Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World

Kino, a 15-year-old traveler, forms a bond with Hermes, a talking motorcycle. Together, they wander the lands and venture through various countries and places, despite having no clear idea of what to expect. After all, life is a journey filled with the unknown.

Throughout their journeys, they encounter different kinds of customs, from the morally gray to tragic and fascinating. They also meet many people: some who live to work, some who live to make others happy, and some who live to chase their dreams. Thus, in every country they visit, there is always something to learn from the way people carry out their lives.

It is not up to Kino or Hermes to decide whether these asserted values are wrong or right, as they merely assume the roles of observers within this small world. They do not attempt to change or influence the places they visit, despite how absurd these values would appear. That's because in one way or another, they believe things are fine as they are, and that "the world is not beautiful; therefore, it is."

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kino Main

Maeda, Ai Japanese

Hermes Main

Aigase, Ryuji Japanese

Kino (original) Supporting

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Riku Supporting

Ootsuka, Houchuu Japanese

Shizu Supporting

Irie, Takashi Japanese

Sakura Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Shishou Supporting

Midori, Junko Japanese

Tchuhachkova, Nimya Supporting

Kobayashi, Ai Japanese

Poet's Daughter Supporting

Saitou, Chiwa Japanese

Poet Supporting

Mikimoto, Yuji Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Abe, Shoujirou Producer

Nakamura, Ryuutarou Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Tsuruoka, Youta Sound Director

Reviews

Oct 13, 2024

Teramol

Recommended

I went into this blind and thought I was in for a cozy travelling show so I was surprised pleasantly to learn that Kino's Journey is something much deeper than that.

The show follows the titular character and her motorcycle Hermes as they travel a fictional world and its various countries, experiencing their culture, history and ways of living. The show is very episodic, featuring only a single double parter, otherwise always changing the tone each episode.

Kino and Hermes are supposed to act as the observers. Because of this, the show feels more like a collection of short stories rather than an actual adventure of the ... main characters. Although sometimes Kino ends up taking a very proactive approach to a place she visits, which in my opinion is when the show actually gets less interesting. I didn't really care too much for the action side.

Personally, I love the show when an episode gets full on philosophical and thought-provoking. It's not afraid to give you grim, reality checks. In fact, most of the show probably feels very familiar to the viewer, handling commonly explored dystopian themes, especially those that reflect our real world. However, I still found the philosophy a hit or miss. When it's good it's amazing, but sometimes I felt like it missed the mark and it was like someone's first attempt at writing this kind of material.

I loved the eerie vibe the show has going on, feeling almost like a horror series sometimes. This is paired beautifully (pun intended) by the haunting OST. There are no happy tracks in the music whatsoever, but not overly gloomy either. A perfect fit. The show also has this odd CRT like filter on it which I have mixed feelings on. It's good for the vibe but sometimes a bit jarring to look at.

Even though I still preferred a more passive approach from Kino herself regarding the different countries, I still wish we got to see more of her story too. We get a backstory of how she got started but that's about it. Would have loved to have learned more about her Master and all the time between her childhood and current situation.

The world building feels slightly off, since we don't get to see Kino really move between the countries a lot, everything just ends up feeling very disconnected from each other, which is a shame since it's a fictional world and I think there was a lot of room for some greatness in this aspect.

While the show is short, I wouldn't recommend binging it all in one go. I think it's better to let the message of the episodes sink in for a while and actually take it in. Scoring this was hard since it's far from perfect but there were times I loved the show and overall it's still a quality piece of anime that deserves its status as a classic.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 9, 2024

Kanudelgruber

Mixed Feelings

The first 5 episodes of this show are great. After that, it takes a sharp downturn with the incredibly uninteresting coliseum two-parter and never fully recovers. Don't get me wrong: the later episodes do start to get interesting again, but they never reach the highs of the first 5. I would absolutely recommend watching the first 5 episodes even if you don't end up continuing with the rest. If you're going to skip anything, skip the coliseum.

While this show is a mixed bag, I enjoyed it more than the later remake mainly for the reason of that show's asinine episode selection, which was decided by ... vote and is not only completely disjointed with no temporal or thematic through line, but also contains ANOTHER adaptation of the stupid coliseum story. The 2003 adaptation feels much more like a journey with various encounters along the way, as opposed to a random selection of popular chapters.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 9, 2024

Latooq

Not Recommended

Every review I've read about Kino's journey made me realize I'm a minority here. That reminds me of Gun Gale Online, written by the same author, receptions where everyone was talking how that show takes SAO concept and tells an amazingly-written story, where in my opinion that show was extremely forgettable compare to the original sword art online. And as I expected, Kino's journey introduces a bunch of concepts and doesn't do anything substantial with them.

Kino and her talking motorcycle are 2 main protagonists. The story follows their journey from one country to another. But every time they leave the country the story moves on, ... making the plot structure episodic. Of course 20 minutes, the usual anime episode length, isn't enough to tell a memorable story, but this show rarely even dedicates one episode to one arc, so some arcs last about 4 to 6 minutes. I think it goes without saying that that's not enough to do more than just to introduce a concept. It's quite easy to reduce every arc to a single sentence. A country comes up with a new tradition for every traveler. A religious community believes in impending doomsday but it gets delayed every time. A girl built a plane but she can't test it because a statue of a bird gets in her way. And I can go on and with that. The only worthy arc is about the library country, it even hints that the story is actually interconnected. But it is one good episode out of 13 mediocre ones.

The adaptation isn't quite impressive either. The coliseum arc is a good illustration of that. Only important fights are animated and the others are skipped whatsoever. Overall quality of animation is low and even backgrounds are sometimes missing. The opening is good though.

Kino's journey isn't a terrible show but it isn't good either. The concepts it presents could work if they had an actual story with them and not just a good concept for the sake of a concept.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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