Kaiba

In a world where memories exist in memory chips separate from the body, death of the body no longer means death of the soul. It is possible for memories to be viewed, altered, and transferred between bodies. These memory chips are used by the rich to obtain eternal lives in carefully selected bodies, while for the poor, selling their own bodies and conserving their souls in the chips often become the only way to earn a living. An electrolytic cloud in the sky serves as a barrier between the heavens of the fortunate and the underworld of the destitute, making this social division impregnable.

One day, a man named Kaiba wakes up in an empty room with no memories, a mysterious hole in his chest, and a locket holding the picture of an unknown woman. After escaping an attack and stumbling upon a decrepit village of underworld residents, he begins his adventure across the different planets of this strange universe to find out more about his own identity and the woman he once knew.

Through a journey of self-discovery and acceptance, Kaiba weaves together tales of souls and spirits and explores the importance of memories.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The series received an Excellence Prize for animation at the 2008 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Episode Videos

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Kaiba

Main

Kuwashima, Houko
Japanese

Neiro

Main

Noto, Mamiko
Japanese

Popo

Main

Park, Romi
Japanese

Chroniko

Supporting

Saitou, Chiwa
Japanese

Vanilla

Supporting

Egawa, Hisao
Japanese

Hyo-hyo

Supporting

Mizuta, Wasabi
Japanese

Patch

Supporting

Cho
Japanese

Quilt

Supporting

Kichi

Supporting

Iwanaga, Tetsuya
Japanese

Cheki

Supporting

Fujimura, Ayumi
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Tamura, Manabu

Producer

Yuasa, Masaaki

Director, Episode Director, Script, Storyboard, Series Composition, Original Creator

Choi, Eun-Young

Episode Director, Script, Storyboard, Key Animation, Animation Director, 2nd Key Animation

Mihara, Michio

Episode Director, Storyboard, Animation Director, In-Between Animation, Key Animation

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Opening Theme

"Never" by Seira

Edit

Ending Theme

"Carry Me Away" by Seira

Reviews

Jun 17, 2023

ronysalos22

Recommended

Kaiba is a unique and thought-provoking anime that delves into the depths of identity, memories, and the essence of what makes us human. With its distinct art style and philosophical narrative, Kaiba offers a mesmerizing and emotionally impactful viewing experience.

The anime is set in a futuristic world where memories can be digitized and transferred between bodies. The story follows the enigmatic protagonist, Kaiba, who wakes up with no recollection of his past. As he embarks on a journey to uncover the truth, he encounters a diverse cast of characters and becomes entangled in a web of mysteries and conflicts.

One of the standout aspects of Kaiba ...

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Sep 27, 2019

literaturenerd

Mixed Feelings

Overview:

Hot take! Kaiba is overrated as fuck! In all seriousness, Kaiba is actually a pretty good anime. The animation is stunning and the character designs are wonderfully unique. However, I wasn't a huge fan of the series from a writing standpoint and I don't believe it's one Yuasa's best works. Honestly, I liked Lu Over the Wall more than I liked Kaiba. I liked Kick-Heart more than I liked Kaiba. Cat Soup? Yep, it's still better than Kaiba.

The story of Kaiba is told in an almost maddeningly confusing manner, but it's actually pretty simple. People are now able to store their memories in little ... flash drives and switch from body to body. People can also erase bad memories and download happy memories that belonged to other people. The wealthy use this technology to keep switching bodies and live forever, while the poor sell their bodies for money. The poor are told that they will be stored on a flash drive and their families will one day be able to get them a robot body, but typically their memories are just erased and they're killed off. The poor live on shitty planets and the wealthy live on super ritzy planets that are inaccessible to everyone else.

All of these are supposed to be mind blowing, incredible plot points, but everything in Kaiba is a well recycled Science Fiction trope. The story is basically just a shitty Metropolis, but doesn't say anything new about the evils of wealth inequality or social stratification. Hell, it says far less than Metropolis did 90 years ago! Evil rich guys switching bodies didn't start with Get Out. It was done in B-movies way back in the early 60s like "Frankenstein Must be Destroyed!" How about the part with downloading happy memories and deleting bad ones? That was done in Total Recall. Also known as Ah-nold und zee sree boobs! Back around 10 years ago there was a shitty action movie with Justin Timberlake called "In Time". In that movie, poor people have to sell years off their life to wealthy people, who accumulate time until they can live basically forever. It may have 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was just as deep and profound as anything I personally found in fucking Kaiba.

Maybe the problem is with me. Other people watched Kaiba and got something meaningful out of it. That's awesome! More power to those people. I've heard frequently that it's all about the importance of memories and how we should cherish all our memories including the bad ones. I mean...yeah. My grandmother has dementia. Of course I cherish my memories and fear losing them. I don't personally consider that a profound lesson, but that's just me.

I've also read this series is a love letter to Osamu Tezuka. Seriously?! Of course I can't speak for Yuasa. Maybe he really said that in an interview. Personally , I have my doubts. Mr. Yuasa loves animation as a concept, but has never displayed a real love for "anime" as non-Japanese know it. I don't think there's an otaku bone in that man's body. There's a quote falsely attributed to Alan Moore that says "I don't make comics. Those are garbage for children. I make graphic novels". While Moore never said anything like this, I could absolutely picture Yuasa saying "anime is trash. I make artsy cartoons!" I'm supposed to believe that anime's greatest outlier, who spent his entire career being as un-anime as humanly possible decided to make a Tezuka tribute? I'm calling bullshit.

