Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
YukkoIsDead
Spoiler-free.
I’m going to discuss Kaiba in terms of the three modes of persuasion: ethos (persuasion through presentation), logos (logical persuasion), and pathos (emotional persuasion). I do this, because the fact that Kaiba is very uninteresting to me is ironically very interesting to me.
Regarding ethos:
I felt secondhand embarrassment watching Kaiba, because I’ve made art like Kaiba before: Art that is so serious and earnest yet so unimportant. Kaiba is an entirely serious show, but I could not take it seriously. The biggest problem, in my opinion, drives the anime so much further down than any of its “minor” shortcomings and cliches (information being withheld, inexhaustible flashbacks, spoon-feeding the plot to the audience, guns that fail to work only against important characters…
Read at the sourceliteraturenerd
Overview:
Hot take! Kaiba is overrated as fuck! In all seriousness, Kaiba is actually a pretty good anime. The animation is stunning and the character designs are wonderfully unique. However, I wasn't a huge fan of the series from a writing standpoint and I don't believe it's one Yuasa's best works. Honestly, I liked Lu Over the Wall more than I liked Kaiba. I liked Kick-Heart more than I liked Kaiba. Cat Soup? Yep, it's still better than Kaiba.
The story of Kaiba is told in an almost maddeningly confusing manner, but it's actually pretty simple. People are now able to store their memories in little flash drives and switch from body to body. People can also erase bad memories and download happy memories that belonged to other people. The wealthy use this technology to keep switching bod…
Read at the sourcejoschmo11
Kaiba left me very conflicted. On one hand, it's a beautifully animated show, with legitimately interesting characters and an absorbing world concept. On the other, it's a serious mess, with a rushed and barely coherent plot that devalues a significant amount of its strengths. in short, it's a show that will unfortunately never realize its potential.
Let's start with the bad: Kaiba's story is virtually unfollowable, with the first half of the show representing a slow-burning, walkthrough of the world's concepts as our main character tries to survive a dystopia, and the second half is a payoff lightly hinted at beforehand. Its jarring, hard to follow, and relies on a suspension of disbelief, especially as Warp's powers are made clear towards the end. Characters that were forgotten from the…
Read at the sourceLIQfilms
Memories. They’re a wonderful thing, aren’t they? The ability to transport our minds back to simpler times of childhood; to look back and reflect on days gone by and to appreciate the various things we did years ago, whether that was experiencing our awkward first love during adolescence, an old friend whom you used to play with as a child, or just simple family gatherings whether that be for the celebration of some kind of event be it Christmas or Thanksgiving, or just gathering around to watch a movie together. But, there are also the bad memories, that I’m sure everyone has. The memories we would want to erase from our mind, and would do so in a heartbeat if given the opportunity to do so. Our memories of past experiences, both the good and the bad, are what shapes the person we are tod…
Read at the sourceStacys__Mom
[INTRODUCTION]
Kaiba is a show that everyone should watch. Not because anything that it does story-wise is particularly spectacular, but because of how fundamentally different it is from everything else in terms of raw artistry with its music and visuals. It's not an outstandingly good show, but everything that it presents to the viewer is just so damn unique and interesting that I can't help but recommend it. The concept itself may not be original, but the execution certainly is, and it's the execution that makes this show worth watching.
STORY [5/10]
Kaiba takes place in a world where people can transfer their minds between each other's bodies. It explores the consequences of doing so by showing how various characters' lives are ruined by the cruelty of this society. The hero is an am…
Read at the sourceTheBrainintheJar
Great works of art are not easy to review. They are not common like the cesspool of bad art. Bad art is easy to deconstruct, to show how pathetically horrible they are. “So bad it’s good” exists because these works are so bizarre, so extraordinary that they become unique. Bad art is never unique its badness. In contrast, great works of art always end up redefining what ‘good’ is, so any review of a masterpiece will never be analytical and conclusive. It always end up chasing something that we can only grasp a piece of, like a poet looking at a beautiful line he wrote and knowing he can never write a worthy poem of it.
Kaiba is one of those artworks. I say it deliberately. Judgment of it is not confined to anime. It transcends media, reaches something so deeply human and awe-inspiring that…
Read at the sourceLindle
Kaiba is an experimental anime best known as being the brainchild of Yuasa Masaaki, who would later go on to direct The Tatami Galaxy and Ping Pong the Animation, two of the greatest works of the current decade of anime thus far. And Kaiba is undeniably in the same vein of brilliance as his later works. However, as impressive as Kaiba is, it's not as good as Tatami or Ping Pong - which is regrettable, because by all accounts it should have been just as exceptional as these two - if not better.
