Studio(s): Aniplex, Madhouse
Genres: Fantasy, Action, Sci-Fi
Synopsis:
Zed and his friend, Noa, live in a city called Calm. Zed is somewhat of a renegade who’s constantly skipping school and getting in trouble with local law enforcement, largely due to the fact that he never had a father and his mother is mentally ill. Unlike his friend, Noa is a responsible young lad who, despite being very sickly, tries to live life to the fullest. But their lives change drastically when Zed is led through a portal by a strange, angelic creature. When Zed wakes up, he’s in a strange fantasy world called Tempura where magic is real. Zed then discovers that he’s actually a Shard Caster – a magic user with the ability to summon powerful spirits in battle. From that moment on, Zed realises his life will never be the same again.
Review:
There are few very original plot devices in the series but the storyline is still quite enjoyable once one gets into it. In terms of characters; there’s a fairly decent amount of character development along with quite a large variety of characters which does make for more interesting viewing. As far as artwork goes, it may not be dazzling but it’s nice the majority of the time (Of course when it comes to artwork, it’s a matter of personal taste in a lot of ways). Sadly, the animation itself is rather lazy. That is to say there are far too many fight scenes that consist of still images with fighting noises played along with a few jerks of the camera. The background movement itself is virtually non-existent with townsfolk seemingly frozen in a sort of limbo. While these are very common shortcomings in anime in general, in Kiba’s case it’s a little too constantly evident to pass off. As for the CGI use, I’ll admit that there were two elements that actually had to be rendered with CGI to create the desired effect. Unfortunately for Kiba the rest of the CGI elements that should have rather been hand-drawn as they tended to conflict with the rest of their surroundings. Luckily, compared with a lot of other modern anime, Kiba actually didn’t contain that many CGI elements (It is sad that I should even make a statement like that but “the times; they are a changing”). Moving onto the soundtrack now, I’d say it was somewhere between average and good. It had a few good scores and it definitely worked for the anime and created all the right atmospheres at all the right times and thus it accomplished its purpose. My overall view of Kiba is that it’s definitely worth a watch if you have it or if it’s being aired in your region but it won’t kill you if you miss it.
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