I have noticed a degree of negativity with this brand new Kino series and true enough, so far it is proving underwhelming. Not bad, but it’s predecessor set a high bar to follow up on. But I believe it’s important to note that the problem here isn’t how the stories are adapted. Instead it’s what stories have been chosen to be adapted. So who have we to blame for choosing the stories? Surely the studio? Well nope, unfortunately the blame belongs to the readers. The stories chosen were picked out of the most popular voted stories in a poll run in 2015. Now things make a lot more sense to me, such as why the story choices are the ones where Kino plays a more active role. I understand that with the 20 volumes of Kino out that it’s hard to pick and choose which stories are worth adapting (Though in my opinion, it should be all of them.) but depending on a popularity poll tends to have mixed results. For what is popular does not equal quality. I don’t think there is any real problem which how the stories are being adapted as the first and third episodes were spot on adaption wise. Both colosseum and this episode suffered from the stories being too big to fit into one episode. Even then I don’t think the stories would have benefited from being elongated. I think we will still get some great episodes mixed in here, it’s just such a shame that more thoughtful stories are going get sidelined for stories that make Kino look cool.
Anyway for a change of pace it’s Shizu and RIko in the protagonist seat as they head to a country which is a floating ship on the sea. Society is split into two groups with the common folk below deck, malnourished and in poor living conditions while the leaders of the ship live above. The story is a bit rushed, in particular when it comes to the little girl who is now a part of Shizu’s crew. But I do like the moral of this particular story. Shizu sees the doomed society and unlike Kino with her no interference policy, decides to take up arms to save the people. In any other story his efforts would be rewarded and he would be touted as a hero. Not this one. The people he saved didn’t asked to be saved and don’t take kindly to some stranger telling them to live on land. Completely ignorant of their own poor status, they decide to board the ship once again ignoring the warning that in a few years the boat will sink, dooming them all. You can take it as an environmental lesson where in people ignore the damage to the world until it’s too late. You can take it as criticism of government where people depend on governments to do right by the people when governments only care for themselves. You can even take it as a lesson on how people will venomously refuse to acknowledge a problem until it’s staring them right in the face. Or even as satire that countries aren’t waiting around for some mysterious hero to come and solve all their problems. Or if we are to get really elaborate, the subtitle of this episode is also the name of a post-apocalyptic novel about a group of people waiting for the inevitable fallout of radiation from a World War to kill them which somewhat parallels the future these people will have to face.
The explanation for this whole situation is that a disease killed off all the adults on the ship country which only left the shi[s AI and the children on the boat. The AI managed but didn’t know how to care for the children, meanwhile the children grew up ignorant and didn’t know how to repair the ship. It does go a way of explaining their child’s dismissal of Shizu’s claims but acts more for an explanation on why the girl was excluded from the society. I found the last minutes of this episode to be rather forced as there wasn’t much build up for the giant escalation of the situation. Having the Tifana girl stab Shizu was certainly unexpected but I found the logic behind it to be rather extreme. Basically her interpreting Shizu telling her to go back to a ship that doesn’t want her as some claim that she is useless to him and thus is thrown away. This was a rather sudden development in the novels too and does feel like an excuse to get her to join Shizu’s merry crew. Thus the parts of this episode that dealt with the country’s situation was the most engaging but when the plot brought things to deal with this girl and Shizu, I found it far to typical for the likes of Kino’s narratives. The only real part I liked about these two was the small moment where they stop in the rain to listen to the drops hit Shizu’s coat. I reminds me of the old moments between Kino and Hermes where they talk of strange topics which bring a sense of wonder to the series.
