Category: Book Club

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!

Good afternoon, all! I decided to take a writing break yesterday to get some errands done. While I’m sure you were anxiously-awaiting this post (maybe?), I wanted to take time and make sure I was happy with it. Since I have the day off anyway, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to postpone it a day. Thank you for waiting.

I’m very pleased with how this book club “session” worked out. While I think active participation diminished over the weeks (this is pretty common from my experience, no worries), I hope that the people who wanted to watch until the end got the chance to do so, and that it was a fun and worthwhile experience. It’s always my goal to broaden people’s horizons with anime, so for those of you who might not have watched the show on your own, I thank you for giving it a try.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There are still two more episodes to talk about, after all. Last week a joked that this series doesn’t really have a climax, but I suspect that episode 11 might fill that position for some of you. It’s one of only a couple stories that have been animated in both the previous animated series and this one. I think, considering how perceptions about identity have become more important over the last several years, that story in particular might resonate even more now than it did then (or maybe I’m just revealing my prior ignorance on the subject by saying so. Who knows?). I should leave the discussion for after the episode recaps, though.

Below are all the previous weeks’ posts and discussions, for those who are interested:

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

I’ll do a wrap-up post next week as well, just to share some final thoughts, and perhaps announce my next choice of title. I don’t think I’ll go through the trouble of holding a vote again; instead I think I’ll just pick something and people are welcome to participate or not as they feel up to it. If anything, these re-watches give me a chance to put together some substantial content for the website and practice my analytical writing, so it’s a win for me either way.

 

Episode 11 – Country of Adults – Crunchyroll – Funimation – Hulu

CW: Stabbing.

Kino and Hermes are traveling through a field of deep red flowers, when Kino decides to stop for a while. This is a place of long-ago memories, some of which Kino decides to share.

Many years ago, Kino was a child in a country near this place. They were a girl with a floral name that’s been lost to memory. In the day’s before Kino’s official transition to adulthood, a traveler arrived in the country – a skinny man named Kino. Looking for a place to stay, he asked the girl her advice – she offered her parents’ inn. While staying there, the man acquired an old motorrad and set to work repairing it. As a traveler, he explains, he and the motorrad enter into a pact for their mutual benefit – the motorrad can take him places much more quickly than he could reach them on foot, and the traveler offers the motorrad the chance to be useful and fulfill its purpose. The conversation shifts to adulthood, and what that will mean to the young girl. She talks about the surgery she will undergo on her twelfth birthday which will “remove the child” from her, allowing her to become an adult and hold a job. Kino is troubled by this, and offers an alternative – perhaps adulthood can be obtained through means other than a surgery. Perhaps adulthood means something more than being able to tolerate drudgery and perform a difficult job. Perhaps adulthood isn’t a concrete thing at all.

The girl seems affected by this revelation, and tells her parents the next day that she would prefer not to undergo the surgery and asks to become an adult some other way. This goes against all teachings of their society and the girl is berated as a sinful creature by her parents and the other adults in the room. Her father retrieves a kitchen knife to dispose of his defective “property.” Kino, the traveler, is blamed for poisoning the child’s mind. As the girl’s father lunges with the knife, Kino blocks him and is stabbed in the heart. As the adults attempt to interpret this turn of events, the girl hears a small voice telling her to get on the motorrad and ride off. As she escapes to a field of red flowers, she offers her name – Kino, like the traveler. The motorrad’s name is Hermes, the name of the traveling man’s old friend.

 

Episode 12 – Fields of Sheep – Crunchyroll – Funimation – Hulu

CW: Animal Cruelty

Kino and Hermes are in between towns, riding across beautiful verdant land and enjoying the lovely weather. In the distance they spot a herd of sheep sleeping among the trees. Though they make efforts not to disturb the creatures, the sheep wake up and are soon following the traveler and motorrad. In a short time there are sheep stalking them on either side of the road, and it becomes evident that they’re not the gentle creatures one might expect. Their aggression is certainly out of character, and Kino makes some evasive maneuvers to avoid them. Unfortunately, Kino reaches a literal impasse – a ravine cuts through the land and there’s nowhere to go. Kino separates from Hermes to descend into the ravine and hopefully find a solution to retrieve the motorrad later.

Kino finds an abandoned vehicle stuck trying to cross where the ravine is much more narrow, and discovers how its driver met a tragic end. Kino gets the truck un-stuck and returns for Hermes, going to extremes to cut through the herd and prevent the sheep from attacking. Unfortunately in this situation, violence is really the only answer and Kino has to use both a persuader and some good old-fashioned gas-fueled fire to keep the sheep at bay. After an exciting ramp-aided launch across the ravine, Kino and Hermes make their way to the next town, somehow still in one piece. They learn from the town guard that the sheep are descended from fighting sheep, bred to battle for the sake of gambling. They were released to the wild once activists began to protest. The guard is happy to learn that the sheep are still living their lives out on the plains, and Kino doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth of the encounter.

 

Discussion Thoughts and Questions (feel free to share additional ones in the comments!)

