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| From http://media.animevice.com/uploads/0/1293/119292-kaiba_large.jpg |
Dir. Masaaki Yuasa
Within basic, rudimentary
knowledge of any form of creativity, even doodling on paper, it is made very
clear how small details can alter the results of a creation. A single note of
an instrument can be bent with modification, or a change in the blowing/plucking
of it, to make a new sound or change how the original note is played. Shading,
dimension etc. can alter a drawing, which anyone having done a secondary (high)
school art class could attest to. Altering certain details can depict certain
human emotions in a clearer way - the difference between the passions of jazz
against the aggression of heavy metal, and both styles can be modified to
convey different emotions than the ones I've given them in this example. But by
changing notes, words, lines sketched on a page, whatever is in front of you, it's
also possible to present more abstract concepts such as internal states, dreams
and memories. Animation, which is inherently about using basic lines to
creating moving images, is perfectly able to do this, as is the case in the
twelve episode series
Kaiba. In the
distant future, a young man wakes up with no memories. He has two distinct
physical traits - a birthmark that is a symbol and a giant hole directly
through his chest. The only potential clue about his past is a locket around
his neck with a blurred picture of a girl his age in it. In the universe of
Kaiba, memories can be preserved and commodity.
People can be preserved on chips and change bodies. Memories can be altered. Of
course it's the rich who have the privilege while the poor go as far as selling
their bodies if need be to support their families. In this universe the
protagonist goes in search of the girl
pictured in the locket and discover who he is, even if it means spending a
large quarter of the series in other bodies than his own.
To clear aside the one major flaw
of Kaiba, from the same director of The Tatami Galaxy (2010), it's that at
twelve episodes it does shorten the potential journey and possibilities it
could have gone with its premise. The first six travel around the universe
set-up, exploring what memory means to human beings, while the last six deal
strictly with the key narrative with the ideas thought about wrapped around it.
It does feel abrupt when the switch happens; if any series could justify twenty
four episodes, when many procrastinate at that length, it's this one if it was
written and planned well. But one has to be grateful for the series even
existing. The series as a whole is inventive and imaginative, using creativity
to depict a concept that is both to reconfigure the story in a new way but also
bring in a melancholic attitude to the nature of memory's mutability. Immediately
the visual look and character designs are instantly noticeable. In another
review, they might be called "childlike" or "cartoonish".
Instead I would say it's a distinct, bold and colourful one. Character designs
to be sympathetic for. It benefits the series because the result allows for a
greater fluidity to the animation. For a series that isn't really about action
set pieces, the few times they happen, in the first episode no less, are
impressive. The series' look also leads to two distinct virtues. That this is
an animation willing to push itself to the most vivid things you could create
from just your imagination possible, a completely alien new world onscreen even
if aspects are recognisable. It actually evokes the great René Laloux's Fantastic
Planet (1973) just in the level of interest in the flora and social life
depicted in the background of locations. This is combined with a very
thoughtful view on the concept of memory.
Kaiba takes immense joy in the notion of memories. Depicting the
mind as a library of books full of past
thoughts and images. As seeds and liquid. Its fascinated with how they could be
preserved and how people could continue to live beyond their original deaths.
Unfortunately in such a world it means this ability to preserve and remove
memories leads to greater remorse for their loss. The girl the protagonist is
trying to find is likely part of a terrorist group who oppose the technology
able to manipulate memories and bodies. As he travels through the universe in
the first half, we also see various implementations of this technology and the
repercussions of it when matched with the complicated emotions human beings
have. The animation in style, composition and tone depicts this without
weightless exposition. It's not difficult to compare Yuasa's
style and thoughts to Mamoru Oshii
and the late Satoshi Kon, the former
in his cerebral takes of his ideas, the later in manipulating reality depending
on his characters' mental states. But Yuasa
is different from them. Oshii is
concerned with philosophy greatly. Kon's
key obsession was dreams. Yuasa even
above these two directors' take on it is directly obsessed with human emotion.
Relationships and interaction, friendship and communication, is important in
his work. He has no issues with tackling love and even sex head on, and it says
something that the series can make a subtle reference to menstruation, without
making it seem abrasive, in one episode when most anime now has developed an
embarrassing track record in portraying women. The series even goes as far as
play with a queer/pan-gender take on what being able to switch bodies could
mean, not a great deal barring one episode, fitting titled Masculine Woman, but enough
to be an idea as fully formed as other within the series.
