episodes 3-5 (Umi Bouzu)

Sunday, September 9th – Episodes 6-7 (Noppera-bou)

Sunday, September 16th – Episodes 8-9 (Nue)

Sunday, September 23rd – Episodes 10-12 (Bakeneko II) (END)

Thank you again, everyone, for watching anime along with me. I’m looking forward to another great viewing experience!