Oh for Christ’s sake! This episode took freaking ages to show up on Share, and even longer to download. I really wonder: how popular is Kaiba in Japan anyways? I remember how even Kaze no Shoujo Emily didn’t run into these problems, and that series probably was one of the least viewed anime around at that time…
Still, this series is pure gold, and I love every single bit of it. I’m an absolute sucker for good series that show how random people deal with its concepts, and Kaiba combines it plot with these random stories in an excellent way. What I especially like his how Kaiba meets the random people, he watches them, but he never interferes with them. He just tries to understand them, and that’s all. The stories of these people would have ended in the same way if Kaiba was never there, and that’s REALLY rare in this genre. It’s a great way of symbolizing the whimsical nature of memory in this series.
I’ve probably said this before, but PLEASE let there be more series like this one in the future. 12 episodes is just criminally short for a series with such a terrific concept. This episode shows a girl who sells her body in order to feed her family. Her memory then gets sent into space, in the hope of someday reaching a new body. Kaiba then steals her body, and ironically enough gets a free ride from the guard, who was sadistic to everyone only an episode ago.
This episode masterfully explores first this case from the perspective of the girl, and once she’s dead it’s the perspective from her stepmother, who was probably the one who suggested the girl to sell her body. The mother first was happy that the girl went, but very soon afterwards, she was full of guilt about what she did.
Kaiba definitely is my top-recommendation for the spring-season. It’s got everything: great graphics, an excellent concept, a fitting soundtrack, terrific characterization, it’s thought-provoking, short enough for a quick watch, and I can go on and on with this list.