Kaiba is a sci-fi anime that right off the bat has an unorthodox look to it as the setting, characters, and color pallet have this rather cartoonish and colorful look to it. The shows surreal look alone gives the anime a unique status outside most of anime. The show not only looks different but it looks good with character designs looking unique from one another as well as visually appealing. The worlds look odd but by the end give off an air of familiarity. The colors are vibrant and clash well with one another which helps with the unique visuals of the show. Even with the unique look it does not hamper the animation in anyway allowing for unique and fluid movement to happen on screen. Overall it’s just great and compliments well with the narrative of the show.
Kaiba follows a young man who awakens dazed and confused with no memory of who he is or what is going on, even the viewer doesn’t know other than what he is referred as which is given through exposition at the beginning of each episode. The only thing he has is a pendant on his necklace of a smiling woman. With this as well with the help of some people he is sent on a journey where he encounters new people and experiences new things that even if he regains his memories he wouldn’t be the same as he was before losing them.
The first handful of episode takes time to explore the world of kaiba that allow it to present the themes and ideas of the show. Despite being Sci-Fi it doesn’t take a technical approach to the technology of the show because it’s used as a vehicle to explore its themes and is able to get away with this due to how it presents all of this. For them all the technology is rather commonplace and is used without much though because they are probably used to them that it’s just normal. It also helps that with it’s surreal look that it’s able to get away with surreal moments such as jumping into people's minds. One of these technologies which is common in Kaiba is a small memory brain chip that works in the same way as a gits cyber brain, except it’s small and looks like a cone, but works almost the same way and allows the characters to switch to different bodies. With this people are allowed to live longer, but it becomes evident that only the rich or those who can pay are able to such a thing. Even worse is that people are able to steal other memories so that they can only have good memories while everyone else is better of a hollow husk of a human.
This is only a small bit of the first half as it continues and explores more about its themes about memories. The show becomes a roller coaster of emotions that is both pleasing and painful, happy and sad, beautiful but heart wrenching. Of course during all this Kaiba continues on his quest to figure out who he is. Along the way he meets many people while many are given one episode that becomes more than enough to feel empathy and emotional attachment even to the most unlikable character.
The story does end up taking a turn during the last ⅓ of the show as the show now has to bring the overarching plot to the forefront which was left in the backdrop for too long as the show used most of it’s time on the first half which was great but honestly was more of a detour. Because of this the last half feels all over the place which left me with a bad taste and had to take another reexamined to understand what occurred. While it did finally make sense the way it was delivered proved to be lacking in the end. Nonetheless the characters were still a strong point of the show and it still had the same heart and genuine feel that the first episodes had even after it felt a bit rushed.
A finally thing worth mentioning is the music of the anime which is just great all around.of course the op and the ed for many anime are good but what many shows lack are a good ost which Kaiba hits out of the ballpark. The “Tree Song” is one of the more prominent songs that is played in different versions each one giving a different vibe and atmosphere to a scene and when finally played one last time reveals the true meaning of the song. Some osts like “planet” and “Hello,Goodbye, My memory” sound more like a circus and joyous. Other osts like “Memories” and “Chase To it” are the ones that give the show the more sci-fi feeling during the mysterious, action, or high-tension scenes. Not once has any of these felt out of place, but in fact where spine chillingly good.
Overall while the story wasn’t able to hold out onto the end, the shows production values and great cast of characters were able to support the show
