Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series

tl;dr The 2017 version takes the mantra "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is" and crushes it under the wheels of a thousand horribly-animated 3D-CG motorrads

Why a 1/10? Why such a low score? It is because there is no reason to watch it. The 2003 version is better, and Lerche's remake has no good ideas and none of the things that made the original so loveable. This new Kino, cutesy and staid, has only really succeeded in becoming a clunky metaphor for the anime industry at large—gutted, and a hollow husk of her former self.

Kino's Journey has been lobotomized in favour of something more ... accessible and easily digestible. All the magic is dead. Gone are the days where Kino riding Hermes around the countryside was given the dignity of normal 2D animation. That old friend you loved, the sepia tones and the somber beauty of an angular, awe-inspiring world, is no more. There's something unsettling and depressing seeing some new studio snatch up this I.P. and make it dance to the tune of modern anime trends, and thinking about this well after finishing the series has been the only time Lerche's remake made me feel something akin to what those old Kino episodes did.

What is the purpose of this show? Why does it exist, and why watch it? That's why I'm here writing this, to warn adventurers that some countries aren't worth going to—that they look like the towns you know, streets you grew up on and vistas you have grown to love over the years, but are now dead countries, joyless and cheap and filled with a million identical cardboard cutouts of high-gloss Akihabara maid cafés staffed by energetic catgirls in miniskirts. Those old memories would be worser for it. There is no beauty here, only popcorn and a quick flip to the next channel.

The world is not beautiful, therefore it is; some worlds are ugly, and sap the life out of those you love.

Is this show any worse than others this season? Probably not, but it all depends on what you value as a viewer. If you want something easily watched and easily forgotten, Kino's Journey 2017 is definitely for you. But if you want something meaningful, something that you might love and cherish for years afterward, please just watch the original.

Have you ever wondered what Kino's Journey would be like if it were garbage?

Well, look no further friend!

I shouldn't have to spell this out, but this is a review that draws heavily on comparing the two Kino anime. It is not an objective view of the 2017 anime alone. I would have found it boring and shitty regardless of the 2003 show's context, but then this review would lack the indignation of seeing everyone's favorite anime indie art film reduced to a cheap and casual throwaway series.

Are you new to Kino's Journey? Well lucky for you the whole original series is available on a number ... of streaming services for free and there's no need for you to waste your time here.

Memorize the phrase "boring and shitty", because that can be used to describe most of this tonally devoid, shallow, toothless, low IQ series.

THE PREMISE:

Kino's Journey is the tale of a person named Kino who is on a Journey. WOW, right? But it's not a traditional adventure story, it's a much more philosophical one. Every few days Kino stops at a country for exactly three days, takes in the culture, and leaves. Every different country presents a different moral dilemma to consider, and Kino serves as an outsider looking in, generally choosing not to get wrapped up in their affairs, though sometimes it happens. You'll get presented with prompts that make you wonder about the nature of communication, humanity, society, free will, morality, etc and each adventure is a fable with a take-away. Like a demented book of fables, Kino shows us something about our world by exploring the one she lives in.

If that sounds great, this is not the series for you. Basically this adaptation is about one of the girls from K-On! scooting around shooting people with a psychotically apathetic smile on her face, presented in the most boring ways possible.

THE STORY:

The original Kino's Journey introduced us to Kino, the philosophical nature of her Journey, and the shit she has to go through and how she copes with it.

This adaptation opens with Kino eating cake and then some guy gets murdered, with the moral of the story being "if everyone owned a gun, society would be peaceful" and that's about it. Kino then goes to a place and kills a bunch of people for the sake of testing her skills and avenging a character we're never introduced to. She never shows emotion and seems completely disinterested in everything that's happening around her. She has no established rules or moral code and by episode three she's a traveling murderer and not much else can be derived from her time on screen.

THE ART and ANIMATION:

The original Kino was low-budget for sure, it was indie as hell. But it had incredible direction and cinematography to make up for it. The series original series is moody, tense, eerie and kind of surreal. It sticks out even today as something of visual interest.

This series looks like Sword Art Online. All the characters look the same. All backgrounds devoid of real detail. All colors are bright and cheery at all times. All camera angles are flat shots of talking heads or just panning shots of nothing. There is no cinematography going on here. Kino's bike is CGI because modern Japanese animators can't fucking draw, but they're also paid $500 a year, so who would want to?

The opening sequence is a poppy borefest of BIRDS BIRDS BIRDS because Kino said something about birds once. It's like this whole thing is directed by a high school student.

WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?

The original series' music is pretty cool, with acoustic guitars and panflutes and one damned great OP.
This series has jpop. It's about as generic as an OST can get. It feels very upbeat at all times, no matter what's going on.

Kino here sounds kawaii. Her bike's voice actor sounds like, uh, Mechazawa from Cromartie High? Soothing and male? Originally the bike's voice was grainy and cynical-sounding, adding to the series' eerie atmosphere. In this one, the voice aligns with the series having no atmosphere at all, so I guess it's fitting.

All side characters sound as over-acted and generic as you could expect anime characters to sound. Kino's Journey has gone from one of the most off-beat Japanese properties to one of the most unimaginative and anemic.

ARE YOU JUST MAD THAT IT'S DIFFERENT?

No, I'm mad because it's shit.
2003 Fullmetal and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood are different series. They're both good and do different things with their different tones. One is a drama, the other is action shounen.

B-BUT THIS ONE IS MORE FAITHFUL TO THE SOURCE THAN THE ORIGINAL ANIME

I hate to break this to you bud, but the Kino novels are probably mostly crap, written by a hack, and the original anime's directors, writers and artists are what made the show memorable. I love Nightow, but no one wants a faithful Gungrave adaptation. It's the same situation here. The author supplied a cool character and premise, and people with more talent than he made Kino a franchise worth remembering. That's that.

This series has no tone. It's just bad and effortless. It's a lifeless application of "How to Make a Marketable Anime in 2017 in 5 Easy Steps" except they fucked it up because they applied it to Kino's Journey and not fantasy light novel #8473.

There's really nothing redeeming here.

Go watch the original.

Unless you're just into anime because you want something that looks the same as everything else you watch and have no interest in thinking or feeling any mild discomfort at all. Then yeah, watch this. I hate you though.

“Sometimes having a remake of a well-known series isn’t a good idea at all because it can potentially damage a franchise for good” -Me 2017

The Orginal Kino's Journey or as I like to call it OG Kino is an endless classic that many anime fans love. It had great worldbuilding, amazing themes, and messages; the episodic episodes were well told and well written that had a point. The characters despite being episodic were all memorable and likable due to them being well written. The visuals while being basic had great direction and cinematography and music while not having many tracks was still great. Plus both ... the sub and the dub were very good.
While I was watching OG Kino I decided to watch the new Kino alongside with OG Kino weekly. After watching the last episode of New Kino as well watching the last episode of OG a day prior to watching the last episode of New Kino and am going to say this right now.

New Kino or as I like to call it Lerche Kino completely misses the point of the original series in every way possible as well completely disrespects fans of the original series.
After watching OG I was satisfied with what I watched, however, Lerche Kino makes me facepalm because Lerche Kino took everything that was great from the OG Kino and manages to fuck it all up to a point where I can say is THIS IS NOT MY KINO.
With all that said Hello everyone this is Shawn aka KurataLordStage and welcomes to my review of Kino' Journey 2017 (Lerche Kino) and with that all that said let's us begin.

Story.

The story of Lerche Kino is the same as the original Kino. It follows a young girl called Kino and her talking motorcycle Hermes and they travel to many different countries and forests, each unique in its customs and people. She only spends three days and two nights in every town, without exception, on the principle that three days is enough time to learn almost everything important about a place while leaving time to explore new lands.

The story of Lerche Kino is a mess. A very boring, uninspiring and poorly directed mess.
To get things started the show doesn’t have much atmosphere. I know am talking about the visuals this early but this is the problem that Lerche kino and it hardly goes away. Because Lerche has almost no atmosphere most of the worlds that Lerche Kino goes to arc bland compared to the original. You see every Country in OG has a different and unique atmosphere that showcases the tone of each country as well as the theme. Lerche Kino hardly does this because each world that Lerche Kino shows are either watered down versions of OG Kino or they are just uninspiring new Country’s that OG Kino did not showcase.
One of the examples of Lerche Kino being uninspiring is in episode 1 A Country Where People Can Kill Others. That episode alone completely sets the wrong tone of the series which I will explain soon after a compare the first episode of OG Kino. The first episode of OG Kino which is called Land of Visible Pain where Kino visits a town where people with incredibly advanced technology, however, it appears that everyone is living in total isolation and shuns any contact of other people. Once Kino finally started to have a conversation with one the town residents he reveals the advanced technology of the town allowed them to modify their bodies so they can understand each other thoughts allowing for much easier communication. Ofbersly this idea eventually turned sour because it meant that people could no longer hide thoughts on each other and so the nonstop communication eventually drove everyone in the town into isolation. The main themes that were explored in that episode were human modifying, isolation and the consequences of relying on advanced technology. OG Kino did a great job with the first episode and its easily one of the best first episode I have ever seen in an anime.
Lerche Kino Episode 1 A Country Where People Can Kill Others is a perfect example of how to not do the first episode. Kino travels to a country where murder is legal and the reason why she even wants to travel to that country is that she want's to kill someone just for her own satisfaction that she killed someone. She want's to kill someone not because she has a grudge against someone or anything like that but she wants to kill someone just for her own satisfaction. Do you see how this series completely misses the point? Not only that the episode itself doesn't really change the nature of the murder of that town not to mention there's barely any theme exploration as well having characters that you can sympathize with in that town.