Episode 11 is a fascinating episode to me in a lot of ways. Speaking from a “meta” perspective, the timing of the episode within the series as a whole has definitely been a point of discussion within the fandom. There’s an argument that the story, which reveals Kino’s former life and thus their original gender presentation, is treated as a sort of “prize” for viewers; that it over-emphasizes the fact that Kino was once a girl (something that has come up through other characters’ observations once or twice already throughout the series). I can see how that might be the case – several times, in response to being asked about their gender (or called a gender-related term like “boy,” for example), they’ve responded that they’re “just Kino” (the implied interpretation being “stop that, and it’s actually none of your damn business.”). Having this story occur so late in the game, after we as viewers have likely become unattached from the notion that Kino’s gender is some information that we need to know, only brings it to the forefront again and muddies the waters, or so it’s been said.

Having watched the entire series a second time at this point, I feel a little bit differently now. As a viewer I feel like I was effectively disconnected from needing to know about Kino’s gender, and watching this episode didn’t really change that. I had no moment of “Oh wait, Kino is a girl! This changes my entire perception of the series as a whole!” Perhaps it’s partly because I made a conscious decision going in that, even though I already knew this “secret” from past viewings of this anime and the 2003 Kino series, that I would respect what I thought the intent of the character was. The little girl feels like some other person from a long, long time ago, a person half-asleep or not fully-formed. Definitely not the Kino that we’ve grown to know over the last several episodes. Considering that the episode’s core seems to be focused on asking the question of what truly defines someone as an adult, I think it makes a lot more sense to look at it from that perspective.

I think in our society we have a bit of an obsession with trying to define adulthood while also having a troubling lack of awareness of what being an adult actually means in a substantive sense. We try to set an age of majority – 18 years to vote and fight, 21 to drink, 16 to drive a car (but much later to rent one). I suppose for legal purposes there has to be something concrete and numerical in place, but numbers ignore the incredible range of maturity that exists among different people at various ages, as well as some other things like biological brain development (I’ve heard that the brain doesn’t reach a point of full maturity until around age 25 in most humans, and yet we ask people much younger than that to make life-altering decisions on a regular basis). It’s not as if a switch flips at certain ages and everyone who has that number of years under their belt is suddenly capable of taking on a new set of responsibilities.

Our ideas of what an adult should be like and what adulthood ought to entail are often confused; they’re also focused around activities and expectations that aren’t achievable for everyone, or if they were would severely limit our society if everyone chose to adhere to them. These beliefs are expressed plainly in this episode – hold a job (and remember, it’s not “work” if it doesn’t completely suck!), get married, have children (and raise them to believe what’s proper and correct), and uphold the tenets of society to live a proper adult life. Spoken by the young girl to Kino the traveler these things come across as decidedly negative, and yet they aren’t far off from the expectations we have for ourselves if we’re being completely honest. Kino the traveler doesn’t fit the definition of adulthood since he enjoys his life and lives it freely and without limiting himself to one place and function, and yet he’s clearly not a child because he’s physically grown beyond childhood and he’s not controlled by anyone. I think many of us would find his way of life admirable, if not actually attainable; whether that’s a limit of our own minds or the knowledge that that type of freedom, if acted-out by everyone, would also not bode well for society as a cohesive unit, is up to interpretation.

There are some other thoughts I have about this story, but I think I’m going to save them for next week’s wrap-up rather than introduce them here because I think they fit in more widely with some of the series’ broader themes.

1. What, if anything, defines adulthood for you? Is it a specific set of traits, an age, or something completely different?
2. Do you think that this episode is specifically commenting on any specific cultural attitudes, or do you think it’s broader than that?
3. What’s your opinion on Kino’s backstory and the timing of this episode?

Episode 12 is certainly amusing. I’m not sure how I feel about it as a note of finality considering how so many other episodes sparked a lot of conversation about various aspects of our society, but in a way I can’t fault the creators for wrapping things up on a decidedly lighter note. Episode 11 is definitely kind of an endpoint; we learn about how Kino’s journey started after seeing them in action in so many different situations. Episode 12 is sort of like a bonus OVA that didn’t fit in with the tone or arc of the series as a whole.

Despite being goofy, I think the episode does introduce yet another situation where people who think that they’re doing things for the purposes of good might not have taken the consequences of their actions into consideration. I’m mostly against using animals for sport, especially violent sport; I agree that they shouldn’t be imprisoned and used for the purposes of betting any longer. But the sheep were bred for a certain temperament and even in the wild they continue to express that; they’re fearless and strong, and aren’t deterred by threats from human beings. To put them out to pasture and expect them to live a happy life as normal sheep is foolish, and to expect them to treat humans, the beings that captured them and caused them to be how they are, with respect is ignorant. They are what they know how to be, and unfortunately Kino (as well as the traveler that came before them) ends up at the wrong end of things.

I also want to note that this scenario reminded me of the video game Oblivion – there’s an empty village filled only with sheep, and as it turns out the sheep are all people who were transformed into their current form in some sort of accidental magic way. The very silly, human-like bleating of the sheep as they’re run into and tossed-aside by Kino and the truck just made me remember that from long ago.