I mean, it was certainly more amibitious than either of them, and those two were plenty ambitious as it is. Where Tatami and Ping Pong were both highly eccentric coming-of-age stories, Kaiba is a highly eccentric dystopian high-concept sci-fi, revolving around the concept of a fictional universe in…
Read at the sourceTareq
Short version:
Story (9/10) - Wonderful setting and good world building, intricate plot and strong mystery factor. First few episodes can be off-putting.
Characters (7/10) - Bland main character, very strong supporting cast.
Animation and Art (7/10) - Good use of a unique bubbly artstyle, inconsistent backgrounds.
Soundtracks (9/10) - Beautiful BGM that amplifies every scene's emotions, good vocals. Enjoyment (8/10) - First 2 episodes were full of confusion, but everything starts to clear up and the story becomes engaging.
Overall (8/10) - A story with a strong message that uses a unique style of presentation in a good way.
Long version:
Memories are one of the few things in our world that are invaluable. Rich or poor, strong or weak, we all have memories exclusive to us. It is th…
Read at the sourceKanaev
What is a human being? It's a collaboration of memories. Memories of yourself and memories of how others see you. When you destroy or change either of the aspects - the whole being changes.
Kaiba is a story about memories, about memories that were lost, memories that were changed. About how good and bad memories are of equal importance.
Humans strive to find a way to forget. Forget all the bad memories and leave the goods ones. But if we forget, doesn't it makes us less of what we are? Without bad experience we wouldn't be the same person.
The world of Kaiba is one of dystopia. The poverty strikes harshly against the wealthiness. In this world the memories can be moved around. Deleted, copied, sold and bought. As well as bodies that lost all their memories. The rich ones may live forever…
Read at the sourceRqt
Kaiba is a dystopian/cyberpunk anime. The atypical story telling and mesmerizing dystopias which are always complemented with vivid and unique artwork of the highest degree make for a highly enjoyable experience for myself. By no means do I consider these to be flawless genres but the amalgamation of the many tropes from these genres creates a captivating experience I personally can’t really find in other genre(s), so on that fact this review may be a little bias. One could argue that Kaiba itself is not a cyberpunk series but a dystopian fantasy and I could agree with that, and maybe that is why I consider it a cut above the rest of the cyberpunk (GitS and Texhnolyze for instance) I've watched. It is something fresh and has a totally different approach and perspective. However I do still…
Read at the sourceLink_of_Hyrule
**SPOILER FREE REVIEW**
The anime community is filled with a bunch of liars. That’s right; I said it. We’re liars anime fans. And “Kaiba” is the proof of it.
If you’re anything like me, then you couldn’t possibly count the number of times that you see a blog entry, a forum post, an article, or some sort of outcry that complains about the lack of innovation in the modern anime industry. The market is frequently bashed for pumping out the same old otaku-pandering crap every single season and losing sight of its artistic and intellectual roots. High school slice-of-life after high school slice-of-life is announced to a chorus of groans as we all scream “I want something unique!”
Well, y’know what anime fans? I call bullshit. Apparently, you don’t want innovation; you want more cliché harem…
Read at the source5camp
There's a scene in the first episode of Kaiba where our main character sits in the main foyer of this small community, watching as various bits of human drama happens around him. This scene is a lesson in introductory worldbuilding. Kaiba is an extraordinarily complicated science fiction world in which bodies are disposable and one can acquire a new body by transporting your mind from one to another. You infer all of that from a series of scenes in which some people are trying to work out which person's mind is installed on each of these new memory chips. Other people walk past complaining they their friend has changed since getting their new body, while another family moans and complains that they've got to share this cheap, immobile body because they're too poor to afford better ones. It…
Read at the sourceKnyt
To be honest, this show wasn't the easiest to get into. If you like light fluffy anime with good humor and no driving theme, this might be a no-no.
Watching Kaiba is like looking at a gallery of abstract paintings. Some things can be confusing until properly understood. The whole story is one long strand of many adventures. I mean, this guy is all over the place. It's like a Greek Epic. Plus, the way it ties in the romantic undertones with Neiro and whatnot? I like that. Along with the many bittersweet moments that accompany conclusion episodes.
The art style was so different that I was just like "wow". It's not some grand eye candy or anything, but a lot of animes don't take the risk of using this smoother, "kiddy" looking animation. Though sometimes it was like taking a drug trip.
