[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Kaiba 3 and 4: the value of memory
After a shaky start I’m finally beginning to warm to Kaiba. I was initially disappointed with how it took a similar tack to Kemonozume in that it relied rather heavily on its superficial quirkiness when other aspects were all those we’d seen in the genres before. Kemo was a fairly straightforward show conceptually but its visual style and the accompanying storytelling approach made it special; similarly Kaiba looks unlike anything else but I was desperately hoping it would follow up on its promises and offer more than this. In episodes three and four it did just that.
I’m mentioning #4 here first because it was the weaker of the two in terms of impact it had on me so I have less to say about it; not that it was a dull of course. That particular episode highlights the generation gap in terms of how we view the world - the young miss out on the little details that point to the bigger picture, while the old cling to the past. I found the story that went with the two grandparents to be really sweet - that and their little planet seem trite and boring to the two grandkids but this little lump of rock is a far cry from the rest of the Kaiba universe in that here memories carry the same value as they do in our own; everywhere else memories are traded and extracted from person to person but for the old couple and their grandchildren a lifetime of memories, both happy and sad, builds up naturally. I guess the parents were making a mistake in wanting to escape, if the lure of the outside world and its memory trading was their motive - the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and all that.
The true value of memory is beginning to look like the core theme of Kaiba and is displayed admirably in ep #3. I won’t even try to match the insight that Hige and Sasa were able to draw from this masterful bit of storytelling but it certainly was the point that endeared the show to me. The potential held by the memory-swap idea was finally beginning to be realised here - it shows how something so artificial can affect something as natural as human emotion. You have to question how, when memories can be artificially added and removed as in Total Recall (I think it’s based on the P K Dick story We Can Remember it for You Wholesale or similar) what value they actually have. What is the point of a memory? Is it a sensation? A feeling? Or the deeper, more far-reaching and complex understanding of where that memory came from, and how the memories mix together in your head?
If you take the idea that our memories are what makes us who we are, the wealthy of Kaiba are rebuilding themselves artificially through an artificial bank of experiences. Taken individually these experiences can be a collection of good times and feelings but I think it’s how they accumulate, distort and interact inside our heads that makes us who we are - simply loading someone else’s memories into your head gives you the superficial sensation but there’s a personal significance that cannot be transferred with them. A set of holiday photographs can’t match the knowledge that you were really there - when you know that some of your memories are artificial, does that cheapen your real ones?
Exchanging bodies also raises questions for me. If you change your body, what’s inside is still ‘you’ but when appearances shift and change at will, could you love someone, and could they love you? Sure, looks aren’t everything of course but when mind and appearance interact so much, the person you see every day won’t necessarily be the same person in the future. The op animation sequence says a lot - hands reaching out to hold one another hints at the romantic leanings and sense of longing but as the hands reach out and grab one another they are continually changing form; the overall message is clear but it gives out a sense of confusion too. Who are these hands and faces? Do they even know themselves?
Finally I was shocked and saddened by the idea that the very things that we cling to in order to maintain our sense of identity - namely memories combined with physical appearance - can be separated and traded. Their value is lessened by the ease by which they can be moved and taken - a point hammered home by the anguish of Chroniko’s aunt. Her moral standpoint was cleverly portrayed as being quite ambivalent and very lifelike: she was both cruel and kind and the whole story achieved much in a mere twenty of so minutes; the final scenes of reminiscence remind us that while memories can be traded, for the original owners they are the most precious.
Kaiba has enough interesting concepts behind it to give it much more potential that its creator’s previous work - it’s finally delivering on these concepts now even though the bizarre, childlike art style will undoubtedly be the first thing that endears it to the viewers or puts them off entirely. I feel that I can now allow myself to not only respect it as a work of art but enjoy it as entertainment too.
Posted on May 17th, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
Great post, Martin. I think you hit some very specific points that are really valuable–and helped me see another dimension of how the visual style matches the theme. There’s a very “fluid” way people and objects move in this world, and it corresponds to the fluid nature of human identity.
Traditionally speaking, individual human identity has been premised on consciousness/mind/soul (the immaterial “inner” part of ourselves), memory, and the physical body; we think of those things as what provides us continuity–the guarantee that I am the the same person as I was yesterday. Kaiba’s world has taken away the stability of the body and of memory, leaving only consciousness–which is subjective, scientifically unmeasurable and extremely difficult to define. Even for theologians.