I do like how this episode wraps up, with Kino taking a well-deserved nap in a hammock. Kino says something that got me thinking a little bit – “You can change your situation however you like, depending on how you think of it.” While I don’t buy into the idea that one’s life can magically be transformed through the power of positive thinking (I’ve been told by people much of my adult life that I just need to “choose not to be depressed” and have a better attitude about life – excuse my language but those people can kindly go fuck themselves), I do think that some situations benefit from being examined from a different perspective. A situation might seem disappointing, but may also offer up a different opportunity in the place of an intended one. Sometimes someone may seem to be rude or unfriendly, but they may have something difficult going on in their life and it might not be all about you. And sometimes a journey comes to its end, but that end opens up the possibility of a new beginning. It can be sad to finish a favorite book, manga, film, or anime and it might be difficult to leave those beloved characters and settings behind. But there are always new books and manga, and the internet is jam-packed with hundreds of new anime to watch, in amounts un-consumable by any one person. I think that’s a good way to look at things.

As usual, feel free to sound off below. I’ll be back next week with a wrap-up post, and I’ll try to come up with a great entry for the next Anime Book Club!

We’re getting very close to the climax of Kino’s Journey (well, if a series like this can have a climax, that is). Rewatching it in this way has given me a much deeper appreciation for the series than I might have had before, and I really did like it quite a bit before sitting down and analyzing every detail of each episode. I don’t think that every anime series can or should have to stand up to deep scrutiny and there’s nothing wrong with being straightforward and entertaining. I honestly don’t know what I would do if something like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure suddenly felt the need to become emotionally complex and address social issues in some way. It just wouldn’t feel correct (and I doubt it would be even half as entertaining). But as far as Kino is concerned, I’m glad I didn’t have the same initial reaction that some other reviewers and fans of the earlier adaptation had, because I think this adaptation has its own set of charms that make it worthwhile and it certainly doesn’t slouch when it comes to introducing moral and ethical quandaries!

Below are previous weeks’ posts, as usual. Check them out and let me know if you agree or disagree with my analyses (or just have something additional to say).

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

Good afternoon, all. This post feels like a bit of a break for me, since as soon as CONvergence was over I went right to writing first episode impressions for the Summer anime season as per this blog’s mission statement from the distant past. I’m trying to keep a good pace while understanding that I’m just one person and shouldn’t expect to match websites with paid writers or blogs with multiple bloggers working simultaneously; comparison is the thief of joy and I started writing just to share my opinions for fun. I think for right now I’m just happy to be giving my writing muscles a good stretch and a workout with a couple thousand words a day or so. I’m also trying not to worry too much about quality, though that’s more difficult for an anxious perfectionist like me; I feel embarrassed when I miss spelling errors or forget to delete or edit things before I post. But that’s just how I am.

We’re now into the second half of Kino’s Journey, and I’ve loved reading people’s thoughts so far. I’ve been pretty poor at responding, so apologies, but that’s more because I tend to see comment emails arrive while I’m at work and then forget to log back in after I get home. I’ll be trying to remember to stay more involved going forward.

Previous week’s posts and discussions are linked below; as usual, feel free to keep discussing and sharing as you feel able and willing to do so.

Week 1 – Episodes 1 and 2

Week 2 – Episodes 3 and 4

Week 3 – Episodes 5 and 6

Break Week

Hi everyone. I’m fresh off both an exhausting and rejuvenating weekend attending and presenting at CONvergence (I’m not attending on Sunday due to a family event). As I mentioned, I don’t have the personal bandwidth to post about and discuss new episodes this week (I’m going to try to spend some of that energy attempting some first episode impressions), but I did want to post a little something for people to discuss (if they like) how they feel about the series so far. I feel like we’ve come so far with the series in just three weeks and it’s making the show feel really short to me for some reason. I know twelve episodes is a drop in the bucket depending on how you watch anime (I’ve been known to marathon a couple of series of that length in a day – I don’t recommend it) but in my mind it felt longer when I watched it through the first time. It speaks a bit to how fleeting anime fandom seems; there’s so much anime being produced at one time nowadays that it can become difficult to focus on and appreciate series that might have had more impact when we were in the dark years of the anime bust.

For reference, links to previous weeks’ posts and discussions are below:

Week 1 – Episodes 1 and 2

Week 2 – Episodes 3 and 4

Week 3 – Episodes 5 and 6

Here are some general things to think about in case you’d like some more structure:

1. So far, what have been your favorite/least favorite countries (or groups of people/general conglomerations/societies)? Why do you think you’re either drawn to or put off by these entities in particular? If you had to live in one of these places, which one would you pick?
2. What episodes have made you think the most about your personal convictions or morals (whether to question/examine them or confirm them)?
3. What are your thoughts on Kino as a character at this point in the series? Do you find them to provide a good entry point to experience the various societies in the series?
4. Do you have any other general thoughts or feelings (both are valid in my opinion!) on the show?

