Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series

When 15-year-old Kino is feeling weighed down by heavy thoughts, one thing always manages to cheer her up: traveling. Nothing fills her heart with joy like exploring the beautiful, wonderful world around her and the fascinating ways people find to live. However, Kino is not as helpless as her cute appearance and courteous demeanor suggest. Armed with "Cannon" and "Woodsman," her trusted handguns, Kino isn't afraid to kill anyone who would dare to get in her way. Always by her side is her best friend and loyal companion Hermes, a sentient motorcycle, who supports Kino through the sorrows and hardships of their journey. Together, they travel the vast countryside with the shared goal of always moving forward, and a single rule: never stay in one country for more than three days.

As Kino and Hermes encounter new people and learn the rules of their civilizations, they grow and find out more about their own values and virtues. But as Kino slowly discovers the world around her, she also finds herself facing dangers that linger within the vast unknown.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kino Main

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Hermes Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Kino (original) Supporting

Ono, Daisuke Japanese

Riku Supporting

Matsuda, Kenichirou Japanese

Photo Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Shizu Supporting

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Sakura Supporting

Amano, Kokoa Japanese

Shishou Supporting

Lynn Japanese

Tii Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Sou Supporting

Ogata, Megumi Japanese

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Iizuka, Aya Producer

Hatakeyama, Takurou Producer

Ashitate, Harutaka Producer

Reviews

May 24, 2024

sazawa01

Recommended

This anime is one of those where you get dopamine from watching one episode.

Me personally, Im not patient enough to wait a fucking cour of build up to get climax scenes like in mystery animes. So when an anime offers sufficient mystery build up in half a epsidoe and a climax in a quarter, hell fucking yeah! You could compare this anime to binging tiktok but all the tiktok's turn out to to amazing pieces individually.

Not only we get dopamine but we also get quite a unique way of viewing what makes a country 'normal'. For example, that one country where someone's moral actions is ... a points system. On the surface such a system sounds very promising. Like no way anything could be wrong with that. But oh man oh man it has the most twisted loophole that legit scares me.

I personally don't mind CGI or bad animation or bad character design in good stories. This is my formula:
Bad Anim/Art/CGI + Good Story = Good Series



Final Rating — 8.5/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 26, 2024

Burayan

Mixed Feelings

This show is okay, but does not compare favorably to the earlier version. If you're thinking about watching both, watch this one first, otherwise you'll be disappointed.
The excessive CGI was very distracting. The artwork lacks the character of the original, the characters look very generic. It's also a lot more colorful, which made it look "cartoonish" to me.
The episodes themselves leaned toward "cute" rather than the more dark and philosophic stories of the original. Some of them are just short vignettes, and in many of them Kino doesn't even appear. As a whole, it feels rather dumbed-down, fluffy entertainment instead of engaging and ... though-provoking.
I don't think watching it was a waste of time, but it will probably sit on the shelf for a long time before I watch it again.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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May 27, 2024

Nyron

Not Recommended

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. The pitch is that 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. You'll get presented with prompts that cause you to consider the nature of communication, humanity, society, free will, morality, etc and each adventure has a little take-away and food for thought. 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, because this adaptation is basically 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 had incredible direction and cinematography to make up for it. The series original series is moody, tense, eerie and kind of surreal. It still holds up today as something unique and fascinating.

This series looks like Sword Art Online. All the characters look the same. All backgrounds are devoid of real detail. All colors are bright and cheery at all times, with flat colors and no thought about lighting. 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 darn great OP.
This series has j-pop. 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Oct 20, 2017	130 replies	by croberto »» Yesterday, 9:18 PM
	Poll: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Nov 24, 2017	76 replies	by Dawizz »» May 27, 4:01 AM
	Poll: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Nov 10, 2017	104 replies	by Dawizz »» May 27, 4:00 AM
	Poll: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Oct 13, 2017	256 replies	by Dawizz »» May 27, 3:59 AM
	I thought Kino was a guy. Nyamaste - May 2, 2022	13 replies	by Dawizz »» May 27, 3:57 AM