I just watched... Kino's Journey

Have you ever wanted to just take your sentient motorbike and go on a journey?

                Kino’s Journey is definitely an odd show, but what’s not odd about it is that it can easily, truly be defined as a ‘philosophical’ series. And the issue with anything ‘philosophical’ is that it immediately falls into one of two categories: pretentious or non-pretentious. It’s very easy for a story to swing a big question around itself, like a briefcase filled with smaller briefcases filled with dead whales, to the extent that the story begins to, like a briefcase filled with smaller briefcases filled with dead whales, repel you.

Featuring: Bunny assassination

Personally, I have a problem with any work that is the question that is the statement within it first, and a story second. Much like a cake that oversaturates your tongue, your throat and indeed your soul with sugar before you even take a bite of it, so much so that will most likely just take a bite of the cake, realise that the cake itself is more like a balloon than a baked treat worth waging wars for and beheading queens for, and then likely leave it for good. If you like the sugary saturation that comes from such a cake then good for you, I’m not going to judge your tastes but I can definitely say that I don’t fancy that kind of cake. I like cakes that taste good, have a bit of firmness to them and leave you with that sense of sugary fulfilment… making my doctor a millionaire along the way as well.

Kino’s Journey sets itself up pretty dangerously as something that could fall into either end of the philosophical-pretention spectrum. In this day and age, almost anything about a ‘journey’ is bound to be philosophical in one way or another, because apparently journeys are the perfect place for meanderings of the mind and musings upon the constructs of this universe. It’s impossible to believe that some people might go on a journey because they’re bored of seeing the same humans every day, drinking the same cup of Iced Americano every day, eating the same food every day, killing the same cockroach every day that you swear is being empowered by the will of Lucifer and so on. But I suppose journeys are a good way of exploring yourself because you are exploring, and it’s a case of ‘two birds, one stone’ to journey into your mind and being while you journey into lands unknown and foods unheard of.

The countries Kino visits have kinks of their own... and questions. 

The good news is that Kino’s Journey falls into the good end of the spectrum, the wholesome cake side of it. I suppose it’s mainly owing to the fact that it gets one thing so right: it never actually states its questions and statements. It just tells a story, many stories, of the titular character’s journeys across increasingly varied and crazy countries. A part of it is also the fact that Kino is more of a bystander than anything else, seeing the woes, systems, cultures, traditions and problems of these countries and doesn’t actually take any part in them or try to ‘fix’ them. Instead, Kino is simply a spectator and commentator, sometimes musing on what is at hand, but almost never taking part in it. There are a handful of exceptions where Kino actually does take part is helping or ‘fixing’ the country, and they are few are far between enough to make them feel like refreshing changes, to see Kino step up and take action.

Kino sure reps guns pretty hard, and other characters follow suit. 

Talking about action, this is definitely not an action series, despite Kino’s love for guns and skill at quickdraw. A handful of fights are scattered here and there, and their brutal and fast-paced nature belies the series’ more ‘innocent’ art style.

The series' liberally shifts its art around. 

It’s certainly a pretty show, not one that’s going to inspire to take upon great artistic feats, abandon your job and family, grow a beard (regardless of gender) and find your canvas in this world, but it looks good and has aged well. I do have a peeve with an element the series seems to randomly use in between, which is to have what a character said appear on screen as quivering text upon a golden screen… which just feels off, odd and pretentious. It tends to give off this feeling of “Hey look, these words are important and have say more than they say, and have more meaning and relevance than you thought. So, LOOK at them!” It doesn’t hurt the series, but neither did it help the series, and it managed to peeve me a bit, so that’s something. But the something is a nothing since I just said that it doesn’t matter since it neither hurt nor helped the series, so is what I said a nothing then?

Case in point. 

The series is definitely existential in nature, as a traveller Kino is in a sense a wanderer, a drifter, someone who belongs nowhere yet belongs everywhere, who simply enters and leaves, whose existence is often like a passing phase.

In some cases the questions and statements are a tad more pronounced, but for the most part they are veiled behind the story within every episode. As an episodic series, every episode covers one country, sometimes multiple, with each telling a different story with a myriad of meanings and reflections. The episodic format is going to fare as well with you if you don’t like episodic series, as milk fares with someone lactose intolerant. It’s not going to magically change your tastes, and if you are especially intolerant you might make a mess.

A stoic and a machine?

Kino is an interesting character as a stoic who actively seeks to remain neutral in all matters, often sympathising but not acting, or loathing but not protesting. Kino’s sentient bike, Hermes, reflects this as someone who’s difficult to decipher amidst using wrong variations of famous sayings, seemingly detached yet attached from everything, and being the more ‘alive’ of the two energy and exclamation wise. Is he just a machine serving his master? Is he just a machine being amused, but bearing to attachment to his master? The fact that Kino spends a lot of time talking to a motorbike definitely amps up the existential side of things.

Things get ugly ever so often.

I’m actually at a bit of a loss for words now, because this is the kind of series that’s hard to right about. Arguably, this is actually a series that you could write a lot about, but that would involve getting into the various stories and dissecting the statements and so on embedded within, which would defeat the purpose of seeing the series. Kind of like me discussing the meaning and statements in the solution and ultimate reveals of a murder mystery, where I talk about how the murder of John at the hands of Shaun draws extreme parallels to the start of the Second World War, the fall of the Samurai and the Apollo 13 mission. Sure, I’d get a lot to talk about but I’d ruin everything in the process. I’m not making excuses to avoid writing, honest. Hell, if I was trying to avoid writing I wouldn’t be writing what I’m writing right now, i.e. this sentence about not writing, which I am writing because I am writing and not trying to avoid writing by not writing.

The characters Kino interacts with have questions of their own.

All in all, at only 13 episodes the series is a fun and interesting watch, if one that sometimes varies in terms of intensity and intrigue. But an interesting watch nonetheless, but also an odd one, that left me with this strange feeling when I finished watching it. It gave me this sense of watching a series end, but also gave me this feeling like I haven’t really watched anything. I suppose that’s the nature of the beat with episodic series, they seem to suffer from an existential crisis of their own. The irony.

Apparently, the series has two movies as well. I’ll watch them in due time.