Cinnamon Ass

Hmmmmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that counts. Supposedly, anyway. It’s not as if the destination in this case is particularly bad, it’s just… a bit weird.

Yup, I’m not totally satisfied with the way Kaiba ends. “What’s new?” I hear you cry. “It’s anime, most shows end weirdly!”. But it’s been a good few weeks now since the show ended and I’ve watched episode 12 a good three or four times now to try and work out how I feel, and I’m still not really getting anywhere.

At first blush, if like me you watch it raw and your Japanese is poor to put it mildly, it’s a whole great load of mindboggling tosh. Giant blue monsters emerging out of nowhere with evil baby Warps, giant planetoids appearing out of nowhere, Neiro running through some completely unidentifiable storage room releasing giant ethereal hands that are apparently “good”… while the overall tone of the episode makes sense and the end is fairly obvious, there’s so much that appears to be just thrown in because it looks cool. Certain aspects make more sense once you take the time to consider the episode on rewatches, but on the whole it’s dissatisying that a show that has spent so much time carefully making its “world” feel so fully fleshed out just throws a lot of weird shit at the audience for no particular reason.

I suppose there’s little left to really do in this episode. The ambiguities of the story as a whole are mostly cleared up, and the characters’ emotional arcs have been pretty much played out by episode 11 - most of the characters don’t even have emotions any more, so there’s not much you can do with them! Personally I don’t think Yuasa really knew how to end the show - Copy Warp is dealt with effectively, and the Kaiba threat is well established throughout the previous episodes, but I think he thought he needed to throw in the baby Warp because a giant plant that Warp had defeated before wasn’t really going to cut it for a final episode conflict.

Baby Warp, though, doesn’t make much sense. Not only does it make the whole Warp succession thing even MORE confusing than it already was, but all his prattle about negative memories and becoming one with the Kaiba has nothing to do with anything and should realistically mean nothing to the true Warp because the whole POINT of the show has been that Warp isn’t a bad guy and that he has happy memories with Neiro. It’s ridiculous.

…and breathe. Anyway, plot issues and meaningless imagery aside, it’s hardly a BAD final episode. There’s some great animation, good action, and at least the very end is nice in an annoyingly Japanese ambiguous way.

So, the show as a whole. I have to think in terms of the whole show, not the ending, although it’s left a slightly sour taste in my mouth. So few shows show the breathtaking imagination that Kaiba did, nor the impressively secure writing, acting, music… you name it. Yuasa MOSTLY got the somewhat teenage impulses that plagued Kemonozume (in my opinion) out of his system and crafted a sensible, mature sci-fi romance like the show was marketed as. I do think he needs to spend more time on his actual stories rather than plot concepts, though - the more abstract concepts and worldbuilding in Kaiba are dealt with fantastically, but I don’t think he’s very good at properly constructing an overall story.

I don’t have a lot else to say, unfortunately, and I wish I did. I’ll pick up the show in a flash if it ever gets an English language release, but I still can’t quite put into words how the end of Kaiba has made me feel, which is a pity as it’s been by far the most interesting anime I’ve seen this year.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Kaiba. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.