Kaiba Episode 2 - Smuggling

Having sold his body into prostitution (well, it apparently did have a massive schlong. I can’t believe I actually just typed that.), “Warp”’s memories have been transferred to a giant stuffed hippo named Kaba. Alongside the flying squid-thing that stowed away alongside him, Kaba meets another stowaway named Kochu. She dreams of settling down with her rather disinterested boyfriend Bataa, but Bataa uses a teleporter to sneak off when she’s not looking; the same teleporter leads Kaba and the squid back to Warp and Paam, the lady who bought him, having the most incredible sex imaginable.

Kochu eventually discovers Bataa’s indiscretions with a well-endowed dominatrix, but in fact Bataa has been smuggling top-grade memories on board the shuttle and doesn’t really give a toss about Kochu anyway. The commotion that ensues attracts the attentions of the sleazy Vanilla, the obstructive guard from the previous episode, who trusses all three of them up and orders them to display their tickets to travel. Bataa produces a fake ticket, but eventually admits his guilt as a smuggler, at which point Vanilla vapourises both him and Kochu; their memories, instead of turning into chips, become orange “memory eggs” and float out into space.

Kaba and the squid return to watch Paam and Warp get it on as officials scour the hold for more stowaways - however, the experience is all just too much for Paam, and with thoughts of her absent father (who turns out to be… Bataa!) she explodes all over the room! When Vanilla comes to investigate, the person inside Warp’s body claims to be Paam, but his ruse is discovered when Vanilla tries to check for Paam’s memory chip. Having frozen Warp in place, one of the officials enters his memories to confirm his identity, but the squid steals the gun that allows him to do this and escapes the shuttle with Kaba. In the meantime, the officials discover a small group of female stowaways in the hold - all of them wondering where Bataa is…

Well, it’s a Masaaki Yuasa show, so there had to be enormous undulating breasts in the show at some point. Maybe he’s got them out of his system?

From an art and animation point of view, this episode isn’t quite as interesting as the first one. The inside of a space shuttle, after all, isn’t as visually interesting as an alien planet, although there are some really nice bits of imagery here, particularly the slightly dizzying shot of the memory eggs floating out past the shuttle. There’s some brilliant animation, though, particularly of Kaba and the squid, and I did like the strange grasping hands that lived inside Paam’s coat even if they were disturbingly voyeuristic.

Plot-wise, we get thrown out an interesting little tidbit in that Neiro is apparently wanted by the authorities for blowing up several memory tanks. I’m also fairly sure that the squid (and possibly the AstroEmu) contains Neiro’s personality - it gets jealous when Kaba eyes up Kochu as she’s getting dressed, and it cares just a little too much about Kaba’s safety for no apparent reason. This is, of course, conjecture, but it’s nice to have a series that one can do that about without someone spoiling you from the manga!

I’m a little confused, however, as to what exactly happened with “Warp”’s body. When did it get a different memory chip implanted? It’s probably not a plot hole and I’ve probably just missed something in the dialogue, but little details like that make the show a little bit less consistent, which is unfortunate. The writers are doing an admirable job with a fairly complex central theme, but if they’re going to slip up on little details now…

Anyway, I don’t think this episode is going to convince anyone who was on the fence before about Kaiba. It’s still a bit odd, and very distinctly Yuasa’s work in its mildly uneven tone, but very few directors would choose to make both the main characters of an episode essentially mute?

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