Don’t get me started with the Colosseum arc in episode 2 because that arc was atrocious. Not only the themes were butchered to hell but the pacing, writings, character interactions/development and production values were abysmal. It felt like a badly made shounen series.
Another problem with Lerche is pacing and worldbuilding. The pacing in Lerche Kino is honestly pretty damn bad. Most episodes just drag on to the point where you just get bored and let’s be real unlike OG Kino most of the events of Lerche are not that interesting in a slightest due to the show butchering its themes and messages for no reason other than appeal to the lowest common denominator of anime fans who like watching crappy light novel adaptations from A1 Pictures. As for worldbuilding, it’s very lackluster and almost none existent. Every Country in OG had a lot of detail put into it while most of the Country in Lerche Kino feels empty and lifeless.
However, I give Lerche Kino this.
As much I dislike Lerche Kino colosseum arc Lerche Kino did a good job with the Kino back-story arc and it was the only arc that I can consider to be good in Lerche Kino,
Overall the story of Lerche Kino is terrible. It has poor pacing, butchered arcs, no atmosphere, barely any themes exploration.

3/10

Characters.

This is where the show literally falls apart.
Why because the characters in Lerche Kino are a complete bastardization to the OG counterparts.
Seriously it’s like director Tomohisa Taguchi didn’t even watch the original series while directing Lerche Kino.
Let’s start with Kino herself. What did Tomohisa Taguchi do to you? The original Kino is a transient being and her personality was kept to a minimum. What makes the original Kino so great are her unpredictable reactions.
Lerche Kino has too much personality and she often portrayed as a little brat. What makes it worse he is her reactions which are almost predictable and this alone completely defeats the entire point of her character. Overall Lerche Kino is shit.
As for the rest of characters. They are all bland and uninteresting which is honestly a shame because characters like Shizu and Shishou were interesting in the original while in the new one they are bland and uninteresting.

Overall the characters in Lerche are a big failure.

2/10

Visuals.

The original Kino wasn’t the best-looking anime in the world is as it sticks to the old washed out color pallet for every episode but what the original Kino had over Lerche Kino is constantly as well having great cinematography.

Why am I bringing this up? Because the visuals in Lerche Kino is shit.
Terrible lighting, subpar character designs that are inconstant and constantly go off model, awful background design that doesn’t fit with characters that are in it. What makes this worse is the camera shots and overall direction. For example Episode 1 we have a close shot of Kino traveling while the backgrounds are just burred out and overall less detailed. Also unlike the original Hermes is completely done in CGI and it was horrible. Poor Hermes you DESERVED better than this.
As for the animation itself, it’s pretty okay overall.
The main reason why I really dislike the visuals of Lerche Kino’s because not only it abandons the charm and consistently from the original but it actually butchered a lot of messages thanks to this shows shitty visual direction and poor camerawork.

Overall the visuals of Lerche Kino are shit and it completely missed the point of the original Kino.

3/10

Sound.

The soundtrack in Lerche Kino is bland and very forgettable.

The opening and ending themes are pretty decent overall and they fit into the series quite decently.

As for sub vs dub. They are both pretty good overall so I have no complaints.

5/10

Final Thoughts.

So that was Lerche Kino. A bad remake that has terrible production values, shitty writing, butchered themes, lackluster characters and awful pacing.

This is honestly one of the worst anime remakes I have ever seen in anime.

It completely misses the point of the original Kino series and it has no charm on its own at all.

This is one no contest one of the worst animes from 2017.

You better off watching the original Kino and completely skipping Lerche Kino.

Final Score 3/10