For me, it’s difficult to pick a “favorite” country because I feel as though the MO of this series is that many of the societies are flawed in some very obvious, fundamental way which makes it easy to say “nope.” In real life the negative aspects of our societies tend to be more insidious and so it’s easier to examine them as a whole; each place is a mish-mash of various traits that defies very simple descriptors like “good” and “bad.” If I had to pick one place to live, I think it would be the moving country; ignoring the fact that it tend to leave a path of destruction (well… I suppose that’s hard to ignore), it’s technologically advanced and seems like a comfortable place to live. I like to think that perhaps if I lived there I could help contribute to a solution wherein the movement of the country could leave less of a destructive footprint while still maintaining the preferred lifestyle of the people there.

One the other side, I’d have to say that, at least based on what we see on screen, my least favorite society is the one which kept Photo as a slave. I didn’t really go into it during the formal discussion because I try to make a point of not leading the discussion in a particular direction (I can’t say I’m always successful), but the feelings I had towards the people in that society were dramatically negative to the point of revulsion. I think that a lot of things that humans do are understandable and forgivable; sometimes our reactions and solutions are just the best we have at the time. But the mental gymnastics required to dehumanize a person or a group of people are so unknowable to me and their effects so terrible that I honestly have to say that when those people all died I felt that some sense of universal justice had prevailed. Not to mention (and I’m also sad I didn’t go into this more/further last week) the ills of that group seem to include a predisposition for misogyny/toxic masculinity based mostly on the desires of the young boy to purchase Photo and beat her to death to prove his ability to “be a man.” Expressions of it tend not to be quite so blatant in real life, but in this episode it was just the cherry on top of the shit sundae that was this awful group of people.

For the second question, I think I’d have to say that the episode about the ship country probably made me consider things happening in the real world more closely than I usually do. I worry a lot about my country’s relations with others and what amount of interaction/meddling is the right amount, even if the situation is dire and there’s aid we could be providing. I think that we don’t always consider what about another culture may make our influence and interactions challenging or even insulting, since it seems to me that there’s always an implication that we occupy some moral and cultural high ground and by accepting our aid the other culture will then become exactly like our own. That’s a roundabout way of saying that Shizu does what he thinks is the right thing without having all of the information he needs to ensure that he’s correct, and I appreciate seeing that portrayed.

I think Kino is interesting to me because they occupy a space that’s between an observer of other cultures and a full participant in them, and that in turn feels wrong somehow. While I sometimes like to pretend that I have a neutral eye when I watch anime (and people like to pretend that “good reviewers” approach their subject with complete neutrality and lack of emotion), it’s clearly not true and frankly that standard is impossible (and this can make people so angry). Similarly, Kino is a focal point but also a person with a history. At this juncture we’re not informed about their backstory and so I think it’s easier to attempt to see them as a neutral party in order to get our own bearings, but when they don’t interact neutrally and sometimes do things counter-intuitively to how we might think a “good guy” would behave, it can be disorienting. Having seen the series before I have some insight into Kino, but for now I’m trying to push that aside and consider them at face value. Trying to work through complicated moral quandaries myself and then watching the person who is ostensibly our POV character act differently is certainly an interesting mental exercise.

Generally, I really like this series (and the previous Kino series, too). I continue to be impressed by how though-provoking it is, as well as its ability to leave me feeling unsettled. At the convention this weekend I attended several panels where the discussions prompted me to consider my own feelings and biases, and in some sense I feel like this series similarly serves to challenge the way I typically approach anime and my default feelings I have about how the world works. Though many of the scenarios are simplified, I feel like they’re a good jumping-off point for considering some of the more challenging situations we encounter in life.

I hope you’ve been getting as much out of the series as I have! We’ll be continuing next Sunday with episodes 7 and 8, so this is a great time to catch up with the show if you’ve been busy.

Many, many apologies for how late this is this week. I went into work on Sunday for something that was supposed to take an hour, and ended up leaving around midnight after many issues cropped up. Never underestimate the ability of real life to interfere with one’s ability to enjoy anime!

This week, I’m in a mad dash to finish this post before I get called into work for some weekend stuff that I (*ugh*) volunteered to do. I don’t know if this is true for others, but when I volunteer for that sort of thing I always justify it by telling myself “oh, it’s just for an hour” or whatever, but as the time approaches I get grumpy about my weekend being chopped up into smaller segments. I was also up very late last night watching a truly epic speed run of Final Fantasy VI live for SGDQ; the run finished up a little bit past 2am CST, which for someone of my age and sleep requirements is very, very late. Definitely worth it to watch it as it happened, but now my brain feels like oatmeal and my body feels wrecked.

Enough about my physical and mental composition, though. I hope everyone has been having a good week, and that you’ve been enjoying (or at least had some mentally-stimulating thoughts about) Kino. This week will mark the halfway point of the series. Related to that somewhat, next week will be a break from the watch-along, since I will be at CONvergence, a local sci-fi/fantasy/media convention. But don’t fret! I’ll put up a discussion post so people can catch up and share their thoughts and opinions on the series to that point.

