planet_taffy 's review for:

Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World by Keiichi Sigsawa

5.0

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"The English edition is presented as a linear narrative."

So says the Tokypop translation of Kino no Tabi in it's front matter. This means that things like key character description and the placement of climax and falling action are randomly placed in the English version. Almost twenty years after my introduction to this book and I still think it's a very uneducated choice. (Non-liner elements are present in most stories.) I prefer to read the short stories in the original order: prologue; stories 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, then 6; then epilogue. You can better watch the story grow in complexity that way.

I've rated solely based on the content of the story: Kino, a young girl with an ambiguous appearance solo travels the world on her talking motorcycle Hermes. Though her world is not the same as ours, it carries similar themes of human suffering and human joy told through her experiences visiting various isolated city states. With Kino's rule of staying exactly two nights and three days in any place, Sigsawa is able to keep his storytelling at the perfect pace never lingering too long on extraneous details and leaving just enough to speculation when Kino & Hermes move on.

I've read this book many times and enjoyed it every time; it was truly a formative experience and the source of my love of short stories.