Kino no Tabi follows the titular Kino and her motorcycle Hermes as they travel from country to country. The appeal of the series supposedly based on the uniqueness of each country they visit, rather than some overarching grand adventure, so apart from some recurring characters, there is very little connection between the episodes, and indeed from what I heard it’s neither in the order of the original novel, nor in the order of the previous adaptation.
Therefore the enjoyment of the series rests on how interesting or thought provoking each individual country/story is. While I had high expectations , in general the stories fell rather flat for me. A couple of them could probably be considered “memorable”, but most range from mediocre to forgettable. And even the memorable ones are hardly masterpieces, just more unique than the rest.
This is not helped by the fact that each story has to be either one episode or half an episode long, which makes some of them feel slow and drawn out, while others feel too fast and hurried.
The ending, however, was just... bad. I'm not really how sure how they can close of a series in this format, but episode 11 seems like a much more fitting ending than 12, which consists of bizarre story followed by Kino murmuring half-asleep about where travel begin and ends. It's just... completely anti-climatic.
Kino travels through a myriad of different settings, from rural to urban, from ancient to modern, from land to sea. It could have been a great visual feast, but instead Kino no Tabi choose to use a drab, faded, one-look-fits-all type of feel. It works in the sense that the world feels coherent despite the different settings, however it takes away the uniqueness of each different country, and make them all feel like clones with minor adjustments.
Character animation is somewhat stable, however there are serious problems with certain animated sequences, particularly the 3D ones -- oftentimes the framerate is so bad that it feels like watching a slideshow rather than an animation.
The OP, ED, and OST as a whole is largely forgettable, and nothing from the OST even pops into mind. It's just... bland and boring like most of the show.
In the end, I’d probably rate the best stories 8/10, and the worst ones 3/10, and the ending 1/10. The series as a whole would sit somewhere at 5/10.
