Really, is there no end to this series awesomeness? This was quite possibly the best episode of Kaiba yet, for very obvious reasons. For the sake of spoilers showing up in the blog-aggregators like animeblogger antenna, this sentence is meant to fill up space. This one is meant to fill up space as well. So, this should be enough.

Kaiba finally meets Neiro! Although under very strange circumstances. She spends this episode in the form of a huge male cyborg without any hands. The thing that made this so awesome was that both of them were struggling with the feelings of being in the body of another gender. Kaiba has his first period as well, while Neiro has trouble with the male hormone-impulses.

As it turns out, Warp was the worst kind of king. He killed Neiro’s family, imprisoned thousands, and he was also probably responsible for the huge gap between rich and old, and several of the memory-clouds we see in space. That makes me even wonder why Neiro fell in love with him in the first place, because right now she seems to consider him as an enemy.

What’s more: in this episode a strange plant appears, which sucks out the memories of nearby persons. Neiro calls it a KAIBA!!! Could it really be that Warp fell victim to one of these Kaiba, and that’s how Kaiba originated? Oh boy.

The case in this episode looked a lot like the episode with the old couple in Kemonozume. Both couples have been travelling for decades now, and both suffer a huge loss as the episode went on. I must say that I prefer the Kaiba-version. This might be a small spoiler, but the problem with Kemonozume was that the ending had no point whatsoever. The two of them just turned into monsters and killed each other due to the big bad guy. This episode in Kaiba has been very deep, though. This time, just the old lady gets her memory sucked out, and as it turns out, she has been cheating on her husband. And yet the husband doesn’t matter, and he’ll just continue to travel with her memory-less body.

With this episode, I know for sure that Kaiba is my favourite series this season. The 26-episode series really need try their best in their second halves if they want to trump this series.

This episode was surreal, even for a Kaiba-episode. I think it has to do with a guy named “Jamie Vickers”, who was listed in the end-credits. His previous work includes a few episodes of Kemonozume, and the animation of the ED of Tokyo Tribe 2. This guy’s sense of style is even messier than that of Masaaki Yuasa.

This episode was all about bodies, and how they’re discarded once they die. The previous episodes have never really shown what happens to a person if he or she dies from a natural reason, but I suspect that the mind and body die together, and the body can’t be used anymore by another mind, so it is discarded and destroyed. In this way, Kai’s body also gets destroyed accidentally. Oh, and Hyo-Hyo mysteriously disappears in this episode without any clue whatsoever as to where… “it” went, apart from the fact that it saw a huge load of Neiro-like bodies with “Neiro” written on them.

Kaiba this time runs into a designer of bodies, who has become quite famous. He’s of the opinion that people shouldn’t walk around with dull bodies, and his vision seems to catch on rather well. Nearly everyone walks around with some kind of strange body. His own body seems to be actually powered by electricity, and his servant, in the body of a dog, just needs to be re-winded once in a while. This dog seems to be a former woman who took care of the… “cat”, though she got too old at one point and separated her mind from her body, just as she was about to die. The two of them also share the same eyes: the designer can only see what the dog sees, and nothing more, and therefore he’s really dependant on the dog, and they’re always together. The dog also takes care of powering this designer.

In this episode, I also noticed a huge difference between this series and Himitsu ~The Revelation in terms of privacy. In Himitsu, Aoki is very much bothered by the fact that he’s intruding the privacy of others, and yet Kaiba just peeks into the minds of others without any second thoughts, in order to find out their stories.

I also have a theory. In this episode, we learn that Kaiba’s original body was some sort of hero, famous enough to warrant his own statue, though at the same time, nobody knows who this guy actually was. I didn’t totally understand the explanation, but it seems that we’re dealing with a king here. My theory is that Kaiba and Warp are two different persons, and Kaiba was just meant to protect Warp’s body as something happened to him, involving the terrorists and Popo. That still makes me wonder what Hyo-Hyo’s purpose was, because the mission of protecting Kaiba’s body clearly failed. Heck, we have no idea where it is now. Or is there more about the locket that it just being a pretty picture?

Okay, so while the introduction of weird accents didn’t exactly help my ability to understand this episode, I still loved every bit about this episode. Really, I’m trying to think of one part of this series that doesn’t stand out, but so far this series couldn’t have progressed better. I absolutely LOVE the pair of Kaiba and the guard (I think his name was Vanilla) as they travel through various world. They stand so incredibly far apart from your usual travelling-companionship. The two of them are without a doubt my favourite characters of all new shows this season, apart perhaps from xxxHolic.

I originally thought that Kaiba would switch bodies with every new episode, but this episode proves us wrong. He just has two bodies: one of the stuffed animal and one of the girl. Both bodies are very different from the Kaiba we saw in the first episode, and it felt especially weird when the stuffed animal suddenly started talking. It turns out that normal rules don’t really apply when you’re into the mind of a person.

What’s also interesting: we see Vanilla into Kaiba’s mind this time, and there, we saw the body he was in when we found him in episode 1. The thing is also that this doesn’t seem to be his original body (because yes, this episode also gives us a small shot of Kaiba when he still had his memory). There’s nothing of that fancy outfit we saw. And really, what the hell has happened to Popo? He hasn’t appeared for four episode, and yet he seems like a vital character in all this, after the previous episode showed some hints that he was connected to Neiro.

