Kaiba

From Tv Tropes

I will love you, even without my memories!

One day a young man wakes up in an empty room, with no idea of who or where he is. His only clues are a strange marking on his stomach, a hole in his chest and a locket containing a blurry picture of a girl.

Soon, Kaiba (his name, though he doesn't know it yet) finds out that in the world he has awoken in, memories can be stored on small cones called "chips". These chips can be moved from body to body, making you essentially immortal. Bad memories can be removed, and good memories can be uploaded -- for a price. Unfortunately, there are now more chips than bodies, and a huge gap between the rich and the poor.

It is in this universe that Kaiba travels from planet to planet, seeking for who he is and who the girl in the locket is.

And it's all to a soundtrack that is hauntingly beautiful.

Please note that this has no relation to a guy who is likely to screw the rules because he has money.

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This show provides examples of

• A King Am I: Popo just wants to be "King". He takes it up a notch when he loses it and thinks of playing God by letting the world fall into an Assimilation Plot.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Upon recovering his memories, Warp almost totally reverts to his previous personality as the Evil Overlord; luckily, Neiro is able to make the Kaiba personality come back in time to save the planet.
• Am I Fighting Cthulhu?: Popo thinks he's just fighting clones and robots - good one that - and consequently fights to become "King" and to escape poverty.
• Amnesiac God
• And I Must Scream: Many continue to live inside a machine when they have no body to return to. This is considered preferable to death/deletion, as they might get a new body one day.
  • On the other hand, those lost in the cold of space and used as tourist attractions...
• Art Shift: The entirety of Episode 5.
• Artstyle Dissonance: Just look at that page picture.
• Assimilation Plot: Popo and the new Warp like the idea of the universe being eaten by the plant monster Kaiba in order to unite all peoples.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: The battle involving Kaiba/"Our" Warp, New Warp and Neiro. Or were those planets/moons rolling around real?
• Big Damn Heroes: Vanilla at the end of Episode 3.
• Black Blood: Green.
• Brain Uploading.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The Warps are masters of this. Portrayed perfectly in a talk between four Warps engaging in Thirty Xanatos Pileups: One of them freezes the other three, who just that second proclaimed their loyalty, and then opens doorways to each one's memories, each imagining himself the last Warp standing.
• Chew Toy: Popo's bad luck reaches epic proportions in the last two episodes he's the center of.
• Cloning Blues: Taken to its natural extreme: cloned memory... "people"/souls/whatnot will turn on their originals because they know they'll be decommissioned. Parm at least seems to have a decent relationship with hers, although it does die, but apparently with her unwilling to stop.
  • The Warps, on the other side, are textbook material on this, each seeking to be the only "original" remaining. It doesn't help that a twisted computer will kill all but the "original"/strongest.
• Conspicuous CG: Most notably shows up in the first episode's chase scene.
• Crapsaccharine World
• Disc One Final Boss: In the last two episodes, a large number of "fake ultimate bosses" succeed each other.
• Dogged Nice Guy: The "nice" part might be up for debates given that Vanilla obviously has ulterior motives for being nice to Chroniko/Kaiba, but seriously the sheer amount of CRAP he goes through for her/him probably makes it true.
• Dulcinea Effect: Really, Vanilla gives up a lot more for a girl he doesn't really know than sensible people would.
• Empty Promise: Horribly so: "I do constant backups and can get a new body anytime"
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Vanilla, although by the time he mentions her, it's debatable how "bad" he is.
  • And Popo, and Warp/Kaiba. The mother child bond is examined, broken apart, and reconstructed into a painfully close to home message.
• Evil Matriarch: Heartbreakingly subverted in episode 3.
  • Subverted in Warp's mother too: she looks like out of Snow White, but she had good intentions.
• Evil Twin
• Expy: The look of the show is based around My Life As A Teenage Robot but with construction (due to how big it is in Japan).
  • Some will say Osamu Tezuka but Teenage Robot is a better bet.
• Fake Memories
• Fetish Fuel Future: Why do people buy bodies? To have harems, to have sex with themselves or to attract the ladies. Dubs as Awesome But Practical and [[
• Gainax Ending
• Gag Boobs: A certain character from Episode 2, who's bewbs are bigger than HER HEAD.
• Gender Bender: Kaiba uses Chroniko's body for literally half the series.
• Grand Theft Me: Sought-after bodies are sometimes stolen, though it's implied to be a rare occurrence in the time of the story's action, since most voluntarily sell their bodies.
• Gratuitous English: The opening and ending theme, and the Tree Song. Sung by a half-Canadian, apparently.
  • Not to mention the character names.
• Gray And Gray Morality: You can't really call La Resistance morally upright given how they twist people to do their beckoning, but neither can you really call the Evil Overlord good either....except he's not really evil. And then there's every other side character who all have good and bad traits.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Vanilla of all people, which really makes you feel for him.
