Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series

When 15-year-old Kino is feeling weighed down by heavy thoughts, one thing always manages to cheer her up: traveling. Nothing fills her heart with joy like exploring the beautiful, wonderful world around her and the fascinating ways people find to live. However, Kino is not as helpless as her cute appearance and courteous demeanor suggest. Armed with "Cannon" and "Woodsman," her trusted handguns, Kino isn't afraid to kill anyone who would dare to get in her way. Always by her side is her best friend and loyal companion Hermes, a sentient motorcycle, who supports Kino through the sorrows and hardships of their journey. Together, they travel the vast countryside with the shared goal of always moving forward, and a single rule: never stay in one country for more than three days.

As Kino and Hermes encounter new people and learn the rules of their civilizations, they grow and find out more about their own values and virtues. But as Kino slowly discovers the world around her, she also finds herself facing dangers that linger within the vast unknown.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kino Main

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Hermes Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Kino (original) Supporting

Ono, Daisuke Japanese

Riku Supporting

Matsuda, Kenichirou Japanese

Photo Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Shizu Supporting

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Sakura Supporting

Amano, Kokoa Japanese

Shishou Supporting

Lynn Japanese

Tii Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Sou Supporting

Ogata, Megumi Japanese

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Iizuka, Aya Producer

Ashitate, Harutaka Producer

Hattori, Kentarou Producer

Reviews

Dec 22, 2017

RPWPA

Recommended

A Masterpiece anime is rare to find and it's specially rare nowadays since the shows mostly focus on bad harems and shitty romance but sometimes a new season comes out and there is that one anime that is just beautiful and tho they don't come every season but i'm happy to say that this season had two of those, Kino and Net-juu.

Kino is an episodic SOL anime with a dark tone which isn't really everyone's cup of tea but it sure as hell is mine, you start with Kino and Hermes (The mottorad) traveling to a new country with every episode being a unique and ... great well-thought out story, you get to see all different kinds of people with different culture and ways of thinking which is the very basis of this anime, i mean it is called Kino no tabi the beautiful journey for a reason, the reason people don't like this is that they try to logic out every thing based on how they feel or how they think but even in real life there are places with a fucked-up way of thinking that they consider normal and the same way around so just deal with what is present to you and you would surely enjoy this much much more.

The characters are great from the main cast to all other side characters with each of them being unique with great characteristics and not just repetition or flat characters like in most SOL being produced now.
The voice actors were great and even though i liked the old voice of kino, the new one still does a phenomenal job of portraying kino's feelings.
The art is great and that was one of the things i was worried about since almost all anime uses CGI horribly and the art seems inconsistent so i'm happy to say (aside from some parts in episode 12) the art is very consistent and beautiful.

When they announced a new season i was worried that it was going to turn into some moe-shit anime like most sol anime now so i'm happy to see this remake being as good as the original with it's new added stories.

There was a hint at a new season at the end which is very nice to see tbh.

Overall a solid 10/10.
Would recommend to even Non-anime fans.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 22, 2017