In any case, this episode is about an old woman, who refuses to share her dead husband’s “treasure” with her two sons. They may be poor, but they’re always causing trouble for others, and don’t ever pay attention to their surroundings. Of course, the “treasure” turns out to be an ordinary memory-box, but still. The interesting thing is how this episode went into this old woman’s mind, as she’s still trying to forget her deceased husband. He fell off a lighthouse, but she never knew why. Inside her memory, she then finds out that he was just trying to pick a flower, in the hope of making his wife smile again. I probably missed the important point of this episode again, though, due to the above-mentioned dialect.

The art this time was also different from usual. It looked much more like Kemonozume than ever. While it’s usually not that good of an idea to have an episode with a different animation-style than usual (just take a look at Gurren Lagann 04), for Kaiba it works surprisingly well. Perhaps it’s because the changes are there, but not quite radical.

Oh for Christ’s sake! This episode took freaking ages to show up on Share, and even longer to download. I really wonder: how popular is Kaiba in Japan anyways? I remember how even Kaze no Shoujo Emily didn’t run into these problems, and that series probably was one of the least viewed anime around at that time…

Still, this series is pure gold, and I love every single bit of it. I’m an absolute sucker for good series that show how random people deal with its concepts, and Kaiba combines it plot with these random stories in an excellent way. What I especially like his how Kaiba meets the random people, he watches them, but he never interferes with them. He just tries to understand them, and that’s all. The stories of these people would have ended in the same way if Kaiba was never there, and that’s REALLY rare in this genre. It’s a great way of symbolizing the whimsical nature of memory in this series.

I’ve probably said this before, but PLEASE let there be more series like this one in the future. 12 episodes is just criminally short for a series with such a terrific concept. This episode shows a girl who sells her body in order to feed her family. Her memory then gets sent into space, in the hope of someday reaching a new body. Kaiba then steals her body, and ironically enough gets a free ride from the guard, who was sadistic to everyone only an episode ago.

This episode masterfully explores first this case from the perspective of the girl, and once she’s dead it’s the perspective from her stepmother, who was probably the one who suggested the girl to sell her body. The mother first was happy that the girl went, but very soon afterwards, she was full of guilt about what she did.

Kaiba definitely is my top-recommendation for the spring-season. It’s got everything: great graphics, an excellent concept, a fitting soundtrack, terrific characterization, it’s thought-provoking, short enough for a quick watch, and I can go on and on with this list.

Make no mistake: the drawings of Kaiba may be very simple but it’s also the show with the most mature themes of the spring-season. It’s only been two episodes, and we’ve already been treated to nudity, sex, adultery, murder, privacy violations, you name it. At the same time, it has also turned into my favourite series this season, along with Himitsu. The thing I love most about the current spring-season is that it features a few series with the most amazing ideas. This is really what anime should be in my opinion: a medium to explore creative ideas. Not to magically give a cute girlfriend to a geeky guy. (Yes, I’m talking to YOU, To Love-ru!).

This episode showed indeed what the OP suggested: the main character changes bodies throughout the series. In this episode, he changes into the body of a giant plushie, while the woman from the previous episode uses his old body as a sex-object. The main character basically spends the rest of the episode, trying to not get caught as a stowaway on the ship (and he’s not the only one, it seems), and wait until the ship arrivees at its destination. We also get another hint about the female lead, as she seems to be some kind of criminal in that place. Is she the same girl as in the locket that Kaiba (the main character) carries? They sure look similar, apart from some colour-changes, perhaps.

This episode also shows him alongside a companion. Was that the same one-eyed bird we saw in the previous episode? It would make sense if the bird threw its memory-chip inside the ship, so that it could continue to follow Kaiba’s progress. I think it’s clear that Kaiba is a special case, since the body he was in when he woke up is quite a rare one.

Another thing I love about this series is how it explores the lives of different ordinary people. This is one of these series where even the smallest side-characters have themselves a personality. This episode was mainly about one of the stowaways and her boyfriend, as he turns out to have been playing around with many women (among which one huge-breasted one).

The guard also intrigues me. The guy is sadistic towards everyone, and not just the main characters, like in most other anime. I’m interested whether he’ll appear in the rest of this series, because I like the guy so far. He’s really been one of the more interesting evil characters.

Toshokan Sensou

With Noitamina, I just knew that this series would be worthwhile. Toshokan Sensou has proven to have the best soundtrack this season, and with Production IG, the art looks terrific. This series also smartly spent its first episode fleshing out its main characters, instead of focusing on a story-heavy start. So instead the characters already feel dynamic for when the story starts kicking in. This series has a limited time to work with, and yet it’s got quite a large premise, so this will probably be one of the most fast-paced series to come out of the Noitamina-timeslot.

Junjo Romantica

Okay, so this was a really weird combination between hilarious and disturbing. This series does have a sense of humour, and there’s some good chemistry between the characters. The only problem is that the chemistry between them might be a bit too good, because the characters wasted no time to get it on with each other. What surprises me, by the way, is that this series has the best OP song this season, strangely enough. The song is standard J-rock, but it works surprisingly well. It’ll be interesting to keep watching this series, if only to laugh at the hot passion that will erupt from it.

Kaiba

Oh my god, I can’t believe how well this series turned out! Even with the fantastic line-up that this season already has, Kaiba has delivered the best first episode of them all! This is EXACTLY the reason why I love experimental anime. Anime should be used as a medium to showcase creative ideas, not to just copy everyone else. On top of that, the mystery in this series is downright excellent. Since 2007 was so disappointing in terms of mystery, my inner-fanboy is loving all the different mystery-series that this season has offered so far! I really urge everyone to check out this series, because it’s without a doubt the most unique anime to come out this year, even taking Hakaba Kitarou in consideration. Don’t be discouraged by the childish-looking character-designs. This series is exactly the reason why simple character-designs don’t mean that the series will be for children.