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| From http://animewriter.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/kaiba290.png |
The series has no issues with
melodrama being used to convey its ideas, pulling at the heartstrings and
making the director vastly different from Mamoru
Oshii. The best episode is the third in the whole twelve series, but is a
great beginning for a story that continues as highly in quality long
afterwards. A character is introduced, leaves halfway through in a way that is
heartbreaking, and in a nicely wrapped up little story, when I'm usually not fond
of episodic anime because the stories are weakly put together, makes a dramatic
and philosophical point that strikes home fully. That this character, while
long gone, still exists physically for a large portion in the series for a
while adds a very inspired move by the anime, in forcing home the the
subjectivity of what the body and mind mean, disturbing in its implications,
but also in how she still "exists", and the queer/pan relationship
that happens with a secondary character, suggests a glory in someone being
allowed to still live even if they're technically dead. If the series could
have been twenty four episodes long, with this level of quality still there,
moments like this episode could have been allowed to be even more powerful,
even if the final work in reality is still something special in its own right.
Particularly for a series clearly
made in the era where anime is created with computers rather than hand drawn
cels, very noticeable even to a novice like myself when you see enough anime, Kaiba nonetheless shows far more of the
amount of talent human hands and minds are capable of in building its world.
Everything in this was clearly designed, such heady ideas through the simplest
visual flourishes allowed to be taken as far as they could. Its baffling the
series never got a wide release in the English speaking world; maybe in anime
fandom its "weird", but the story and ideas are conveyed in ways that
are fully graspable without having to work with them as other anime required. Oshii was difficult with the celebrated Ghost In The Shell (1995) even before
the divisive sequel, but his work was released over here. Kaiba is unconventional because, if one takes the simplest and
obvious of changes in something, a colour palette, character style, how
everything is conveyed by what is drawn, its furthest, there's somewhat of a
paradox that, when even the simplest of modifications of image or sound are
avoided in more mainstream work, something that does them looks more
experimental. With this series this is strange to have taken place. A
legitimately beautiful, gentle opening and closing song are wrapped around each
episode, rather than something really trite like is an unfortunate case with
other works, setting up the notion of love that can even overcome the loss of
memory and multiple bodies that is the eventual key theme for the whole series.
Despite the jarring jerk in the plotting in the middle, the series does indeed
fully run with the notion of how human existence and interaction could be
drastically altered, in reality and philosophically, but that notions of love
and kinship could still exist despite the burdens created. Far from naive with
this message, Yuasa also has the
advantage of realising how badly human beings can negate this and harm
themselves, as seen in realistic terms in The
Tatami Galaxy, even if his heart is for the happy endings. The notion of
fate or the strength of eternal love in these two works isn't the sappy,
asinine debacle is its usually turned into but a true optimism for good of
people to be able to exist together regardless of the fact reality can be completely
undermined. The last episode of Kaiba suddenly
turns into Neon Genesis Evangelion: The
End of Evangelion (1997), completely within the bowels of the human mind
like that film becomes, but rather than the violent catharsis and destruction
of what was before to even consider healing, this ends with reconciliation of
what existed before instead.
Anyone can do this. On a written
page. Painting. Film. Sculpture. Anything. Knowledge helps improve your ability
to do this. In trying to depict these ideas to a wider audience however a
problem arises. Anyone can do this, but to widen the palette and tools, you're
stuck with issues of commercialism. It's actually not encouraged in the
mainstream to even modify a slight aspect of what you're doing to be different
unless you have the money and ego to go forth with it. Music has the most
freedom because, even before MP3 distribution furthered the ability to reach
new audiences, musicians can play the most unconventional music possible and
find a way to get it distributed, the most uncommercial acts and musicians able
to develop cult followings and reputations. Art in general has the advantage
that, despite the questions of what "art" is, that many different manifestos
and techniques have opened up what it is as expression of thought. Literature
and writing in general is helped by the fact anyone can write an idea or mood
down on paper, since paper and a pen is easily available, although as someone
who wants to become a fiction writer myself, I dread when it comes to actually
trying to publish the novel I presume I will make; even if the internet (again)
has made it possible to distribute one further, the issue of whether the most
interesting works, like in music and art, eventually rise to the surface will
happen with novels now is something I'm worried about, the desire just to cause
one person to think enough for me to have succeeded. Moving images
unfortunately have suffered in this area because the cost of making them. The
great creators have managed to make films regardless of this but were still
handicapped by distribution. Animation has greater flexibility, but unfortunately
the perception that it's for children, and like Disney or Pixar has been
a severe handicap on it. Thankfully Kaiba
managed to get made. This proves that you can always have hope even if the
final work is never financially successful. Although it's on a roll of a dice
in a lot of cases. In fact Yuasa had
to use Kickstarter to fund his last
animated work, a mere short. The further sadness is that I could only see Kaiba through the kindness of a person
online in a way considered very un-Kosher in some eyes. It's annoying because Kaiba is bold in style but not
alienating, very clear in its ideas. Very simple, understandable ideas merely
stretched as far as they can go, through characters who are only real in their
voices but living through the few pen strokes people made on computers. The
thing that avoids making this epilogue completely sad is that the work being
reviewed is a testament to how the simplest bendings and modifications of the
moving image, animation, led to something that was great.
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| From http://animediet.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/vlcsnap-00193.jpg |
