Despite being a TV series, Kino no Tabi — The Beautiful World has the aspirations of art house cinema. © ADV Films.

Kino's Journey. V.1, Idle Adventurer. V.2, Emerging Lanes. V.3, Warning - Curves Ahead. V.4, Not Without Reservations.
TV series (13 episodes), 2003. Director: Ryutaro Nakamura. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes; v.2-4, three episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: ADV Films.

Although Kino no Tabi — The Beautiful World (Kino's World — The Beautiful World) was a TV series (13 episodes, April 8 through July 8, 2003; animation by A.C.G.T.), it has the feel of one of the compilations of art films like Robot Carnival intended for viewing together or separately at international film festivals.

Based upon several novels (actually collections of short stories) by Keiichi Sigsawa, the rambling journey of barely-adolescent Kino and the talking motorbike Hermes takes them through a surrealistically metaphysical world of individual city-states, each a personification of a personal or political state of mind carried to a psychotic extreme. There is the land where people cannot stand to be close to each other for fear of hurting one another. There is the city on the verge of civil war over how to interpret a set of Nostradamus-like prophecies. "A Tale of Feeding Off Others" is a parable of responsibility: are human lives worth more than rabbits'? As an abstract rule? What about a case-by-case basis?

Kino and Hermes make a point of staying in each "country" for only three days, although some are almost impossible to escape alive. The two are often the protagonists, but sometimes only background observers. Some episodes have flashbacks and tales within tales like the Arabian Nights, although these tales are more reminiscent of Kafka than of Richard Burton. The tiny city-countries are reminiscent of Renaissance Italy or the Holy Roman Empire, although the landscapes, architecture and costuming cut a swath through Northern Europe and Central Asia. The locales of various episodes are identifiably based upon Western Germany, Russia or Siberia, mostly during the first half of the 20th century. Kino's Journey is worth watching for the attractive art design alone.

Because of the deliberately surrealistic aspects of this world, the viewer is distracted from the nature of Kino and Hermes themselves. Are they characters with backgrounds and a goal, or are they only point-of-view surrogates for the viewer? Personal details are revealed from time to time (their origin story is in episode #4), but the viewer is deliberately kept guessing how much is "true" and how much may be only Kino's imagination. (For example, is Hermes really an intelligent talking motorbike — since several countries have advanced robotic technology — or just an "imaginary playmate" of the child-adult Kino?)

Kino's Journey is a fairy-tale-like counterpart to director Nakamura's acclaimed Serial Experiments Lain, which was a high-tech sci-fi exploration of the same questionings of the nature of reality.