Of Masaaki Yuasa's main three anime series (Kaiba, The Tatami Galaxy, and Ping Pong the Animation), Kaiba is arguably the most ambitious but also the most flawed. It weaves an overarching story while gradually building upon the distinct world it's set within, but along the process struggles with particular plot points being rushed, questionable actions, particular occurrences insufficiently explained, and particular contrivances.
The ways in which Kaiba is able to expand upon its world while maintaining a level of imagination often uncommon in the anime medium is its strongest point. Paralleling its cartoony art-style, many of Kaiba's sci-fi concepts are almost childishly simple, but this is in fact a commendable approach. It doesn't try to thoroughly explain the mechanisms of its world through info-dumps and rather chooses to show the viewer how the devices of the world work. To maintain the wonder of the concepts themselves, the series doesn't mechanics that don't need to be explained. From individuals removing chips and transferring someone into another body to scanning one's memory with a device and jumping into his/her mind to teleporting from room to room by stepping on a floating sphere, we get to witness all of its sci-fi concepts in action. We're shown this all naturally through the actions of Kaiba's characters without taking time to spoon-feed the reader all the information, thus enhancing the experience.
From the moment the main character begins exploring the world, the series establishes how the world shapes the mentality of its inhabitants. We see the despair of a family trapped within a cube, unable to experience the world with a real body. We notice attempts to limit the number of people who can inhabit an area with a body for pragmatism. We see a woman striving to escape her current life after winning a new body. Small touches of visual storytelling such as a man's failure at pretending to be a child's brother in order to obtain a body and his cover being blown when thanking the wrong child are well appreciated and serve as natural means of showcasing the deceit that can be present in such a world. Kaiba is the type of series to not hold back on harsh realities. Rather than present a childlike idealistic notion of a world in which memories are fickle and bodies can be manipulated, it depicts the class struggle that would naturally exist in such a world. The rich prosper and live on with near endless potential in what they may do with the manipulation of bodies and memory, while the poor struggle to even thrive in a body. An electrolytic cloud was built to separate the poor from the rich, and those in poverty have resolved to break through the cloud, even when the inevitable result is failing and losing their memories.
We can further see the tendency of impulse, deceit, and denial as we embark through Kaiba's world alonside the titular protagonist. The woman whom Popo sends Kaiba on the ship in episode 1 uses Kaiba's body for her own sexual impulses, loading her memory onto Kaiba's body for pleasure. The depiction of this sexual portrayal is gruesome, and some may be deem this event far too excessive for the series, but it demonstrates the lengths that some individuals may take in such a world and thus is a worthwhile inclusion. Butter's using of various women for his smuggling of memories serves to portray more of the deception inherent in such a world. Vanilla maintains order as a sheriff, but we see he's driven more strongly by his lust for a beatiful woman. Through him we further see the rules enforced within such a world, such as copies of individuals having no right to harm their originals and individuals being free to harm copies. Certainly questionable rules, and pragmatism is raised yet again when the copy within Kaiba's body is spared only so that the body could be sold to the collector Cloak.
Episode 3 further supports the harsh reality of such a world, but it also showcases that there's more to the conflict of characters within this world than mere selfishness. Chroniko's memories being disposed of when selling her body poses the risks and uncertainties that can arise in such a world of deception, but it doesn't depict her aunt Negi as wholly evil. Negi attempts to convince herself that she's justified in selling Chroniko, providing the excuse that she has provided enough for her and that Chroniko isn't her true daughter. But as she reflects upon what she went through to provide Chroniko her boots and takes joy in remembering playing piano with her, she cannot mask her genuine love for Chroniko, consequently grieving over the decision she had made. Although the characters of Kaiba may be driven through selfish ambitions, they are after all still people, and Negi's conflicts represents what playing with the memory of others can entail.
Episode 5 serves to showcase the role of consumerism in such a world. Individuals are more focused on what they can attain for accessories rather than what is truly necessary. Through the story of the robot Patch, we see his ambition in righting the wrongs of Alibiba's consumerism desires. Path's inventions were responsible for such excessive consumerism, but he built those inventions out of necessity rather than personal satisfaction. As such, he resolved to sabotage his creations in rebellion. Unfortunately his limited battery prevents him from succeeding in each attempt, and he loses all memory before recharging. As a result, all his attempts to combat the toxic consumerist tendencies of the masses is in vein. And thus we see the struggle of a character seeking to correct the world when in reality he's only admired for the problem he creates.