Hybrid_Rainbow29

Mixed Feelings

Keichii Sigsawa's 'Kino no Tabi (Kino's Journey) The Beautiful World' is one of the longest running ongoing Light Novel series in existence, generally releasing a whole volume of material every year since 2000. In that time it has received first an Anime adaptation in 2003 directed by the late Ryutaro Nakemura, and this 2017 adaptation by Studio Lerche. For fairness, I will not try to compare this version to its source material or the previous adaptation too much and try to judge it based on its own merit.
The premise of the series is that it follows the Journey of a traveller named Kino and their ... talking Motorrad Hermes through their travels across a world made up of small countries which each encompass their own unique ideologies, cultures, and traditions. From this, Sigsawa uses the perspective of Kino, a traveller with no ties to a particular culture of their own and a maintained neutral outlook on the morally grey activities which they often come across, to look at multiple facets of philosophy and the human condition. This results in a very interesting and thought provoking episodic series, whatever its incarnation.
While this will be a positive review overall, as I did find more to enjoy about this adaptation than I didn't, I will start this review off discussing the negatives of the series first, as they are perhaps the more glaring issue with this adaptation, and the one which may turn potential viewers (be they familiar with the source material or not) off.
The biggest issue with the adaptation is without a doubt the stories that were adapted for this versions. For those of you who didn't know, the stories from the LN selected for this adaptation were picked from a poll in which fans of the LN were asked to vote for their favourite stories from the series. While this may sound like a good idea on paper, as it means we get to see what the fans themselves picked as the highlights, sort of like making the series a Band's Greatest Hits compilation which can in turn help to entice new viewers, the issue comes about when the stories placed near each other cause the series to feel extremely uneven.
What I mean by this is that in the original source material, these stories would have been written in the order they were for a reason. That becomes apparent when we see how tonally conflicting the series can be, as the episodes can often be radically different in terms of tone so that one week we witness a deep and quite dark study of the way that humans take their lives for granted but then next week get a silly, action packed episode. This often extreme tonal dissonance which occurs between the stories can often feel jarring, and lead to the feeling that the series suffers a severe identity crisis in which it doesn't quite know what it's trying to be as a series.
It doesn't help also that some of the stories in the series perhaps aren't what I would have selected as being among my favourites. The worst offender perhaps being an episode which is itself a compilation of short stories which each feel insufferably self parodying and painful to watch (this is episode 9 in case I've convinced you to skip this episode when you watch).
Another major problem with the series is the direction it takes. Lerche are a studio whose work I'm only familiar with from this year, and from what I can gather, the popular consensus seems to be that they're an extremely uneven studio, and that certainly reflects in this adaptation, which additionally serves as a showcase for both the studio's strengths and weaknesses. They certainly aren't a studio known for subtlety for one thing, and when the series does try to showcase its more philosophical side by showcasing the actions of people within the societies that exist in this world, their emotions and negative reactions to things which dilute their customs can sometimes feel a bit overblown, not helping is some really overacting VA work for those characters. This can unfortunately cause the side characters to feel a bit like caricatures, and the way such scenes are so sporadically directed to have some sort of dynamic breakdown suddenly occur can often lead to it looking a tad more silly than it was possibly intended.
Additionally, the studio's trademark heavily saturated lighting can sometimes cause the colour pallet to feel overblown and processed, and this becomes an issue when it subtracts from any atmosphere the story in question is trying to convey, and for those with more sensitive eyes can perhaps look a bit ugly when it is done wrong. That said, this lighting effect when done right can actually help to enhance the atmosphere in some episodes, and make some genuinely lovely background art which brings the world of the series to life, looking appropriately Beautiful as the title implies.
Now, with these admittedly very large issues of inconsistent story quality and sometimes harmful directorial choices, I will say that the series is actually good overall, when it manages to overcome these issues. More specifically, when the strength of the source material is able to shine through in the stronger episodes. For me, these would include episodes 1, 4, 5, 6 & 10. Each of these episodes appeal to the main strength of the series, a frank look at philosophy and the human condition, sometimes told through a surprisingly dark and chilling lens which invites the viewer to reflect and think about the morality of what just transpired.
On the side of characters, Kino and Hermes are of course the main characters of the series, travelling across the world with a neutral stance towards the (often terrifying) events they encounter which in turn helps us the audience to view them with a similar lens. Unfortunately, there's pretty much nothing in terms of development for the main character as a slight result of that aforementioned episode order, with the possible exception of episode 10.
Adding fuel to the fire is the addition of episodes which don't feature Kino as the main character, as we also see stories told primarily through the perspectives of other travellers who Kino met on their journey, such as their mentor, and Shizu; the former prince of a dead kingdom who travels with a talking dog, and later a unique child. These characters are likeable enough on their own, and does provide a counterbalance by looking through the different perspectives of characters who lack Kino's neutral ideology and solve situations differently from how they would, but it does become a problem in the second half of the series when their episodes dominate and cause Kino to feel almost insignificant in their own series.
On the technical side of things, I already discussed the advantages and disadvantages of Lerche's heavily saturated lighting. The animation looks fine for the most part, though it does look fairly safe, there's nothing much unique about it. Some people criticised this change in artistic style from the 2003 adaptation, but this ignores the fact that Sigsawa's own illustrations for the series have changed through the years he has been working on the series. The 2003 version reflected the designs he used at that time, while this version reflects his current artstyle, so it isn't really "betraying the source material" as many said.
The OST isn't particularly grabbing, while some of the side characters do overact a bit, the voice acting is generally fine for the most part, with Aoi Yuuki being typically lovely as the voice of the main character, and Inori Minase providing an appropriate mix of nervousness and calm to her one-off character. The OP and ED are both quite lovely (and evidently where most of the animation resources were allocated above all else) capturing the more calm and tranquil aspects of the series, as well as its serene sense of beauty.
Perhaps the most frustrating conclusion I have come to in this review is that I still don't quite know who I'd recommend this series to. I suppose if you consider yourself a "Super fan" of the source material you should at least try it, outside of that it becomes a bit trickier, as I've seen from the community mixed responses to the series, some newcomers feeling unmotivated by it, others enjoying it, and similarly mixed opinions from fans of the 2003 adaptation. I will say that if you're a newcomer, the 2003 adaptation is probably a better bet to go on, as it has a much more consistent tone and represents the strengths of the source material in a much more solid way by ignoring some of the sillier storylines that pop up in this version. And check out this adaptation after that if you feel you can tolerate it.
As I said before, despite this adaptation's glaring faults, its uneven quality, I still found it to be a fairly faithful adaptation of the source material. Especially in those stronger episodes that I highlighted. And it does reveal many of its cracks, especially in the second half of the series, but for what it was, and for those episodes I liked, I do give it credit.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 23, 2017

