There, under your hood, is it furi kuri again?
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Kiba

Zed and Noa
Uploaded by JavaBomberman.
So you're not satisfied with the antics of Rock Lee and his random retarded dojo? ORLY! Well, guess what. There's still some good anime out there. Ya, wai.

Kiba. This one has just passed the thirty episode mark and it continues to escalate in excellence. Upon watching the first few episodes, I found myself going, "huh? what is this madness..." But I pressed on, and what began as a seemingly random smattering of odd fantasy/sci-fi tidbits soon congealed itself into a cohesive whole with a totally badass fantasy setting. Basically, it took me a bit to get used to the crazy ass "spirits" that every decent "shardcaster" uses to battle. Spirits are giant floating thingies. No, seriously. As often as they have a humanoid shape, they also look like turtles or flying diamonds... or whatever. Shardcasters will summon their spirits, and let them have at it while they fight each other with energy swords *cough*lightsabers*cough*. Shardcasters also randomly throw little orbs that can explode with different forms of energy or make smokescreens, etc.

I know, that's what made it hard to stick with in the beginning. It was intriguing, but seemed too weird and anti-killing-and-blowing-stuff-up for my normal tastes. However, after they introduced some cool badguys and random killings of family members, things started to look up. Now, thirty-one episodes in I'm hooked. The story is insanely intriguing and the characters are all being fleshed out. There's some nice twists all throughout that keep the "Oh damn!" experiences coming. The story follows Zed, a boy who somehow is teleported out of Calm, his home city that resembles modern day Tokyo. He finds himself in a whole new world, in the nation of Tempura.

And that brings me to my favorite part about this show: the setting. I dare say it comes in a close second to Eberron right now for "Badass Fantasy Places". The setting consists of five different nations; Tempura, Jimoto, Neotopia, Task, and Ulbacus. Tempura is your most basic fantasy type nation under rule by a council of wisemen. They are allied with Neotopia, a nation that follows the "Ultimate Rules" without exception. They are zealots of the highest order, kinda crazy and nazi-like. The "bad" nations are Jimoto and Task. Jimoto is run by the antagonist who, of course, wants to rule the whole world. Task is a harsh nation of beastmen and conniving/insane humans. Ulbacus is the technology nation. Every setting needs one of those, right? From what I've seen, it seems the main (and possibly only) means to travel between nations is through use of "shifting shards". Basically, shards that create teleportation circles.

The music is so-so and at times even detracts from what's going on, though much less often in the later episodes. The first ending was a little strange, which didn't help the initial opinion I was forming of the show. The second ending was a huge upgrade in quality of music as well as animation. The second opening and third ending are both superb, with excellent music and great animation sequences. The show itself, in fact, has seemed to get higher quality animation as time went by. Perhaps budgets rose as interest grew, who knows.

The final word is this: It's not Naruto!! But seriously, this show rocks. It's at a great point and continuing forward superbly. Check it out.

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posted by JavaBomberman @ 7:51 PM  
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