Previous Weekly Discussions

Week 1 – Episodes 1 and 2

Week 2 – Episodes 3 and 4

 

Episode 5 – Country of Liars – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation

This episode is comprised of a couple of shorter vignettes, both of which are broadly centered around the theme of lies.

In the first, Kino passes through a country which owes its peaceful way of life to the intervention of a traveler who visited many years ago and eventually settled down and ousted the corrupt government. Kino visits a small museum dedicated to this traveler, located in the traveler’s former home. Kino and Hermes are immediately struck by how much of the information about the traveler’s supplies is grossly misinterpreted – a “gardening trowel” would have been used to dig toilet pits, and a “lucky knife” was actually a cheap souvenir from another country. The tour guide is enthusiastic and misinformed, which seems fairly innocuous until Kino is brought to a back room where the traveler’s motorrad is displayed in its own display. Kino and Hermes ask for some privacy, and they begin to speak with the motorrad. Being stored in a museum is no place for a vehicle that was created to travel the world and the motorrad now exists in its own personal hell, begging Kino to take it from that place or to dismantle it, both things that Kino cannot do. There is a small ray of hope, though, when a little boy asks Kino how he could become a traveler; Kino suggests that he go to the museum and ask the motorrad there the same question.

In the second story, Kino arrives at the gates of a country which recently underwent a revolution. They’re met by a strange man who’s asking after his lost lover; he only settles down when a young woman, his housekeeper, comes to take him back home. While in town, Kino learns the story of the man’s situation. During the time leading up to the revolution, the man had a lover – a young farm girl living on the outskirts of the country. When the time came to oust the corrupt royal family, the man threw a grenade that destroyed the royal family’s escape vehicle. In that car was the women, actually one of the princesses who enjoyed spending time outside the palace. Rather than tell the man the tragic truth of the situation, his cohorts made up a lie that his lover was just traveling, and that she would return someday. The only person willing to put up with this and help him in his mental state was the housekeeper, a traveler who was hired to fill the role.

Soon Kino learns that the layer of lies goes even deeper when they stop for tea with the man and the housekeeper. The housekeeper is indeed the former princess; the people in the exploded vehicle were merely body doubles. She doesn’t mind the arrangement she has now; she gets to be close to her lover until the end of time, and she’s happy even if the man will likely never be able to see her as who she truly is. But perhaps the man is simply another liar; he races after Kino and explains that he wants things to be the way that they are.

  

Episode 6 – In the Clouds – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation

Content warning: Physical and mental abuse. Suicide-by-firearm.

High up in the mountains where the clouds make it difficult to see the path ahead, a traveling group of several families sets up to make camp. With the group is a girl dressed in rags and led along on a chain; in a previous country the citizens didn’t have enough money to trade this group for supplies, but they did have an orphan girl whose services they offered in place of currency. Now the group treats her like a subhuman slave, not only tasking her with chores, but beating and harassing her. In the girl’s former country challenges of this nature were considered a spiritual test and it was forbidden to hate, harm, or wish ill to other people. She takes this to heart, despite plenty of ridicule from her “masters,” and continues her thankless job of carrying supplies, setting up camp, and preparing ingredients. She’s given a pile of herbs to wash in the stream, and this seems to trigger something in her, but for now it’s just a passing thought.

As the group sits down to eat their meal, the girl suddenly realizes something about the herbs; the ones growing at their altitude are poisonous, and the poison has likely infused every ounce of the stew that was prepared. When she tries to warn the others, she finds herself unable to speak. They’ve already started to consume it anyway. Without hesitation, she starts to eat her share as well, intending to die alongside the others. One of the children throws a rock and knocks the bowl out of her hand, then ridicules her for not using a spoon. The situation escalates and she’s knocked unconscious by another rock. When she wakes up, the meal is over. Soon enough all the members of the group begin to drop, the poison taking effect. Her last effort to die with the others is thwarted when the owner of the gun she tries to shoot uses it to kill himself.

In the silence, the girl hears a small voice, and finds a small, scrappy motorrad in the back of one of the wagons. Like most motorrads, this one longs for the freedom of the open road. It also talks the girl out of her death wish and convinces her that the deaths of the others weren’t because of her; their lack of knowledge and unwillingness to listen did them all in. As the only survivor and the “luckiest” one there, it’s the girl’s duty to continue to survive and live her life, or so says this talking vehicle. In the end, the girl takes this opportunity to become a reborn person with a renewed sense of purpose.

   

 

Discussion Thoughts and Questions (feel free to share additional ones in the comments!)

The first time I watched episode 5, what struck me as most important or worthy of thought was the situation with the motorrad in the museum. There’s a concept in Japanese folklore of a tsukumogami, an object or tool that, once reaching some old age (traditionally a hundred years but I don’t think that’s always taken literally) acquires a spirit of its own (or becomes a youkai if it gets thrown out for some reason, uh-oh!). Whether motorrads are imbued with some consciousness upon their creation, or whether they operate somewhat like tsukumogami and come alive once they’ve been used to travel the world and maintained in good condition, is something worth speculating about. The fact is, though, from what we can tell they’re some sort of sentient existence that is only really fulfilled when being used for their intended purpose. At best, the people of the country Kino is visiting drastically misunderstands a motorrad’s purpose, and in search of a way of demonstrating respect for their traveler-turned-leader, have inadvertently been causing harm.

