By KAITLYN HENSON
Staff Writer
The human mind is complex. The memories we store throughout our life’s experiences shape who we are and who we become, along with the people we meet along the way and the choices we make. But what if memory can be stored as data? What if you can transmit your memories to a body you want? In 2008, an anime called Kaiba was introduced to the world, which discusses just that.
Created by Masaaki Yuasa, Kaiba tells the story of a boy who wakes up with no memory, a hole in his chest, and a locket with a picture of a girl. As he explores this strange world he learns about how this system of memory storage and selling bodies has become corrupt. People who can’t afford to live in the skies are forced to live in fear of having their bodies stolen and their memories taken away. The technological advancements this world has achieved has slowly become it’s downfall, with death being a concept of nonexistence and identities being only of our memories.
Throughout watching Kaiba it jostles around these peculiar ideas and plays around with them. Are we our bodies or are we our minds? And does that affect our relationships with people? Who are we if we’re not in the body we were born into? And does that even matter if we have the ability to go from one body to the next after death? Does death mean anything if you can just move into a new body?
There’s several episodes of this show that dives into these topics and explores what they would mean and what kind of place this world would become. There’s a society of the One-Mind, who resents using this memory technology and strives to all become one mind. There’s people who have no money, and some who make the decision to sell their healthy body to the highest bidder. There are factories that make syntheic bodies, these synthetic bodies are often worn as fashionable and trendy looks. And throughout all of this, Kaiba finds himself going from one body to the next, and going on this impossible journey to remember who he used to be.
The really fascinating part about this whole story is Kaiba and the girl in the locket — who we later learn is his lover Neiru. They’ve been together the entire time, without ever realizing it. Both Kaiba and Neiru have been swapping bodies and going from planet to planet trying to find each other, without ever realizing they’ve been companions alongside each other the entire time. It’s so interesting to think about, the connection between these two lovers is so strong that no matter where they were they’ve always been drawn to each other, even if they never realized it. In a world where everyone’s seemed to forget about love, these two prove to everyone that it is possible in every unimaginable way. It’s a very deep and touching sentiment of this show to think about.
My favorite part of Kaiba is the end, where Kaiba is remembering who he used to be, and a distant memory comes by of a traumatic experience he had as a child. Because his body is indestructible, his own mother tried poisoning him from the inside — explaining the constantly growing hole in his chest. This moment of his life led him down a dark path of developing the memory technology and cloning bodies of himself to live on forever — he even created the ability to alter memories as if bad experiences never happened. And because of this people tried using it for themselves, making the world in Kaiba as we know it now to be broken, forgotten. This conflict between Kaiba’s younger self and the self he’s become now is the final fight, and it is emotional and jaw-dropping as Neiru shouts to Kaiba telling him about all the things he’s changed about himself and what he’s done for her, for the people he’s met along this journey. It’s a beautiful finale, and when the credits started rolling I was at a loss of how to feel or what to think. My point of view on things has changed after watching this show.
At the heart of this series is love and acceptance, and above all what human belonging truly means. This anime is incredibly fascinating to watch and ponder about, with it’s unconventional ideas and strange world that ultimately puts together a universe that explores the very principle of humanity. I was completely blown away watching this anime and I never expected this amount of maturity and depth to come from something that looked so simple. It feels like a dystopian fantasy from a preschooler’s point of view. The artwork of Kaiba is phenomenal and the themes are expressed as such, and the characters — whether you like them or hate them — have every aspect of humanity in them as any other person you’d meet.
I’ve had a lot of trouble writing this article because of the amount of conceptual ideas and deep thinking Kaiba makes you do. But I also feel it’s very important to talk about Kaiba because it’s something important that people need to see. It’s a love letter to the exploration of human existence and it’s recurring themes make this series a truly important story for people — especially for people going through difficult times. Kaiba isn’t for everyone, but if you’re curious about it after reading this then I highly recommend checking it out. There is so MUCH that I can’t fit into this article and can only be explained when you watch it, and it can remind people the complexity of the human mind — and what it means to be people.