Christian philosophers have also often added the memory of God as the one thing that holds all of it together and keeps you as you in existence. That’s how I viewed the ending of Lain, as you read in my long-ago article.
I have a friend who is very interested in bioethics, and he acknowledges how sticky these questions are already starting to become. We know, for instance, that the cells in our body are wholly replaced every few years; technically, you have a totally new body. People can get implants and have body parts like the heart, arms, legs, etc., replaced if they don’t function properly. Is the lack of brain wave activity and lack of consciousness enough to declare a person “dead” and pull the plug (c.f. Terri Schiavo)? This is probably where a lot of future discussions will converge and Kaiba is riding high on that wave.
Posted on May 18th, 2008 @ 1:05 am
Martin, very good post, I thought the very same question about the link between your body and your memories after watching episodes 3&4 of Kaiba.
I think that the link between the body and love are inseparatable, when I’ve been truly in love with a person it was more than just the mind and personality I loved, it was also the touch, texture, smell, sound, of the other person’s body.
Those sensations that I cherished about the other person were experienced through my body, and I highly doubt that if I swapped my body or she swapped her body it would be the same as before, it might be close but it wouldn’t be the same.
Nice P.K. Dick reference, another author that covers a similar storyline is Cordwainer Smith, in his collection of short stories (The Rediscovery of Man 1993) man has acheived near immortality and totally dominates the galaxy, he treats the under-people (non-human intelligent lifeforms)like animals, but since mankind has lost it’s passion for daring, love, and justice, mankind in the end becomes less human and noble than the under-people that they rule.
The under-people because they are not immortal live their lives with a passion and vigor that shames and confuses the immortals. Mankind in it’s quest for immortality and stability has lost it’s humanity, they forgot the connection between the mind, the precious and fragile body, and the good Earth it was born from.
I feel that if someday we can swap memories and bodies like in Kaiba, or live in the wired like in Lain, or get machine bodies like in Galaxy Express 999, we might still call ourselves human but in reality we would be something different.
Posted on May 18th, 2008 @ 8:18 am
Another wonderful Kaiba post~
the mind/body dualism theme of Kaiba can really drown you with the amount of insights (and questions?) you can gather from 3 episodes alone. I do believe that the mind and body cannot exist independently of each other, because both of these make up our individuality. Although our consciousness is one of the facets that make us unique, it should be noted that other people identify us first with our physical looks, the tangible part of our being.
As for Chroniko’s aunt, I had the impression that she supposedly rid herself of those [sad] memories of the past, but then it somehow creeped in (the memories regenerated), and by the time she realized how precious those memories are, it was already too late. What happened in episode 3 served as a reminder that people should not have any control over their memories, because our judgment of whether these are ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’ is based on our feelings. Our perception of memories changes over time, and ideally, we’ll learn to embrace both these positive and negative experiences in our past, and see them in a positive light.
Posted on May 18th, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
@Mike: the questions regarding what makes us ‘us’, as it were, are becoming more and more relevant as science and technology are becoming increasingly able to replicate and replace body parts and, I suspect, other things too (cyberbrain, anyone?). Now is a good chance to pimp the movie Chrysalis - a recent French cyberpunk effort that makes nice use of questioning how memory affects identity. It’s a cracking sci-fi piece.
@Chris: in regards to human interaction, for me at least the makings of ‘attraction’ are an inseparable combination of appearance and mind - even when I can say someone *looks* attractive, I can only click with them on an emotional level when I feel that we’re on a similar wavelength. Cheers for the heads-up on the Rediscovery of Man - I’d also recommend (if you’re into very profound but laugh-out-loud romcom films) The Man with Two Brains!
@usagijen: as much as I’ve distanced myself from episodic blogging in recent months, I could take that approach to Kaiba if only time and energy permitted! Every ep so far is less of an ‘episode’ to set up the next and more of a mini-film in of itself, each with its own dramas and issues. Sasa’s post raised a great point though, which had me thinking for ages: if your bad memories were to be removed, would your good ones feel as good afterwards? Seems like a fundamental flaw to the mindset of the people in the Kaiba universe, which I hope the series follows up on in later episodes.
Posted on May 29th, 2008 @ 2:17 am
[...] slightly late, review of episode 4 of Kaiba. Some good reviews already written by other [...]