Ranked #904

Kiba

I can't believe such a hyped anime doesn't have a review. Well on with the show:

Story:
I absolutely loved this anime storywise. It begins with a young boy named Zed, who lives in a strange, polluted town known as Calm. One day, a spirit, Amil Gaoul, appears to him, and he is dragged into another world. This of course, might seem cliche within the genre of time/world-traveling hereos, but where Kiba sets itself apart is in the concept of shard casting, the main magical ability of the people of the alternate world. Shard-casters can produce from their body small shards which unleash an elemental attack. Other anime have similar concepts, but to use items like this is something that to me is rather new, and I liked it. Also, shardcasters may summon spirits using special shards, and there are six Key Spirits, which are far more powerful than other spirits. Without going into too many spoilers, once the six Key Spirits are brought together, a great power is unleashed, and much of the anime is spent in this quest by multiple factions to obtain the power of the Key Spirits. This makes for a truly epic anime, with a rather interesting ending.

Art:
During the first episode, you get the feeling that the art is dark, due to the nature of Calm, but once Amil Gaoul appears, you see the real art style of this anime. Most of the characters are drawn in rather conventional anime form, but the real artistic value of this anime can be seen in the ethereal forms of the various spirits. Amil Gaoul resembles an angel, but there are also spirits which resemble devils, warriors, mythical creatures such as phoenixes and centaurs. Most of the spirits are bipeds, which really adds to their appeal, in seeing ghostly, two-legged forms of many different beings. The places where the shard casters draw their shards from, can resemble anything from an intricate tattoo to jewelry, to some sort of disease-ridden boil, depending where it is, or the very character of the person.

Sound:
The voice actors are great, although personally I found Roia's voice grating on the nerves sometimes. The battle sequences with Amil Gaoul all have a beautiful chorus to them, so you know when the tide of the battle is going to turn. This is really the only highlight in terms of sound in this anime, the rest could easily be attributed to background sounds.

Character:
I didn't like some of the characters, mostly because they often contradicted their own actions in extreme ways. Zed remains for the better part of the anime, a hero, he takes to his role readily, then experiences doubts about himself, and his mentor, who although appears to have a grandfatherly aspect about him, has a dark past that doesn't come out until the last 5 or so episodes. Zed's best friend is another source of frustration, in that he so easily and completely changes himself into the opposite of Zed.

Enjoyment:
As you are watching the anime, you are completely absorbed in it, and maybe once it ends is when you really start questioning things such as characterization and such, but meanwhile, this is one wild ride. The rather novel concept of shard casting sets this anime apart, and I highly recommend it to everyone read more

Kiba is a Shounen, Fantasy, Action, Adventure about a world full of shard casters, which are people who can summon spells and spirits. The concept is great but the story is rather second-rate.

The story follows the adventures of two separate boys (Zed and Noa), as they go through many different experiences in their different world, before both stories meet. Even though this anime series has a pretty unique concept of spirits, the story itself is told just like you average shounen anime, which ends up taking away quite a bit of the enjoyment of the show. However the simplistic story is still good enough and doesn’t feel like it’s entirely dragged out, most of the time. There are also the whole nations at war plot and their relations, which helps give this series some much needed depth, plus there are plenty of plot twists to supplement it.

The characters are probably the worst aspect of the series because they are all fairly one-dimensional and a lot of them go under drastic personality changes for no good reason. The poor dialogue doesn’t help much either, as they tend to spew out clichéd lines. The main character Zed is just as bad because he is a loud-mouth, simple-minded brat that does things senselessly. The only redeeming point has to be the way in which certain characters develop throughout the series.

The animation quality of this series is of a pretty good standard; with plenty of effort put into the environments, the actual spells and appropriately used CG effects. On the other hand the character designs are really plain and the actual fights sequences were somewhat lacking, as if they cut some corners in production. The quality of sound is just as good; with some notably great tunes from the soundtrack and adequate ambient sounds but poor voice acting does take a few things away.

Overall Kiba is a fairly entertaining shounen action adventure, with an erratic storyline. Because there was no clearly defined path, it just felt like the author was making stuff up as he goes along. One interesting thing is that during the action sequences, there are usually 2 fights going on (between the people and between their spirits). However this anime had a problem with leaving things unexplained or just doing a poor job explaining. If you are able to ignore the numerous faults, especially in the characters, you are sure to enjoy this series.

