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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 9 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 6 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3424#1552] |
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To say this remake of Kino's Journey is a disappointment would be an understatement. The original 2003 series was a hidden gem of the decade that depicted a series of short stories that were parables focused on elements of the human condition observed through the traveler, Kino. The stories tended to vary in their mood and intensity, being either bizarre, insightful, or having a dark and twisted element to them. In spite of the changing moods, the 2003 Kino's Journey adaptation did a great job with balancing them out with exploring both the joys and pains of being human. This remake sadly lacks the subtlety and nuances that made its 2003 counterpart a pleasure to watch. The stories for this remake are more blatant in exploring the moral they are focused on and many of them seemed to lack the time to allow the viewer to be immersed into exploring the various lands visited by Kino, thus reducing the impact of when the true side of the visited country gets revealed. The story order also felt more disjointed as several episodes of this series shifted over to exploring other characters like the swordsman, Shizu, and the slave girl, Photo. While interesting characters in their own right, there's little further elaborated on with Shizu following his introduction and Photo only has a single episode devoted to her. But perhaps the worst element to this adaptation of Kino's Journey is the series often getting too immersed into showing off action when Kino and Shizu get into any sort of major conflict. Said action scenes mostly have nothing to do with exploring the moral of each of its episodic stories beyond showing off the anime's animation and goes against the whole point of Kino's Journey about the series as a whole being moral-focused parables with an occasional cruel twist. Anyone who has seen the 2003 adaptation of Kino will notice the rather jarring difference in story mood, focus, and presentation choices as some episodes for this remake adapt stories also featured in the 2003 anime like the Coliseum arc and the Land of Adults story. The only real praise that I can give this remake of Kino's Journey is the improved artwork over the original series. There is greater detail put into character designs and scenic shots are more pleasing on the eyes. Animation is also more fluid for the most part with more natural movement depicted with characters, especially noticeable during the anime's action scenes. In spite of the improved animation though, the use of CG animation still sticks out badly compared to the regular animation and is quite noticeable at points where complicated animated sequences are depicted, particularly whenever Kino is riding on Hermes. Also in terms of a presentation choice for a series like Kino, the more detailed and brightly-colored visuals don't mesh well with a series like Kino that is more focused on exploring the morals each story has to offer up on an element of the human condition. Overall, I would say Kino's Journey 2017 easily makes for the biggest disappointment I have for an anime series this year. In spite of its improved visuals, it felt like Lerche did not have a clue on what made Kino's Journey an enjoyable series during its 2003 run as there were points where it felt like the series was unsure over what it wanted to focus on and then when making the effort to explore a moral, the focus of it felt forced and lacked the subtlety and impact offered from its original series. If you want a better option at seeing how Kino's Journey could be adapted in animated form, I strongly suggest checking out the 2003 series over this subpar adaptation for it. Last updated Friday, December 22 2017. Created Friday, December 22 2017. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Official Japanese Series Web Site | http://www.kinonotabi-anime.com/ |