Through its episodic format in the first half, the series fleshed out the world through these aforementioned elements but it is also respect-worthy for how it built up its overarching story throughout its episodic format. Episode 1 already showcased Popo's desire to kill Kaiba in front of the skonk, and Hal's role in delivering Hyohyo onto the ship, both central to future reveals. The announcement of Neiro blowing up the memory tanks in episode 2 established the introduction of the Issoudan and suspense over what the relationship between Kaiba and Neiro could be. The end of episode 5 revealed the king of memories warp, leading the viewer to question the significance of Kaiba being given the name warp. Episode 6 established the memory-eating kaiba plant and Kaiba's interactions with Neiro. And episode 7 wrapped up Kaiba's journey with Vanilla, closing the episodic half of the series. Although the focuses shifted throughout the episodic portions, the series maintained a sense of continuity. For example, Kaiba and Vanilla being chased after in episode 7 was directly due to their involvement with Neiro.
With sufficient setup from these episodes, the series focused on its more ambitious central story. The Issoudan's movement to oppose all manipulation of memories was established more thoroughly, Kaiba and Neiro's past together was revealed, and motivations were provided for all of Kaiba's characters. This focused story of Kaiba was surely ambitious, but it also resulted in the majority of the issues with the show's execution. Firstly, Kichi receiving Kaiba's memories after Vanilla's memory transfer was contrived, as the series didn't provide a good enough reason why that location was chosen. Furthermore, although Popo's motivations and hypocrisy in disobeying the rules of Issoudan were understandable, several of his decisions were questionable: from not disposing of Kaiba when he and Neiro fell from the castle to his attempts at getting Kaiba and Neiro to go against each other, rather than ridding Kaiba himself. Popo's ideals of instrumentality (of unifying everyone into a single existence) before being betrayed seemed to come out of nowhere without enough a sufficient basis. Even worse was the barrage of betrayals that occurred in episode 11, which also raised the question of how Mantle and the fake warp survived up to that point, as that wasn't explained well enough. Kichi's love for Hyohyo and Sate's desire to follow Popo faithfully until the latter's instrumentality plan needed to be contextualized better. Fortunately, the ending at the very least handled the relationship between Kaiba and Neiro well, suggesting the importance of connection beyond class divide. Their interactions in both the light-hearted and serious moments were well done, and Neiro was integral in Kaiba's growth from a tyrant focused solely on executing others. Neiro's motivating of Kaiba and her influence as his driving force were necessary for Kaiba's ability to resolve the conflict with the kaiba plant and establish a conclusion in which the connections between individuals was stronger. Despite this, the presence of the kaiba plant at the end seemed far too rushed, and the appearance of another warp at the end wasn't explained properly. The role of the revolving fans also weren't as prominent as they could have been, merely thrown in at the end and taken care of immediately.
Kaiba also had one partciualar lacking character arc. Primarily, Vanilla lacked enough characterization for his sacrifice to have weight as he was portrayed almost solely through physical attraction to Chroniko. Thankfully, such physical impulse is consistent with Kaiba's theme pertaining to the value of the body, but Vanilla being portrayed almost primarily by this hindered the investment that his sacrifice required. Perhaps if his character traits such as his desire to bring back his mother were established earlier on and further traits were added to present him as a more fleshed out character, his fate would have had more impact.
From this we can see a handful of issues with Kaiba's execution. Nonetheless, its ambition mostly made up for it. How it presented its world visually was impressive, and although it had issues with its story, it performed a commendable job given how ambitious it was for the run-time. It would also be an injustice to not mention how strong the series was audio-visually. Kaiba's art was vibrant and distinct compared to most anime, and it featured a strong soundtrack for both the more light-hearted and the more melancholic moments. The character designs were simple yet still expressive, varied, and effective. The series even made use of shortcomings in its art/animation as the lower budget episode 5 integrated the drop in art quality into its story of consumerism and the desire for the artificial. Kaiba definitely uses its audiovisuals for full capacity and probably couldn't work as well in any other storytelling medium.
Final Verdict: (Personal Rating—Fairly Good)
It's no surprise Kaiba is one of the quintessential artsy anime in the medium. It's highly experimental and ambitious in its approach, and although it does falter in the execution of its story, what it accomplishes is more than enough for it to be a worthwhile series.
