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This movie really impressed me when I first watched it. The art is not overhyped, the art is every bit as stunning and maniacally beautiful as everyone tells you it is, the voice acting and music is absolutely perfect. The flow of situations, even simple ones, is absolutely madcap and helps imbue a broad emotional appeal to the limited focus of the story, which is essentially one man's struggle to embrace life.

The story is indeed emotionally compelling on some level no matter who you are, but I think it has its limitations and that's what you might see focused on by some of the contrarian ... detractors of this film, which has received no shortage of praise and acclaim. And they're not wrong. We might thrill at points to see a protagonist conquer self-loathing and even death, meet God and emerge from the belly of a whale to live a better life, but there's something disappoiintingly simplistic about such a story. Sometimes you can't simply live life. Sometimes you just live miserably for most or all of the time until you die, whether or not you intervene to change that situation. I actually love optimistic storytelling, but a story that lacks understanding of this fundamental reality will always have a tinge of disappointment to it as it crafts an optimism that seems flimsy when held up before reality.

There was also a little crass sexual humor that I could have done without. It was by no means the worst I've seen in anime, and I don't view it as having spoiled the movie, but it's the type of thing that will make you squirm in discomfort when showing it to other people or even just viewing it yourself.

I only seek to review the movie realistically though. Nothing I've said changes the fact that this film is a tremendous artistic accomplishment, and if its frenetically delivered emotional message gives you the spark of hope you need to live a better life, more power to you. See it.

Kino's Journey can best be described as a series of complex morality plays or parables woven together elegantly by the journey of a single girl. It is a story of lamentation and praise about the reality we all inhabit, the "Beautiful World" descriptor being both ironic and sincere at once in the context of the story. It is an unspeakably powerful and compelling emotional experience that has to be seen to be believed.

The titular protagonist Kino travels around with her sentient motorbike, Hermes, experiencing what is wonderful and what is terrible about the distinct lands she finds, each of which generally imparts a specific lesson ... about humanity and our place in the greater order of nature, of existence. It is actually a very sentimental series, but it is never naive or afraid to comment frankly on the cruelties of nature or those that lurk in the hearts of humans. And still it never fails to focus on the beautiful.

The plots surrounding each land are well-constructed and, while being only loosely related, serve well to tell one of the most important stories, which is the story of Kino's personal growth and maturation. Kino is a girl protagonist completely devoid of stereotypes, right down to the traveller's garb and presentational style she inherited from a grown man who was himself a wanderer, her friend and inspiration. She is pragmatic and excels at problem-solving, she faces reality unflinchingly and without squeamishness, she is masterful with a pistol and kills for her meat and kills in self-defense. Her successful struggle for her own survival, her life torn between desire to connect with others and need to protect herself, between a desire to settle down and a need to continue wandering... Kino's is a personal arc with many nuances which utterly set her apart.

The art and design in the series is magnificent and is every bit worthy to portray the marvelous story and characters. Every element from the setting design on down to the palette and lighting effectively imbues the series with the deep feeling of melancholy and longing that is necessary to highlight the similar moods so evoked by the story and character interactions. Elements like costume design (especially Kino's) and architectural design are handled adeptly and even fancifully, creating the sense that Kino is drifting through a vaguely European-styled neverland.

While the series may be less than overwhelmingly popular, I truly feel that there is something significant about it. As a story that is in many ways a character study of a significantly gender-nonconforming female protagonist, who is behaviorally gender-nonconforming rather than simply presentationally gender-nonconforming as one might find in any given dumb "genderbending" anime, I feel Kino's Journey stands out, especially as a cultural product of a society stilll heavily steeped in patriarchal attitudes and practices. (Not to say that the US or the vast majority of all other nations are not also complicit in this.) And it accomplishes this didactic storytelling about the true capacities and possibilities inherent within women without preaching or compromising the art for the message.

I also feel that Kino's Journey has so much more to offer beyond the unparalleled feat I just described. Its many parables are valuable in themselves. Some may bring you to tears, and some may rip you right out of reality for a spell. I've endeavored to describe and review a series that I cherish without spoiling yourself, so if you happen to read this, please do a favor and go see it with your own eyes! My gushing, however justified and appropriate, could never compare to the experience you will have watching this amazing show.

It's a Shaft anime, so yeah, blah blah art's good whatever. Watched half of this with a friend a good while ago because they know I like yuri, and I was sort of intrigued with the premise at first--despite the flaws of the series being evident from the start, and my younger self having less of a functioning bullshit detector, I thought there was something cool and maybe even groundbreaking about a female protagonist who is unabashed about her exclusive attraction to other women. This hope didn't last long. The show delights in tormenting lesbian protagonist Kanako and almost immediately devolves into a parade of ... typical fetishist garbage: sadistic crossdresser, maid whatever, who gives a fuck.

Kanako isn't portrayed with depth and is actually one of the most grotesque stereotypes in the series, giving the impression that the creators don't really know what lesbians are like and have a reactionary view of lesbianism in general. Essentially, the formula is this: take the template a male "pervert" protagonist, Love Hina guy or Ataru from Urusei Yatsura or whatever, and make this character a female while changing nothing else. Have this character endure a bunch of threats of sexual assault from a male character for the "crime" of being lesbian, and have the reason this character is a lesbian be childhood trauma as if we're back in the 50s and reading discredited Freudian claptrap. Congratulations! We've created Maria Holic, and now we can start working on our mutual suicide pact to atone for our mortal sins.

One of several outstanding displays of the raw creative talent possessed by the individuals at Shaft, but irrecoverably marred by the all-too-common, subculturally sanctioned sickness on display by the creators. Shaft anime drives me absolutely bonkers because their work was and is some of the most unique and engrossing animation that I've ever seen, but it's so often wasted on indulging the petty whims of the creators, which can range from boring and rapidly dated non sequiturs from internet culture to the revolting but widely tolerated pedophilia typical in otaku culture. SZS will take you on marvelous journeys replete with interesting samples from the history ... of Japanese visual culture and mind-bending travels to the edges of abstraction which are beautiful and never lose their representational power, but then if you have a remaining ounce of moral sense it will rip you right out of it when it turns out to be a setup for one or more jokes that center on sexualizing one of the female students, and you've probably already turned the show off when you realize that the opening credits for much of the series is just a grotesque reel of the female protagonists in bondage. The music, the excellent art, the style rife with gorgeous anarchonisms, and even the central conceit of a suicidally depressed teacher and a class full of madcap students, all of this should work so well together, but ultimately, like so many other products of otaku culture, the virtuoso displays of skill disappear down the drain of predatory otaku self-indulgence.