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10 💎 | kino no tabi: the Beautiful world

The series is a collection of independent tales about eccentric people who travel the world and experience the strangeness of the places and people they meet.

Kino's Journey is my all-time favorite text and what led me to light novels and web novels in the first place. It has a very Mushishi-like atmosphere, exploring a fantastically and beautifully created world and its residents in an episodic format, with a rather prominent protagonist who acts as a temporary observer rather than a resident of each place he visits. The difference is that Kino's journey takes on a more cynical ... tone and Kino is very different from Ginko.

The "abnormal" qualities of each chapter are reflected in various aspects of society and the human physique. It's mostly emotionally distanced in tone and can be very dark and/or disturbing at times, but it often has lighthearted moments and downtime to make it not too gloomy.

Kino herself is my all-time favorite character. She is extremely cold, uninvolved, and unsympathetic to others, but her behavior is that of a person with a conscience. Her actions are sometimes what I read as "doing the right thing", but I still always feel that she is not acting out of any sense of fairness herself. It's just a by-product of your acting in your own best interest. She is intelligent, capable and indifferent to the opinions of others. Still, she's not cruel and never takes things further than necessary. There is a depth of warmth in her genuine coolness. Many characters are written to be cold hearted, but compared to Kino they fall to the ground and look fake, not like a believable person like her.

A beautiful diary of an adventurer's journey that has many fantasy elements, but at the same time realistic. It focuses on human nature and relationships with others. Each story leaves the reader with something to think about, without giving the reader lessons, giving a conclusion.

"The world is not pretty, so it is..."
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