Short Synopsis: Popo continues his plans to overthrow the heavens.
Highlights: This is what you get if you build up properly…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9,5/10
Holy crap! This episode was utterly utterly incredible. The best episode of Kaiba yet, and with an already incredible series, that HAS TO SAY SOMETHING. I’m still baffled at all the plot-twists that bombarded the screen for the past twenty minutes. Obviously MAJOR spoilers follow. DO NOT read this entry if you haven’t watched this episode yet.
Oh my god, I’m still pretty speechless about this episode. The entire first half of the episode develops Popo further into insanity: the strange purple mist first caused Cheki to lose most of her memories, and he then lost his mother’s memory-chip. He already thinks that he defeated Warp, so he didn’t even bother to confirm whether or not Kaiba was really dead. He first claims to love Sate, but then betrays her by showing his affections for Cheki, and with the prospect of soon ruling the entire universe, his personality keeps moving out of control.
This guy was an excellent example of a great villain. He clearly is the villain in this series, but at the same time his desires kept spiralling out of control.
But the craziest thing about this episode was definitely the domino-effect-killing scene. I repeat: MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH:
Inside the main control room of Popo’s ship, Sate kills Popo. Then the body-collector kills Sate, who turns out to be a cyborg. The three older Kaibas then gloat over their victories. Fake Warp (who turns out to be alive) then kills the body-collector and the three older Warps. As an added bonus, we also learn that the memory-guy and Sate were sisters, and they grew up watching Neiro, Popo and Cheki play together.
There were a few things I didn’t understand, though. What was up with the fans, wiping out the purple fog? Who activated them? Why did fake Warp erase the collection of all the memories, which basically meant the entire history of the world?
In any case, it’s amazing to see how much Masaaki Yuasa has learned from his mistakes. I remember how the pre-ending episodes of Kemonozume were a big mistake because the huge contrast between the light and extremely serious final episodes was way too big. For Kaiba, he made sure to build up as much as he can, he kept throwing in flashbacks, foreshadowing and different hints that all came together in this episode. This episode was dramatic, sure. But it WAS SO WORTH THE WAIT. It’s a definite candidate of the best episode of the year for me, along with episode 21 of Shion no Ou. I’m really curious as to how he plans to end this series. Kemonozume’s final episode was absolutely nothing like its other episodes, but on the other hand, Kaiba is absolutely nothing like Kemonozome, so I’m very interested, and at the same time very sad that the goodness will only last one more episode.
Woah crap, mindfuck episode. Of course the raw turned up within a few hours after I complained about it being late.
Popo going crazy killed me. I liked him a lot after the first episode, and it was freaking sad how everything just went out of his control. Also, we knew Sate was goggle dude’s sister from episode 9-in case you didn’t notice, he continuously referred to her as ‘aneki.’
Questions, which may be answered with subs; wtf was the purple mist? And how did the guy that tried to bargain with the fake Warp live? We saw him get ‘sploded, after all.
lol at the practically Death Note parody moment of everyone shooting each other. “Fool, I am standing behind you.””Ah, but I, thought to be defeated and irrelevant to the plot, am behind you!” And at goggle dude’s mecha. He won position of my favorite character already, but I love him so much more with every development.
I now only have one remaining problem with this series, which I doubt the last episode will be able to do anything about, but it’s proven itself before. I’ll address it once they’re done. XP Sorry for humongous useless spiel.
I just watched it (I’m spacing these out… no point in marathoning a show with as much going on as Kaiba)… and WOW. That was amazing, terrifying, and satisfying at the same time. Though the thing I want to know is who was the Mantle character? He looked identical to Cloak, who was killed a few episodes back.
I was thinking back on Kaiba today, and I was thinking about how sad Fake Warp’s death was (which, given this episode, we know didn’t really happen). Again, big plot twist.
Though one thing struck me: Kiichi and his sister had been following Popo around since they were kids? Neiro actually was part of the original memory, but got erased, then Cheki in this episode, leaving Popo alone in his memories of the events.
I also loved the mirrors to the previous epiodes, with Neiro having a dog that looked like Patch’s, Popo being in love with Cheki, even when she was a memoryless body (much like Vanilla and Chroniko), and the final scene of Fake Warp mirrored the memory tank explosion that Neiro caused while in disguise.
Kaiba has an incredible amount of circular storytelling going on, to the point where I rewatched the entire Neiro arc up to this point before diving into episode 11. Now, having caught a lot of episode 11’s nods to previous ones, I feel like I want to watch the entire series again before seeing episode 12, just to be fully prepared.
And it goes without saying that I’m watching episode 11 again.
When I hear myself yelling “OH MY F*cking GOD!” over and over again, that would mean that I just watched Episode 11 of Kaiba.
The purple fog is being sucked up by the Revolving Fans, so that they can be used against the Kaiba plant. I know you’ve finished this show already, but I’m wondering if you decided to rewatch this show with subs, now that all 12 Episodes have been subbed by Ureshi and F-B.
I’ll probably rewatch it in a year or so, when my memory about the show turned a bit vague and I want something really good to watch.