^_^ read more

Kiba is a fantasy fighting anime that focuses heavily on battles involving summoned spirits and its own brand of magic and hand-to-hand combat. The story revolves mainly around the main protagonist as he moves through each of the series featured 'worlds' - although a fair amount of the series also devotes some time to the other main characters.

If your still with me now then here comes the fun part - this series is totally genocidal. It is amazing how often they introduce characters and then kill them off (and that doesn't even begin to cover all the fodder characters). Despite this the series manages to introduce enough characters to maintain a cast and was actually pretty enjoyable despite my intense dislike of the rival character and some pretty hilarious plot holes and dialogue.

Story

The story had some ups and downs which kind of smoothed each other out - its also very fast paced which is welcome in the age of anime which likes to drag on forever with flashfiller. There were a number of times where the story was pushing incredulity even by this series interpretation of physics. My two favorite examples being the number of times the main character gets thrown in jail only to easily break out (often within minutes - and about 5 of those occasions were from the same jail) and the number of times he manages to get right into the heart of heavily armed locations without any trouble between the front gate and wherever he was going. Despite it's faults its was always entertaining to see what was going to happen next and it was almost never boring.

Art

Overall I liked the art for this series - Its not the most fabulous art I've ever seen but it was consistent and pleasant enough to look at. There was a lot of frame recycling used for the spirit animations and lots of corner cutting for fodder fights but they managed to keep it interesting and some of the more high level fights had a surprising level of intricacy (owing a lot to the integration of sword/magic/spirits often being used in combination) which was often maintained in animation.

Sound

Didn't notice the sound very much - which is an indication it did its job without being too invasive but didn't really impress me. I did notice the theme they used for the main characters spirit which was kind of cool the first few times but got old pretty quick. On the other hand I often loitered at the start of a few episodes to watch the second OP cause that was pretty good.

Character

Hilariously bad - particularly the rival character of the series but there is enough to go around here. Most of the core characters were acceptably fleshed out although it often took a long time to get there. Scores of the minor cast were sources of unexpected hilarity as they were so stereotypical and absurd and often foul up and die within a few episodes ( I even nicknamed one of them Hamlet while he lost his mind). My main gripe though is the rival character - I cannot make the leap of faith required to think anybody can as much of a tool as that guy. I don't find him even remotely believable and I want to slap him every time he appears.

Enjoyment

As long as your not expecting (or indeed wanting) a cerebral workout I think this anime is pretty enjoyable. I laughed out loud at some of the ridiculous things that happened but in the end the plot pulled me in and the action kept me there.

Overall

If your looking for a light series that is isn't too deep but has enough ace and action to keep things interesting you could do a lot worse then Kiba. Its probably not going to change your life but it will make it shorter :)
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First of I just finished this and All i can say is WOW!
Unlike a few animes of this type it really doesn't drag on and on. The story is constantly moving forward and keeping you well informed on whats going on with the characters and how they play their parts through out the anime.
I was really suprised, when it started i thought it was going to be your average superpower good vs evil kinda thing, but in the end i was wrong. A good bit of twists, and things that may or may not keep you guessing.
One of the best things i have to say is there are hardly any dead spots, even with memories and flashback.


This is my first review and i hope it can be of some help to some people. read more

This is a series that is comprised of 51 ep. This series is a Shonen show with some fantasy elements and drama.

Story:

Ok the story i would have to say was Mediocre at best. There was really not any huge plot twists or eye popping scenes. The first Episode was pretty good. You get really involved into it, but then after the first episode, the series just drops in plot and everything becomes your typical average shonen, spirits fighting spirits, good VS evil, etc. The first season really had no shocking moments and it seems like you have learned everything this series has to offer right from the start. I almost even thought bout dropping this series due to the pain painstakingly boring fights. How ever towards the second season the plot started picking up again and it became surprisingly bearable to watch. I think in all honesty that this series was to slow, they should of revealed the plot at a faster pace. This series could of been 26 episodes and be a great series, because of all the useless spirit fights that had absolutely nothing to do with the whole plot behind Kiba, i found it rather boring to sit down and watch this anime from start to finish. I will have to say that the ending was really good and it did a great job of wrapping up everything and all the un answered questions bout zed's fateful past were answered. I found it enjoyable to watch the last 10 episodes because they were actually good. The battles were alot more detailed as well towards the end. They also shown alot more of the personalities behind all the Key characters in the series.

