Cinnamon Ass

OP - Sanctuary (Nami Tamaki) - what a disappointing OP! It just feels flabbily directed, and there’s too panning shots; I was expecting something much cooler. Generic techno song, as well. Boo!

ED - Very Very (Afromania) - eck, it’s rap and wireframe monsters. It’s likeable in a cheesy, Asterisk-from-Bleach way, I guess, although it’s not quite as awesomely cheesy as Asterisk.

In a futuristic dystopia (how many times have I begun an entry like that now?) Zed is a juvenile delinquent, about to get kicked out of school and put in jail; his father is missing, presumed uber-powerful-to-be-met-later-in-the-series-shounen-cliche, and his mother is in a mental hospital where she stares at fish all day. Zed’s only friend is the respectable student council member Noah, who has some kind of heart defect and a weird metal exoskeleton supporting his back; judging by the OP he’ll become Zed’s enemy at some point.

Anyway, it’s his birthday, and Noah gives him a talisman that’s the symbol of some old god or something; this talisman makes Zed’s mother go out of control, suggesting Something Mysterious is going on. Later, after Zed gets arrested and imprisoned, Noah springs him from jail; Zed is prepared to skip town, but foolishly tries to visit his mother again first, where he is cornered by the police; however, the policeman is stabbed from behind by some crazy robotic man who tries to kill Zed, except the weird growth on his hand deflects his sword and Zed’s mother pops out of the hospital to throw some fireballs and give chase; Something Mysterious is definitely going on…

Yadda yadda yadda, Zed gets arrested again and escapes AGAIN thanks to Noah, magic portal to another world opens up and Zed goes through to land in a fantasy world, the end!

My flippancy is mostly because you can guess the plot yourself, it’s the standard set up for “boy in another world” stories. However, don’t take this attitude to mean that Kiba’s a bad show - far from it, actually!

While the plot isn’t anything new per se, the narrative flows much better than most shounen adventure stories, and it certainly doesn’t feel twee at all; compared to the first episode of something like Erementar Gerad, for instance, it feels much more mature, even though I realise this show is all about selling merchandise to young boys (Kiba Card Battling - coming June 2006!).

The thing that sets Kiba really apart from most shows of its ilk is the rest of the production. The animation is pretty solid stuff (although this is just the first episode so it’ll probably get worse) with some decent, sparse use of CG and attractive character designs; we’ve yet to see anything particularly innovative in background design but the artwork looks pretty good all round. More impressively, the music is really, really good; a decent mix of rockier stuff and some awesome-sounding Kajiura-influenced chants and so forth. According to ANN it’s by Jun Miyake, who hasn’t done a lot of other anime stuff (just Stink Bomb from Memories) but it’s really vey good indeed.

I like this type of show when it’s done well, and despite a disappointing OP and ED Kiba looks promisingly well made and sensibly written. A pretty good start; hopefully the show will keep it up!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 10:23 am and is filed under Kiba. 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.