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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 04 May 2006 00:00 |
 Every new season needs a shounen fighting show, and one of this season's contributions to the genre is KIBA, a tale of strange worlds and fighters with strange powers. Our hero Zed finds himself drawn from his own stagnant world to the vibrant world of Tempura, where the powers he seems to have inherited from his mother are soon called into use...
1 - Wind of Fate
15-year-old Zed is going through one of those phases where he causes nothing but trouble, and it's reflecting badly enough on his school that they're ready to expel him. The student council president, Noah, has been asking for patience for a while now, believing his friend's behaviour is just a reaction to his mother's illness, but their patience is just about at an end. Truth is, Zed's just had enough living in his home city and is wanting to find if there's more to life. For him, there is - he's about to learn he's a Shard Caster, like his mother before him, and that there are those who would very much life to see him dead. A breeze - unheard of in the city of Calm - leads Zed to a portal to another world...
2 - A New World
Zed emerges from the portal, right into the midst of a battle between two other Shard Casters. It's all he can do to get out of the way, after which he manfully passes out until after the battle is over. When he awakens, he's introduced to Jiko-sama, an old man and the winner of the battle, and Roia, a young girl and Jiko's spprentice. The land he's found himself in is called Tempura, and Jiko takes the first steps in leading Zed towards learning what it is to be a Shard Caster...
KIBA seems to be fairly typical shounen stuff - the crystals make for an intersting enough twist on the fighting, with a variety of powers and magical creatures on offer to those who have the Shard Caster abilities - and naturally enough it's clear from an early stage that Zed's abilities are up at the powerful end of the scale. I'm not sure there's enough in that to really make things truly interesting, though. Roia's also an interesting character - she's cute with fiery personality, and could well provide some love interest to keep Zed going.
What's not clear at this stage is where the story is going to go. With Zed's mother now on the loose back in Calm and being a Shard Caster of some power herself, and Noah having a fairly significant place in the opening sequence, it's clear that there's still a fair amount of setup work to be done to fully flesh out the setting and what's going on. The setting is curious - Calm and Tempura are very much complete opposites: one a city of almost eternal night where the wind never blows, the other a bright and fresh world where the breeze is a constant. There's obviously some connection between the two, and hopefully that'll be something that gets explored as the series progresses.
Not that I'll be watching that far, I admit. KIBA has promise, but for me just doesn't have the hook needed to make me want to see where it goes. It will have an audience, though, so particularly for fans of shounen fighters will be worth checking out. |