• Huge Guy Tiny Girl: ...Kinda.
  • For that matter, Gender Bender.
• Humans Are Bastards.
• Human Resources.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Parm, who borrows Kaiba's body for "recreational purposes" and... well, screams. A lot. Then she explodes!
• Inconsistent Sub: The only English fansub switches from "Cloak" and "One Accord" to "Mantle" and "Issoudan" with no explanation.
• Instant Awesome Just Add Mecha: In the last two episodes.
• Journey To The Center Of The Mind: Several throughout the series. It's how we learn that Neiro's memories are heavily altered and also the location of the climax of the final episode.
• La Resistance: Though they aren't terribly nice, and it's questionable towards the end if they're even the good guys.
• Laser Guided Amnesia
• Leaning On The Fourth Wall: The Little Brother in Episode 1.
• Love Redeems: Kind of the whole point of the show.
• The Man Behind the Man: Dada, even when you think "he"'s done for.
• Man Eating Plant: Or rather memory-planet eating plant, which assimilates everything
• Meaningful Name: Kaiba is Japanese for hippocampus, the memory component of the brain.
• Mental World: A number of them.
• Mind Screw: The entire series is a little difficult to understand, but the last episode pulls out all the stops.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Related to Power Perversion Potential, although it's interesting to note memory thingies came from someone's idea of helping people conquer death. Then people started corrupting the technology for their own petty, egotistical pleasures...
• My God, What Have I Done?: The ending of episode 3, for one.
• Names To Know In Anime: Even if they're for single episodes and/or bit parts, we've got a lot of 'em...
  • Hisao Egawa: Vanilla.
  • Tetsuya Iwanaga: Bori, Kera, and Kichi.
  • Yuko Kaida: Parm.
  • Yumiko Kobayashi: Guri.
  • Houko Kuwashima: Warp/Kaiba.
  • Mamiko Noto: Neiro.
  • Ai Orikasa: Moko.
  • Romi Park: Popo.
  • Chiwa Saitou: Chroniko.
  • Sakiko Tamagawa: Negi.
• Oblivious To Love: Patch, who's oblivious to everything except his work. His admirer's solution to this problem (after a lifetime of I Want My Beloved To Be Happy) is rather unusual, but it seems to work out well for her in the end.
  • Popo with the girl that helps him - it's implied she had a Childhood Crush on him.
• Off Model: And how!
• Our Souls Are Different
• Out With A Bang: Parm. Just... Parm.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Popo is a Chessmaster worthy of Lelouch's brilliance, but also his horrible bad luck. However, he's no match for four Thirty Xanatos Pileup unscrupulous Woobie Destroyers Of Worlds, and if he had succeeded, the other two Physical Gods would have made it a moot point.
• Pokemon Speak: Hyo Hyo.
• Physical God. Warp is the closest thing to it in the series. (Practically) immortal, and he says he can destroy the world with only his memories.
• The Professor: Patch.
• Quest For Identity.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Issoudan is really not nice at all.
  • Arguably, its leaders aren't and act like cult leaders rather than freedom fighters. Except the "two" Chessmasters running it, its members seem to be ok and even with scruples.
• Scooby Dooby Doors.
• Screw Yourself: Parm. The possibility of loading some of your own memories into another body, then having your way with yourself isn't revealed until well into the episode, making it a bit of a Mind Screw until the fact.
  • Not to mention the Squickyness of [[spoiler: seeing her give herself such a big orgasm that she goes to a gory green death. Well, of her current body at least.
• Shout Out: Possibly. Did anyone find the concept of a blonde boy in green travelling from planet to planet and observing their inhabitants' way of life familiar? And the planet in comparison to Asteroid B-612 ...
  • Warp's mother looks straight out of Snow White's stepmom, complete with the
• The Starscream: Popo has been waiting for some time for both the chance to get Warp off his throne and take it for himself, thus having enough power to take down Dada. His silver lining comes in a different order, but too bad he's Overshadowed by Awesome.
• Super Robot: Kichi the memory merchant transfers his memories into this sort of body for the last episode. The robot can even fold out to perform a Macross Missile Massacre.
• Tanks For The Memories
• Thirty Xanatos Pileup: Towards the end of episode 11.
• Trauma Induced Amnesia
• True Final Boss: Arguable if New-Warp or Kaiba-the-plant.
• Twelve Episode Anime
• The Unfavourite: Partly subverted: Warp remembers his mother tried to poison him, and his father tried to kill him with all sort of "external" ineffective weapons. Subverted in that his mother poisoned him with non-lethal doses to protect him. This sort of makes sense in some Fridge Brilliance ways.
• Villainous Breakdown: Popo loses it after his mother's memory chip is accidentally destroyed and he discovers that Cheki's personality has mostly been wiped away.
• Was Once A Man: Anyone who places their memories in a non-human body, like the people on Abipa.
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made On Drugs?
• Well Intentioned Extremist: Popo does everything for the sake of providing a better life for his mother and his friends.
• Who Wants To Live Forever: Part of Issoudan's motivations.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Episode 10.
• Woobie Destroyers Of Worlds: Popo turns into this, and the Warps are born like this due to their genetic (bad) memories.
• Xanatos Sucker: Popo to the Warps. Four of them.
• Your Head Asplode: Kaiba-Warp shows the possibility to do so.