(L) Kino's travels

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Dist

Gonna bump this to ask if the animation style is supposed to be like this or why are there these '' lines '' going through the screen. Can't explain it well but someone who has seen the series should know what I am talking about, unless there is problem with the files.

It's a while since I watched it but I don't recall noticing any issues - can you post a screencap (and approximate timestamp) that demonstrates the problem?

[Dist]

It was throughout the series, it's really hard to explain and I'm not sure if it would be properly visible in a screencap. Well, here is a screenshot regardless .. Focus on her hair and maybe you will see it more clearly.

As for the series itself, I just watched it anyway, all 13 episodes in one run. This reminded me a bit of Haibane Renmei where nothing particularly happened but I still liked the series alot and I don't even know why .. There's still two movies left but I'll leave those for tomorrow.

What was with that last episode though, Sakura and .. well the whole setting, it was as if it was Kino's life when she was young, excluding the brain modification thingy.

[Neat Hedgehog]

Yeah, that's intentional. I wondered the same thing myself when I first watched it, actually.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Dist

What was with that last episode though, Sakura and .. well the whole setting, it was as if it was Kino's life when she was young, excluding the brain modification thingy.

Those "lines" are usually used to portray video playback in TV shows. I'm not sure why your clips would have them, since I don't recall seeing them in mine. I'd have to check again, though, as it has been a long time since I last watched Kino no Tabi.

As for your above question about Sakura, I don't understand your question. Yes, Sakura's story is deliberately meant to mirror Kino's own experience as a child. Parts of Kino's back story have already been hinted at in previous episodes. The last episode serves to tie up the various threads to provide a fitting finale for the series.

In a way, the last story is meant to show how fate can turn out very differently for different people even when they seem to face similar circumstances. Kino (or rather, the girl who would one day become Kino) was forced to flee her country because of circumstances but, in Sakura's case, she chose to stay in her country even though it would cost her life.

[Dist]

Just check the post above with the picture in the link and you will see the lines I was talking about. Neat Hedgehog said though that they are apparently intentional, though it still puzzles me as to why have such lines there at all, intentional or not.

[Flower]

This series was a rare success for me - an "artistic" method of presentation of a series that actually works for me.

It was extremely subdued and almost minimalistic - especially the dialogue - and yet so often it felt as if so many of the phrases and reflections were filled with meaning: one only picked up on the meaning every once in a while. This kind of "artsy" style works for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the series.

Definitely not for everyone though - I can easily see many people finding this to be boring, repetitive and tedious. But I really enjoyed it.

I am kinda interested to check out the light novel work on the series going on at baka tsuki now....

[Mars Terra]

I saw the remake of this series, I actually heard about the original before that one was coming out and intended to watch it. Everyone says that the original is better than the remake and so I figured I watch it sooner or later.

Episode 1-2:

Spoiler:

The first episode opens up a bit oddly with those tremors that sink in the ground. The country they visit is the one where science has advanced far enough to allow people to read each other's minds and have each other's minds read. This one I found to be very interesting as there was a anime released not too long ago which explored the concept of feeling others' physical pain as a way for humans to understand each others' and I thought that was a bad way of doing that, and you would need to understand one's emotional pain in order to truly understand them.
But this anime shows how knowing what's on a person's mind can actually lead to even more discord, and understanding everything about someone would not be a good thing, so I thought that was a interesting idea.

The next one is about these three men that Kino find dying in the forest in the middle of winter. This one was not as good because the twist doesn't really make a lot of sense as a twist when it should of been obvious from the start. In this episode Kino takes killing the bunnies out to be a big deal, so I thought it would be exploring the trolley problem and how taking three lives (the bunnies) to save three lives (the men) was not a ethical choice. So I was a bit disappointed by this episode.

Episode 3:

Spoiler:

The story of the poet is a pretty poorly written one. If he was told that he needed to write a sad poem and told he would be put to death if he didn't, he already has cause for distress right there. That being said, it would make sense for his daughter to follow in his footsteps of reciting the poem if her mother killed herself when she was four years-old.
As for the prophecy, they might be making a statement about how religion can cause people to do crazy things. Then again, the same can be said of anything, wouldn't you agree?