Th…
Read at the sourceGonzyChan
Where there is a body, there is a mind. A mind that is unquestionably a part of us and remains to be this way until our eventual passing. Throughout the centuries of philosophy and science, it is one of the most utterly fascinating aspects of human existence that has yet to be explored fully. Many stories have delved into the realm of consciousness as the primary plot device from the mid-20th-century science fiction authors, and anime has had its fair share of shows akin to this. One of which is Kaiba, a fascinating trip that shows no boundaries of animation and how it can use different styles in anime that have primarily been redundant at the time.
Indeed, this type of story has not been done before. One that deals with the concept of minds and how it's ourselves, but with Kaiba, it's li…
Read at the sourceUberElitistClub
The universe sits atop a house of cards, with revolution shaking at the base. And Kaiba truly does hold an entire universe in its hands.
This is Sci-Fi through and through, and every bit of it overflows with imagination and experimentation. The strongest aspect of this show is how comfortable the writers felt in their own world. They put passion into this, and tried to make something that would last in the audience's memories. Apart from any pacing or plot problems that may have arisen, this was written in confidence. None of the lesser points are because of weak willed writers unwilling to be adventurous. If you want to see something different and intriguing, I give a hearty recommendation on that basis alone. If you also happen to be a fan of Sci-Fi, well then, sharpen your knives and p…
Read at the sourceOdysseusUlysses
One of the most distressing things about some anime is their inability to use to its fullest potential many of the interesting ideas that they come up with. Some get bogged down in trying to appeal to as many people as possible or by just abandoning originality in favour of playing it safe by ripping off other successful shows and characters. But with Kaiba its a little different, the show had some interesting original ideas, art and characters and was definitely not try to appeal to a mainstream audience but it too failed to reach its full potential and become some thing truly great but it was for a number of different reasons than what happens to most other anime, but I'll get into that later...
The basic premise of Kaiba is the story of a young boy who wakes up possessing no memories,…
Read at the sourceanthonyistosen
Ah, first review, here we come! (There might be a few spoilers)
Kaiba is not your typical anime. From the unorthodox way of animation, to the strange, confusing (but brilliant) storyline, it breaks the mold for anime you'd probably typically watch. There are virtually no characters that fall into the groups of typical anime stereotypes (yandere, tsundere) and the anime introduces interesting sci-fi concepts that we probably could never imagine ourselves, which brings out the amazing originality of this piece of art (I mean anime).
Kaiba's basic storyline starts off in a world where memories can be manipulated and swapped and bodies can be interchangeable, meaning you can freely delete bad memories and replace them with good ones, and implant them into another body. We find the main prota…
Read at the sourcenoteDhero
Art - 10
Kaiba is visually stunning and creative. Sometimes they trade in dynamic quality of images for free animation, and it’s not a bad thing. The art design is very Seussian, especially in architecture. There is a wonderful roundness to everything, with nary a straight line in sight. Despite the character design, there is an unexpected expressiveness in the facial animation. There is a thoughtfulness in each character’s appearance that is underscored by the fact that characters don’t look anything alike unless they are twins. The direction utilizes light and shadow brilliantly to keep the eye focused on the important, active pieces. Computer animation is good, and well integrated into the show, allowing a freedom of movement in both character and cameras that many sho…
Read at the sourceRanivus
::QUICK REVIEW::
Story: 9 (Great amnesia story, love the sci-fi elements)
Art: 10 ("I DO" yelled Sam, "I do like green eggs and ham!")
Sound: 7 (overly silent at times, but dialog helps lot)
Character: 9 (So simple yet very complex, a must see)
Enjoyment: 10 (Felt like a 3-hour summer blockbuster movie)
Overall: 45/50 = 9 (Everyone must experience this)
::FULL REVIEW::
People always try to be above others. It's because they can't be happy unless they have people below them. This show creates a whole universe around this concept and other unconventional ideals. From the anime description and genre choices for this show, and even the database picture the normal anime viewer might be a little turned off from this show. At first glance for me I quickly turned it away as I thought it was aim…
Read at the sourceMaster10K
Kaiba is a Sci-fi, Adventure, Romance, Drama featuring some questionable abstract art. With such a surreal concept on ‘memories’, only those who are able to see this anime for its originality will be able to fully appreciate it.
It’s set in a world where dying doesn’t matter, as long as you have your memories you can be reborn into another body. This is certainly a fascinating premise and the series does a great job in raising some serious issues that arise due to this perpetual world. The story itself focuses on some guy named Kaiba, who wakes up with no recollection of anything about himself. It seems to have a similar story telling style as the more widely known series ‘Kino’s Journey’, where our protagonist journeys to weird and wonderful plac…
Read at the source