Upon revisiting the episode, though, I became more focused on the concept of lying, specifically how misunderstandings, wrong interpretations, and the desire to create a mythology all contribute to the series of lies we all tell ourselves in order to feel good about the groups to which we choose to align. It’s almost comical how the tour guide explains the uses of the various tools kept within the glass cases in the museum; I assume she either doesn’t know the truth about the commode-trowel and the cheap knife, or has some vested interest in making her country look good to an outsider (depending on many factors, it could easily be either). It got me thinking about all the goofy little myths we have in the US, some of which are based on complete fabrications and are even harmful to certain groups of people. We talk about the “first Thanksgiving” as if it was truly the breaking of bread between Native people and European settlers around a long wooden table, and they all had turkey and stuffing and had a great time, when in fact the majority of that image was a happy little fabrication to create a new holiday and which we continue to use to make ourselves feel good about invading a land where people were already living. We fool ourselves into believing that George Washington was beyond reproach – he was a slave owner for essentially his entire life. We use the “I Have a Dream” Martin Luther King Jr. to berate people who are demonstrating and fighting for their civil rights in the modern day, when in fact they are only carrying on Dr. King’s tradition. And don’t even get me started on blond, blue-eyed Jesus Christ (I prefer Japanese Jesus and his BFF, Buddha). My point is that history is written by the privileged and is tainted by that point of view to some degree no matter what. We don’t really know what the traveler did in the past to change the government of that country and get rid of its corruption; who’s to say that it isn’t just differently-corrupt in the time that Kino has come to visit?

I suppose that this does indirectly advocate for Kino’s way of life – the only way to see the truth of the world is to travel and see it for yourself.

The second half of the episode was interesting in how it directly featured a complete web of lies that ultimately seemed to have reached an equilibrium. I think I’m still trying to interpret if all the parties involved were truly happy with their situation, or whether they were, in fact, also lying to themselves.

1. This is maybe more opinion than interpretation, but what are your thoughts about the country from the first segment and how truthful or not their history might be? Did you catch any evidence that I may have missed that gives more perspective into the situation? Do you think the traveler/president was actually such a great person, or do you think he may have replaced one form of corruption with another.
2. As mentioned, the second story is so full of various lies that it becomes difficult to tell whether anything about it is really truthful. It seems as though much of the lying is done to preserve the feelings (or the tenuous sanity) of others. do you think this is better than the alternative (telling the full truth and facing some kind of consequence)? Are these kinds of lies as bad as those created to deceive or dupe other people?
3. In the end, it appears that both the man and the housekeeper are lying to one-another and are aware of it, since they both reveal that to Kino separately. What reasons do you think there are for revealing this to a total stranger?

Episode 6 is a bit of a different beast, but to continue with this week’s theme, it also features a pretty large lie-by-omission; the poisonous nature of the herbs growing at the high altitude campsite. Moreso, though, I’d say the episode is about a kind of rebirth. I found it interesting that the slave/Photo was so adherent to a particular religion, especially to the extent that it guided the way that she carried herself and accepted the actions of the others who were not only keeping her in captivity, but additionally treating her especially terribly. As someone who isn’t religious in that way, I find it difficult to relate to that situation. Of course, the concept of rebirth in that context becomes very important – Photo (or proto-Photo?), through finding a new perspective (the wisdom of the motorrad), becomes essentially reborn into a new way of thinking, a new purpose, and a free existence.

Another thing I liked about this episode that only really occurred to me later on was something stated at the beginning and pretty visible in the opening and ending moments – the clouds at that altitude are so thick that it makes it difficult to see the road ahead. I think lack of sight (or foresight) and knowledge is definitely a concept that plays heavily into what happens here, whether you’re talking about the cooks not identifying the poisonous herbs, or the fact that the slave who they mercilessly mistreated would turn out to be the person who could have prevented their deaths. I found it interesting that Kino laments their lack of knowledge, and acknowledges that they might find themselves in a similar situation somewhere down the line someday.

1. For those of you who are religious, or believe a set of teachings that you use to help guide your actions, I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this episode and your feelings about Photo’s mode of existence before and after.
2. Photo feels responsible for the deaths of the others because she can’t bring herself to warn them in time. I think most of us can understand why this might occur. Do you think a lie-by-omission that results in harm to others is as bad as raising a hand to them directly?

Thanks again for the leeway this week with the timing of the post. Remember, next week is a week off, but I’ll have a placeholder post for people to discuss the show so far.

 

Good morning, all. I’m trying to get this out a bit early today since I’ll be out of the house for a while on Sunday afternoon. I would also like any newcomers to know that posts for previous weeks will be open indefinitely; even if you’re starting late (or seeing this post several weeks or months after the fact), I’d love to hear your thoughts on the episodes and I see every comment that gets posted, so it won’t be overlooked. Additionally, I did a few tweaks on the back end of the site which should make it a little easier to post comments and subscribe to comment threads, so you can get notified when someone replies. There’s also a way you can subscribe to the site itself and be notified when new posts go up; there’s a spot to enter your email on the right sidebar (just below the calendar). I’ve tested it out and it works.

