Kaiba’s second episode opens on a monologue that serves as both a description of its world, and an articulation of its central question. “Are memories one’s soul, or one’s spirit? This is a world where memories can be turned into data, and stored.” The age-old question of where our fundamental “identity” resides is further complicated by the next line, as the narrator explains that in this world, “bad memories are deleted, while fun memories are downloaded.” If memories can be altered, it seems inappropriate to consider them our “soul” – but if we are nothing but that collection of memories, being altered and bartered and passed from body to body, what other selfhood could we be said to possess?
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Kaiba – Episode 1
Eternal life is a pretty tempting concept, but in truth, any actual path there would probably turn out something like Kaiba. Even just in this first episode, a strange and compelling world feels fully established, complete with firm social strata and quirks of social engagement. In this world, minds and bodies can be separated, letting people truly try on someone else’s shoes, or even continuously switch bodies to live indefinitely. This doesn’t result in a golden age – it results in the rich buying bodies off the poor to maintain themselves, and many poor families being reduced to a collection of minds inhabiting one rickety shell. When one character’s brother has his mind forcibly removed by some flying creature, the remaining family members jokingly bicker over whether they should return him to his body or sell the frame for cash. It’s a dark world Kaiba is establishing, but it’s pretty much exactly the world the show’s conceit would create.