The character designs are pretty awesome...mostly. Then there's this flying booger named Hyo-Hyo that never ceases to be obnoxious. Navi from Zelda would make up excuses not to hang out with Hyo-Hyo. Then we have this weird black caricature with fat, blue lips and a bulging tumor on his forehead. Oh and his name is Vanilla. God damn it Yuasa. What the fuck were you thinking?

We all love Yuasa. However, I feel the man is much more comfortable as an artist than as a writer. His best works are Ping Pong, Tatami, and Night is Short, which were all adaptations. When Yuasa does the writing, we end up with stuff like Cat Soup. I was disappointed by Kaiba, but I'm glad other people love it. Now go and spread that love by fixing the fan wikia! As of the time of this review, the wikia is barren and has had zero effort put into it, as if nobody actually gives a shit about this series. The Wikipedia page is also a near stub and lacks basic episode summaries! There are 30,000 people just here on MAL who would say "I LOVE Kaiba! I don't just include it in my favorites to look smart!". One you guys please go fix this.

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Jun 17, 2021

YukkoIsDead

Not Recommended

Spoiler-free.

I’m going to discuss Kaiba in terms of the three modes of persuasion: ethos (persuasion through presentation), logos (logical persuasion), and pathos (emotional persuasion). I do this, because the fact that Kaiba is very uninteresting to me is ironically very interesting to me.

Regarding ethos:
I felt secondhand embarrassment watching Kaiba, because I’ve made art like Kaiba before: Art that is so serious and earnest yet so unimportant. Kaiba is an entirely serious show, but I could not take it seriously. The biggest problem, in my opinion, drives the anime so much further down than any of its “minor” shortcomings and cliches (information being withheld, inexhaustible flashbacks, ... spoon-feeding the plot to the audience, guns that fail to work only against important characters, songs that try hard to evoke melodrama, characters with simple motivations in service of the plot [this is not a character-driven story, which makes it a little less interesting imo]). The biggest problem is so much worse than any of those mediocre story-telling devices. It is the unshakable nature of the anime being completely serious, unironic, and unapologetic in its attempt to wow and move the audience using very insubstantial drama and minimally explored themes (of memory chips, replaceable bodies, human nature, capitalism, and globalization). Most of the characters being one-dimensional (had a few traits each) and acting like children (suitable and reminiscent of kids shows) did not help matters.

Regarding logos:
The “sci-fi” (science-fiction) tag is truly the most enigmatic scrawl I’ve had the prerogative to investigate. I used to think that only the highest of stories deemed scientifically plausible would be conferred this emblem of intellectual creativity; I was quickly proven wrong as I noticed that some sci-fi are almost completely implausible, or at least, grossly speculative and without a single line of justification. I decided then that there must be a spectrum, a scale, as with most things, on which some sci-fi are more science and some more fiction. Today, I disagree with both of those past stances. I now think that all sci-fi contain some speculative elements and some realistic elements, and, in effect, concede that every sci-fi is indeed unrealistic, which is why they are called “sci-fi” and not “hyper-realistic stories containing only currently available technologies.” To put it simply, all sci-fi contain unexplainable phenomena that may or may not come to exist in the future.

However, some sci-fi really stretch the boundaries of its genre. I’ve noticed that anime in particular often does this, where borderline fantasy is often either tagged as or mistaken for potential future technology/circumstances. Kaiba is one of those anime. How? As Charlie would say: You do the math.

I’m kidding. I’ll do the math. In Kaiba, rich people buy poor people’s bodies. That will not happen in our world. And I don’t mean human trafficking or smuggling organs. I mean rich people transplanting their memories into poor people; this will not happen. For countless logical, medical, ethical and legal reasons, rich people will instead artificially design or request the most efficient bodies from tightly controlled labs with scientists and AI smarter than we can imagine. Kaiba, in that sense, is completely irrelevant to reality if it seriously means to be sci-fi. Besides some symbolic value or being a mental exercise in futility, Kaiba is valueless in terms of being a sci-fi, void of any logical merits.

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ve gathered absolutely nothing new or complex from this anime that I haven’t thought or known about already, despite my dire efforts to derive from the anime any food for thought.

Regarding pathos:
I’m the kind of person who becomes teary-eyed watching anything the slightest bit sad, and yet, I only teared up during this anime from the stress induced by the fact that the anime said near nothing despite being so stressfully fast-paced. It rather reminded me of The Tatami Galaxy.

About Chroniko’s story: I was sad and really almost cried. But I was also mighty bored. I am sorry (to the animators who tried hard), but each of the sob stories were so standard and cliched that my mind gnawed at itself in boredom. I understand that Chroniko’s story is a real world problem, however. I think that it is an IMPORTANT theme, but it wasn't any radical or deep one, just like every other theme in the show.

Ultimately, I award Kaiba with its extra score (2 instead of 1) for having allowed this self-analysis. I’ve wondered before why some stories don’t engage me. It was especially puzzling this time because I love sci-fi. I understand a bit better now.

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Poll: Kaiba Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Siing - Apr 11, 2008	109 replies	by ProxyLain »» Sep 9, 8:08 PM
Poll: Kaiba Episode 10 Discussion 8GaugeBrett - Jul 31, 2008	42 replies	by PopDaPotato »» Aug 16, 6:45 PM
Poll: Kaiba Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 ) freedo- - Jul 4, 2008	63 replies	by PopDaPotato »» Aug 15, 3:57 PM
Poll: Kaiba Episode 8 Discussion cyruz - Jun 22, 2008	47 replies	by PopDaPotato »» Aug 13, 5:30 PM
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Kaiba

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Characters & Voice Actors

Kaiba

Neiro

Popo

Chroniko

Vanilla

Hyo-hyo

Patch

Quilt

Kichi

Cheki

Staff

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Kaiba

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Synopsis

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Episode Videos

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Reviews

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