This week we’ll be covering episodes 3 and 4 of the series. I felt that the two episodes last week worked out to be a pretty good pair, with a sort of a shared theme being “why do people kill others?” This week, if I’m remembering properly from my earlier viewing, there’s also a kind of similarity between the two episodes, but I’ll save that for the discussion.

Previous Weekly Discussions:

Week 1 – Episodes 1 and 2

Episode 3 – Bothersome Country – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation

Content Warning: Use of military weaponry.

Kino encounters a setback while traveling which doesn’t present an immediate solution, so decides to sleep on it until they come up with some way to address it. While Kino is napping, Hermes feels the ground begin to rumble. They first suspect an earthquake, but the source of the shaking turns out to be something much less natural – it’s a huge country on wheels, traveling across the land on an unstoppable, never-ending journey.

Kino hails the country and they seem very welcoming. They’re met at ground level by a diplomat, who then accompanies them above and gives them a tour. The country is very clean and modern, and runs on caterpillar tracks that are almost always in motion (if they stop for too long, the giant generator that powers the country will overheat and explode). There are cameras hovering outside the metal borders that send back images of what’s going on outside. The top floor is a beautiful park – the one place where the sun shines and people can enjoy the natural light. The children about to graduate from primary school are even painting a striking mural on the outside wall of the country, depicting the most memorable sight they witnessed during their days in school. Kino is impressed by the place’s modernity and the many creature comforts (like clean sheets and hot water – very important to a traveler who’s used to drinking from dirty streams and rarely getting to bathe). The place seems like a dream.

It’s a few days into Kino’s stay when the host country encounters an obstacle – another country whose border wall spans the area between two mountains. This country is understandably unhappy about potentially having their assets (infrastructure and agricultural fields) crushed beneath the wheels of a giant vehicle, and once negotiations go sour (almost immediately), they open fire. While the missiles don’t have much of an effect on the strong outer walls of the moving country, they do begin to mark up the children’s mural. Kino volunteers to take out the missile tracking system in order to prevent any further damage, and is hailed as a hero when their shots deftly hit their targets (with no loss of human life in the process). After the ordeal is over, Kino continues traveling, having used their time aboard the moving country to avoid their earlier setback.

  

Episode 4 – Ship Country – Crunchyroll – Hulu – Funimation

Content Warning: non-lethal gun violence and a stabbing injury.

Shizu and Riku continue to look for a permanent place to settle. At the shore, they encounter a giant ship whose population is there to trade for supplies. This famous “ship country” is as mysterious as it is huge, and this piques Shizu’s interest. He and Riku board the ship to both gain passage to the Western continent and to see what, if anything, its cloaked figures are hiding.

Once aboard, Shizu is given a choice by the country’s leaders: either join them and serve as an overseer to the workers living in the ship’s belly, or join those workers in their labor and living conditions. Shizu chooses the latter. The people living in the ship’s internals seem perfectly kind and welcoming to the traveler in their midst. They provide Shizu with a guide, a very quiet girl named Tifana or “Ti” for short. Ti doesn’t say much, but she does show Shizu around the ship, including some abandoned areas in disrepair. Shizu becomes concerned because there are so many seemly essential areas of the ship that are falling apart, flooded, or otherwise inaccessible and it’s soon clear that the country won’t be afloat for much longer unless something is done to address the maintenance situation. The working population (who as Shizu begins to notice, don’t actually seem to be doing much or have anything to do in the first place) seems unconcerned, and claims that the overseers will take care of them. Shizu decides to discuss the issue directly with the leadership.

The overseers are specifically uninterested in talking the matter over, and send one of their members to silence Shizu. That individual turns out to be Kino, who also boarded the ship some time ago and chose to aid the overseers when given the initial option. When Shizu explains the situation with the ship he then invites Kino to join him in his quest to get the overseers to see reason. When they arrive atop the leaders’ tower, however, the situation becomes even stranger. The overseers ask Shizu whether his concern over the populace indicates that he plans to become their king. When he answers somewhat in the affirmative, the overseers collapse into nothingness before their eyes. Shizu brings the ship ashore and sets the people free, but instead they become angry and return to the ship’s underbelly. They’ve never known life outside the ship, the land doesn’t have the comforting tremors that they’re used to, and who does Shizu think he is, anyway? As they’re leaving and the doors are closing, Ti remains. She was an outsider to begin with, abandoned by her parents and shunned by the other humans on the ship. The overseers, really a complex AI system, raised her. Now they’re abandoning her, just as she was abandoned by her blood family. It’s only after a tense few moments that Shizu invites Ti to join Riku and himself on their travels. Kino leaves, perhaps to meet them again someday after Shizu finds a permanent settlement.

   

 

Discussion Thoughts and Questions (feel free to share additional ones in the comments!)