Xesh

Not Recommended

tl;dr The 2017 version takes the mantra "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is" and crushes it under the wheels of a thousand horribly-animated 3D-CG motorrads

Why a 1/10? Why such a low score? It is because there is no reason to watch it. The 2003 version is better, and Lerche's remake has no good ideas and none of the things that made the original so loveable. This new Kino, cutesy and staid, has only really succeeded in becoming a clunky metaphor for the anime industry at large—gutted, and a hollow husk of her former self.

Kino's Journey has been lobotomized in favour of something more ... accessible and easily digestible. All the magic is dead. Gone are the days where Kino riding Hermes around the countryside was given the dignity of normal 2D animation. That old friend you loved, the sepia tones and the somber beauty of an angular, awe-inspiring world, is no more. There's something unsettling and depressing seeing some new studio snatch up this I.P. and make it dance to the tune of modern anime trends, and thinking about this well after finishing the series has been the only time Lerche's remake made me feel something akin to what those old Kino episodes did.

What is the purpose of this show? Why does it exist, and why watch it? That's why I'm here writing this, to warn adventurers that some countries aren't worth going to—that they look like the towns you know, streets you grew up on and vistas you have grown to love over the years, but are now dead countries, joyless and cheap and filled with a million identical cardboard cutouts of high-gloss Akihabara maid cafés staffed by energetic catgirls in miniskirts. Those old memories would be worser for it. There is no beauty here, only popcorn and a quick flip to the next channel.

The world is not beautiful, therefore it is; some worlds are ugly, and sap the life out of those you love.

Is this show any worse than others this season? Probably not, but it all depends on what you value as a viewer. If you want something easily watched and easily forgotten, Kino's Journey 2017 is definitely for you. But if you want something meaningful, something that you might love and cherish for years afterward, please just watch the original.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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