Comments on: Kaiba [01]: this is how we operate

By: Robber Barons and Mercenaries: A look at Itazura na Kiss and Macross Frontier « In Search of Number Nine

Sat, 10 May 2008 03:52:25 +0000

[...] anyways, itsabun and later Hige mentioned how Kaiba depicts a fairly Marxist ideal of what a capitalist society is. [...]

By: Impressions: Kaiba – somewhat better than five fingers and a palm « In Search of Number Nine

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:58:49 +0000

[...] Kaiba – somewhat better than five fingers and a palm Oh Kaiba… how people will lavish over you. How you will stroke people’s brains and make them think about things. How you will [...]

By: TheBigN

TheBigN — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:10:48 +0000

From all of the posts that I’ve read about Kaiba including this one, and from my own impressions from watching the first two episode, Kaiba seems to be covering many interesting concepts in one go. We have questions on classism, identity, mortaility (and immortality), the nature of memories, and so on. It’s definitely an interesting world, and I could probably spend a lot of time just trying to understand how it works, and posts like this help out with that. At the same time, it will be interesting to see how the story tries to tie all of these things together when all is said and done.

From how it looks from the two episodes I’ve seen though, Kaiba looks like it will continue to be a fun ride.

By: Randall Fitzgerald

Randall Fitzgerald — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:38:26 +0000

Glowing praise from Higgy. He must be after your gully hole.

And mind yourself around that AB.net crowd. They’re a bit… zealous.

By: Hige vs. Otaku» Blog Archive » Kaiba – Uncanny Marxist Fantasy [Eps. 1 & 2]

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:43:13 +0000

[...] a massive amount of depth to compliment its magical, though constantly disturbing, visuals. itsubun mentions the strong classism vibe that run throughout these episodes (with interesting analysis of the [...]

By: Hige

Hige — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:07:05 +0000

Re: THAT acquisition – please keep some autonomy and post here. I like Impz and all, but group blogs tend to bleach the individual personalities of their authors. If you can maintain both places with the spark you’ve demonstrated here then it’s good news all round . . . just don’t get eaten up by the machine, man. It don’t care nothing bout you.

As for Kaiba, you’ve picked up on a couple of excellent points:

The dividing cloud and its lack of solidity seems important for two symbolic reasons: that it allows the lower class to believe they can break through and ascend to better circumstances (as suggested by the pair who were working on the balloon transport thing in episode one). Secondly that it allows the upper class easy access to the lower in order to abuse them for their own ends. I’m going to try and tackle thee Marxist undertones in a blog post soon – I’m glad you’ve covered one of the big symbolic parts of its class-related themes. Well said.

The purple denoting regal point is another interesting one. Masaaki Yuasa, the director, used a lot of block colouring motifs in Kemonozume too, and I never thought to consider the symbolic reasons for doing so. Thanks for alerting me to another element of this incredibly layered show. :3