I mentioned in the opening of the post that I felt that these episodes, much like last week’s episodes, had some similarities that made them a surprisingly good pair. Last week we talked a lot about the morals, ethics, and rules-lawyering related to how the act of killing is seen and portrayed in the different countries and stories depicted in episodes 1 and 2. This time the initial similarities between the two episodes is more visual and physical – they both involve countries that are constantly on the move and the unique issues and problems that occur as a result of this. As one would expect, though, both takes provide some unique insight into the types of consequences that occur as the result of such a massive conglomeration of parts and people being anything but stationary.

Episode 3 is interesting to me because of how conflicted I was by the end. The citizens and leadership of the moving country all seem very nonchalant about the inevitable destruction involved in their constant travels. The diplomat expresses some minor sadness about the huge tracks they leave in their wake (“Anyone who travels leaves their mark behind”), but since the consequence of their not moving is their inevitable destruction from their overheating generator, it appears that any other ethical dilemmas resulting from their continued movement are outweighed by their duty to survive. This is all well and good until they literally trample over another country’s agricultural fields to make their forward progress. The walled country is nominally given a choice – either get out of the way willingly, or by force – but is this really a choice? On the other hand, the walled country seems like it’s populated by grade-a jerks – it’s not because they start shooting off missiles at the moving country, because that to me seems like a typical, expected response. As we learn at the end of the episode, however, they tried to extort Kino when Kino attempted to pass into their country, by attempting to take one of Kino’s weapons as a “toll.” It sounds as though the wall they put in place was explicitly to facilitate the strong-arming of people attempting to pass through, so perhaps the world would be better off if that country had a hole bored through said wall.

1. My first question is related to that line of thinking – what are your thoughts on the justification either side has to their position (moving forward to ensure the survival of their country and citizens, versus the right to build a wall and collect (perhaps unreasonable) tolls on others)? It’s stated in the episode that every country (much like every person) causes some degree of bother or inconvenience to others simply by existing. Do you think that this is enough justification for what transpires?
2. Throughout the episode, the term 迷惑 (meiwaku – trouble, annoyance, bothersome) is used repeatedly. It’s a concept that’s culturally important to Japanese people – they don’t want to be a source of “meiwaku” to others. Do you think that this term and concept adequately indicates the degree to which each country is affected by one-another?
3. It seems to me that there might be other solutions for the traveling country’s issue of their overheating generator; that its overheating could be addressed in some other way, if they decided to expend some resources studying it (they’re clearly technologically advanced enough to do so). How do you interpret the fact that they’ve chosen to let it be?
4. I found myself interpreting this episode (as well as episode 4) in terms of things that countries do and have done in “real life.” While there hasn’t yet been a case where a country has physically driven over a neighboring country (that I know of), there are almost countless cases of countries having invaded others, imposing their will and leaving much more than footsteps behind. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Episode 4 was compelling to me not so much due to the makeup of its moving country, but more so for the consequences to its bottle civilization which after many generations eventually came to the surface. Like the moving country from episode 3, there are clearly some issues that could have been addressed at some earlier time that would have allowed the ship to remain functional and the populace to have a greater concept of the outside world and their potential opportunities to exist elsewhere than beneath the ship. The AI may have avoided simply becoming overseers and chosen instead to educate the children further on the ships functions, ensuring that generations to come could maintain the vehicle and prevent it from deteriorating. The AI could have explained the existence of the outside world and allowed more freedom. But of course, perhaps as an effect of the AI not being human itself, this didn’t happen and the two groups settled into an easy, though eventually self-destructive, relationship. Looking at how things ended up in the episode, it’s almost as if Shizu was a virus, disrupting the balance of the relationship and altering the makeup of the ship’s “body” going forward.

I don’t have as many structured questions related to this episode in particular (though I would love to hear people’s general thoughts about the episodes as well – please don’t feel obligated to stick to a “script” if you have any personal responses to share), but I did have a couple of thoughts:

1. Much like in episode 3, I found myself relating this country’s situation to real-life ways in which countries haven’t done right by their own existences. Specifically, I was struck by the concept that the “broken parts” of the ship have been left in place to deteriorate rather than anyone taking the initiative to replacing them. I think this is a powerful concept that relates very closely to some of the things my country (USA) has approached some of its many social issues. What are your thoughts?
2. More than once, a character (in at least one case it’s Riku, the very wise talking dog), refers to the ship country as “this country, or rather this ship…” I personally found it odd because it’s both a ship and a country, but do you find any particular significance in the fact that they corrected themselves in this way?
3. Shizu unfortunately finds out that, while making a change he thought would be positive for the ship country’s people, he acted without knowing the entire truth of the matter. I find this to be a very telling realization especially since I feel this is something which occurs in relations between actual countries. It begs the question – while it is natural to want to correct injustices as we see them, what can or should be done (if anything), if the people being affected by injustice don’t see it as such?

I didn’t get much into Kino’s specific motivations this week, but I feel that there are at least some things that happen in episode 3 that might make it interesting to explore that a little further, so feel free to discuss that as well. This series continues to fascinate me, especially when doing these deep-dives. I hope everyone else is having a fulfilling watch-along so far, too!