ART:

The art was pretty good. Most of the battles had great animation, and you felt like you were not watching a old classic series like (astro boy) lol. You felt like you were watching todays Generation in anime. I have seen anime with better art then this show but it was not all that bad. Its ashame the battles were not that great to go along with the awesome art.

Sound :

This was another thing i really did not like bout kiba was the sound. The BG sound in most fights were just terrible, they could of done MUCH better in this department. The only sounds i found were good and went with the flow of the battle was the music showing the fights with AMil Goal "Zeds key spirit". Other then that, the music was just terrible. Even on the most important scenes were the music was really needed the most was not there. This is really what put the anime in Jeperady was because of the painful music. The OST's were good though, opening and ending theme songs were pretty nice and you find your self humming the tunes in your head but the anime music theme's shouldn't of went with this series at all.

Character:

Not much to say bout this, the characters were great. I really like the personality of zed and Roia. The characters, cried, had emotions and everything, its really ashame that there roles in the plot were not all that important until the very end of the series. Everything from ep 1-35 is just spirit VS spirits, good VS evil. They did not reveal really much of anything behind the characters pasts or personalities until the last 10 episodes or so. If only this series had a better story then this show would of got a rate of 8 or 9 at least.

Bottom line is this series is boring to watch, especially the first season were nothing really happens, just battles between spirits. Like i said before if it wasn't for the filler based episodes in the first 26 episodes of the series and the plot moved along at a faster pace then this series would of be acceptable because of this if you can bear watching all the boring episodes, then it really does get good towards the end. I hope my review does not keep people from watching the series. I found it enjoyable to finally finish the plot and under stand everything.
But there is alot of anime out there that has a much better plot, better music themes then kiba does, i guess its just all about personal opinion! read more

Kiba's a good anime. It's quite enjoyable, I found myself seeing all the episodes in a row. However, even though the story tends to improve, the basic storyline is quite simple. It steals a couple of ideas from other series (pokemon along with others), you will kinda feel it's really not a fresh idea. But in spite of that fact you will thoroughly enjoy the experience. You'll get easily connected to the characters and you will be very pissed off at Roya because she is always (and I really say always) dragging other people down. As for the art, I got to say it's pretty good. I must add that I find Roya to be the most beautiful anime girl ever and the reason is because you don't have to have big boobs to be atractive (and she is probably the first female anime protagonist that doesn't have big boobs I've seen all my life xD).
Final veredict: it's fun, but you would be better served with some other series read more

Alright so Kiba is an original anime with a concept that is fresh and original. Story is pretty much a loner on the fencepost fights against those on either side. Main character fights against just about everyone in the show and grows because of it. The character developement is very good by the end of the show everyone left alive has gained closure and those who didn't change at all died.

Two things that irritate me about this anime: First is the animation; the main means of fighting in the show are 3 things element shards, lightsaberesque swords, and spirits. The animation leaves very much to be desired. The weapons are original and cool conceptually but when brought to the screen you long for more detail of the carnage, swords that can cut through 5 foot wide concreet blocks but seem to show doing the damage to that of a wooden sword. This leaves for plot holes later on in the show. The stereotypical squelch sound when a sword cuts through someone also begins to nag at you as the show goes on. Second, bad bad music is always popping up at the wrong time, and it is always the same music. read more

Kiba was something i have never seen before. and i mean in a good way. its was ok in the first few episodes but later, it became more intersiting. i give story 8, art 6, sound 7, character 9, enjoyment 9, and overall an 8

long story short, its basically a more violent pokemon in a medieval type fantasy world

that line should be enough to either make u watch or not watch

if u disagree with me, all i'll say is: dude they summon monsters out of their arms contained in small orbs, i forget if they shout a name of the monster or something, its been a while since i saw it

its still enjoyable to watch since i am a fan of that whole medieval fantasy setting stories