Kino's Journey - the Beautiful World-

Episode 8

As of this second Shizu episode, KINO has officially featured in only 50% of their own show. That's bad, but there's an odd silver lining in the fact that KINO's screen time has been consistently awful. In comparison, Shizu's presence is downright refreshing, with his big fluffy dog and occasional ability to convey human emotions. Despite this, his track record for maybe committing genocide isn't much worse than our regular hero's. By this point, Kino's Journey - The Beautiful World has set a low bar for itself, and this episode passes that bar by virtue of being merely stupid, rather than accidentally advocating something vile.

This episode opens sometime after Shizu's adventures in Ship Country. He's largely recovered from the stab wound Ti inflicted on him at the end of that episode, so he's ready to head out again. Shizu, Riku, and the newly-adopted Ti go to the nearest country, a pleasant-looking place that resembles rural America. For a while, Shizu considers settling down here. However, he decides to reconsider this decision when some dude runs out of the local schoolhouse carrying a severed head and covered in blood. Shizu disables him, and it's soon ascertained that the guy killed an entire classroom of students in an act of horrifying violence. Disturbingly, the authorities respond to this ordeal with a strange attitude of resignation. Investigating further, Shizu discovers that the entire country blames these sorts of crimes on supposed “radio waves” that have been plaguing them for generations. This phenomenon stems from a brutal history; their ancestors practiced slavery and implanted their “chattel” with microchips so as to better control them. Some time later, slavery was abolished and this practice discontinued. However, the radio towers built to control the slaves couldn't be decommissioned, and they began sending out incredibly strong signals to drive anyone who approached them mad. To this day, the entire country continues to be plagued by these radio waves, which are deemed the clear cause of any bloody tragedy that occurs within their borders.

Shizu is immediately (and rightfully) skeptical of this. How can these radio waves affect current-day citizens – who presumably don't have microchips implanted in their heads? He decides to go check out the towers himself and discovers only dilapidated structures that have been nonfunctional for who knows how long. There are no radio waves, and the country's attribution of violent dysfunction to them is just a collective delusion. While the episode has mostly been straightforward setup before this point, this is where things really take a sharp turn into Stupidville. When Shizu goes back to report his discoveries, the crowd undergoes a sort of existential crisis. The situation starts turning dire, and it becomes apparent that Shizu should probably try to leave. So in an attempt to ensure their safe passage, little Ti snatches a local baby and takes out a grenade. Whoa. So the situation has now escalated dramatically, and Shizu needs to get out ASAP. Our heroes at least have the decency to exchange the baby for an adult hostage and make it out of town. As they dump the hostage, Shizu decides to leave this country with a message that cemented my response to this bizarre story. He claims that while the old towers in the photos he took were ruined, there was a new facility still working that he altered to start broadcasting murderous impulses nonstop by tomorrow. Their terrified hostage believes him and presumably relays the message back to his people. With that, Shizu, Riku, and Ti proceed on their way.

So yeah, Shizu may have committed genocide again. At least I think so? If you read that ending more charitably, Shizu expects people to realize that the radio waves don't exist when a few days pass and they don't start killing each other. However, if this is that strong a collective delusion, then there's a chance that mass violence might break out due to the force of their belief. I hope that the former will happen, since Riku seems hopeful on that front, but it still comes off as awfully irresponsible for Shizu to make this type of gamble in the first place. Again, I don't know that the show is aware of the messages it's promoting? It's honestly hard to tell.

Otherwise, this story was dumb and pointless, but at least it didn't end up advocating anything politically dangerous. Its message boils down to a basic denunciation of the societal tendency to shove responsibility for bad things that happen onto some imaginary cause beyond their power, but this example doesn't make a lot of sense even according to the show's internal logic. The nation came off as pretty functional even with such an overpowering delusion affecting its whole populace, barring that horrible incident that happened. (Even things like that are said to occur only “every few years,” which could be below the average rate, as far as these things go.) I also can't think of a better solution for this sort of thing than what the country already does: hospitalizing the culprit afterwards. Does the episode think that they need prisons or something? It's not like they're taking insufficient measures to prevent massacres regardless of whether they understand their cause. That's really what would be required for the story's conclusion to reflect positively on Shizu's own choices. As it stands, the possible outcomes of his actions range from mildly positive/neutral (the country dispenses with a catch-all falsehood to begin addressing the myriad catalysts behind horrible acts of violence) to the catastrophic (they all murder each other). The former really doesn't seem worth the possibility of the latter.

Otherwise, this episode suffered from Kino's Journey - The Beautiful World's regular problems. The citizens of this country are cartoonish idiots to the point where any conclusions drawn from their behavior won't be applicable to real life. (How did this country manage to forget all about whatever event ended slavery for them? That's a pretty big deal. Also, was their collective delusion somehow causing people physical pain whenever they tried to approach the broadcast towers? That's a bit severe for me to believe without further justification. And most importantly, microchips aren't hereditary. You need to do more to justify an otherwise medically modern society falling for ideas this divorced from reality.) Secondly, this episode continued to further the show's bizarre thematic fixation on the value of freedom ABOVE ALL ELSE, including extremely basic considerations for other humans. While I value freedom highly, this show frequently comes off as psychotic in the lengths it will go to defend that virtue for its few heroes above all others.

Finally, this is just another example of that “random outsider enters a society and has no trouble substantially altering it according to their idea of what's right” nonsense. I've discussed this problem at length already, but this attitude is condescending, unrealistic, and attached to a regrettable bloody history of colonialism. Admittedly, this is a relatively natal version of the beliefs that lead to that, but I like to point out their ultimate extension (violent conquest justified by the idea that it's for the conquested party's “own good”) when I can, because those ideas need to be addressed with the appropriate gravity.

The last few minutes of this episode consisted of some cutesy moe stuff involving Ti. It's the most passable that the show's been for a while, and it would've worked better if I had any affection for these characters. Unfortunately, Kino's Journey missed that boat a long time ago, so I was mostly just bored. I'll admit that it's pretty amusing how Ti manages to access an endless amount of grenades at all times (By amusing, I mean horrifying.) The adaptation throughout has been flat enough that I honestly can't tell how comedic these scenes are supposed to be. Next week will probably still be bad, but we might get to see the show's ostensible protagonist again, which would be a change of pace by now. Shizu's commitment to SWORD doesn't provide quite the same flavor of reckless violence as KINO's affection for GUN. See you next week.

Grade: C

Kino's Journey - The Beautiful World the Animated Series is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.