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]

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

Tamura, Manabu Producer

Fujio, Tsutomu Producer

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

Momose, Keiichi Sound Director

Reviews

Mar 5, 2025

N__02

Recommended

This is one of the most underrated Anime Series EVER. Coming from the great Masaaki YUASA, the animation style never ceases to amaze me. It's a mix of very unique eery sci-fi, dystopian and psychological genre. I literally couldn't stop thinking about this anime, the story and the dreamy feeling the music gives off. The opening is obviously a 10. The series may seem very cute and chill (wich it is) but as you go further into the story it becomes more dramatic and you realise it deals with serious now a days topics.

What would happen in a world where capitalism has reached its peak ... by now selling our bodies and minds (literally) ? This anime kept me glued to the screen. It left me heartbroken and with an odd feeling of nostalgia. If you enjoy an anime and on top of that leaves you thinking, then it's worth the watch.

Story, Art style, Animation, Characters, Voice acting, Music everything is beautiful.
I didn't give it a 10 because the main romantic relationship seemed to be going in an interesting direction (episode 6 gave good clues). I though Neiro would have a stronger personality which I think would've matched better with Kaiba. Or maybe I'm wrong I should give it another watch anyways.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 17, 2025

ninjaaw14

Mixed Feelings

For many viewers, Kaiba hits a very obvious peak early on with Chroniko’s story. It’s a rather simple sub-story, using only a single episode to spin its tale. There isn’t the time to construct deep and complex characters, yet watching it can feel like experiencing a full feature. The weight of the dramatic tragedy isn’t held up by the writing, but by the raw and powerful depiction of its emotions. It has no tightly woven plot, strongly developed characters, or deeply explored themes. In this case, we don’t particularly need any of that to understand the tragedy of family bonds being stretched by financial hardship, ... the aunt’s depressing guilt, and Chroniko’s ultimate fate. It’s a simple opportunity for the show to flex its artistic muscle, and the show wastes no time dunking the ball and taking its victory laps.

Some people might eventually be pulled out of the immersion of Kaiba, especially as similar patterns are followed with subsequent sad stories in a very episodic manner. There’s a thin line being walked between drama and melodrama. Consider the fact that Chroniko’s story is undoubtedly the most effective one, and you can see how people might lose their interest in simple drama that starts to hit a repetitive decrescendo. But they might be pulled back in by Kaiba’s overarching plot and themes. Some fleeting elements introduced at the very beginning rear their head more and more. Kaiba builds back up, now with a continuous narrative, to a very artistic climax.

The ending has some similarities with Chroniko’s story on a macro level. Once all the mysteries are dispelled, we are left with a rather simple story. There isn’t much concrete or deep in Neiro or Kaiba’s characters, and certainly far less to be found in the logic of the plot. It’s all very abstract and emotional, which could certainly work just as Chroniko did. But it is here where Kaiba’s foundation collapses. Unlike Chroniko’s story, Kaiba’s ending relies upon the specific plot point that led up to it. The overarching campaign that Popo wages against Warp was what drew viewers in while they slodged through the heart of the show. The depth and complexity of the show all comes from Popo, who is directly tackling the world and themes of Kaiba with his own character perspective. That depth would serve as a solid foundation to prop up Kaiba’s finale, if only the story didn’t decide to abandon it entirely. Popo’s character is dropped unceremoniously and instantaneously, right along with the literal dropping of his mother’s memory chip, the core driving part of his character. It gets to the point where Popo becomes interchangeable with three Warp clones, all of them serving as pathetic squabbling comic villains. With Popo sidelined, the story is free to shift to Kaiba and Neiro, going through the motions with its artistic emotional payoff. But with its emphatic dunk full of showmanship, its victory dance full of glee, the show forgets that it had missed the hoop entirely and spiked the ball into the ground.

The finale’s emotional core is seemingly Kaiba and Neiro. Neiro, who previously served as a pendant, dangling in front of our eyes as nothing more but a mystery, becomes central to Kaiba’s journey and identity. But in our memory, Neiro wasn’t that all important figure in our journey. Our dance was with Vanilla, and Chroniko, and Patch, and Quilt, and only briefly, mysteriously with Neiro as Gel. But even more we danced with Popo. We grappled the same questions, forging our opinions on this world, coming into conflict with each other. But those memories could not bloom. They were cut off at the head, and replaced at the final minute. Now Neiro’s face smiles at us, and we wonder why it feels so off. Something is missing, something is wrong. Now our memory tells us we are connected to Neiro on some shallow level. Try to dive deeper, to find a more meaningful connection, and the memory gets fuzzy. We love her, the her who appears before us at the end, or maybe the her we connected with in our memories. The mystery girl in the pendant picture, permeating throughout our journey, but never embodying its soul. Because in truth we travelled alongside others, others who now recede into the background. All that meaning has been replaced by her. And the remnants of our memory now fades into the light. In the dance of colors and music, the whole world fades. We see nothing but Neiro. Oh. It’s clear to us now. Someone messed with our memories.

Kaiba
5 out of 10

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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