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Kino no Tabi, also known as Kino’s Journey, is another book from Tokyopop’s new light novel line POP fiction. Stepping away from the sword and sorcery of Scrapped Princess, Kino is full of dark and brooding tales that focus on the beauty in an ugly and flawed world. Kino is a small girl traveler, always accompanied by her magical talking bike Hermes, and her guns, which she is excellent at using. Together, Kino and Hermes travel throughout their world, staying at countries, more like cities, for only three days to learn about them. These cities vary wildly in detail and theme. Some are technologically advanced, with robots and hovercars, while some are tribal monarchies. The only common link is the tragic nature of the people’s existence, whether from being oppressed or isolated from eachother, and the supposed beauty in it.

I quite enjoyed Kino no Tabi. It’s stories were short but thought provoking, and leave the reader to place any moral judgement on the characters. A couple of the stories were too similiar I think, both beginning with Kino in a seemingly abandoned town, but the themes behind them are different enough that I can forgive this. Kino herself is a fascinating character, not liking to kill others but always willing to use force if necessary. I also have to wonder on how she became such a good sharp-shooter at such a young age. Kino has room for a lot more stories to tell. Her sense of ” beauty ” is pretty interesting also, seeing how it seems serenity after chaos is beautiful, but I don’t know if that’s what she’s trying to say.

The translation was done by Andrew Cunningham, the same guy who translated Boogiepop, so I have full confidence in the text’s quality. Random note: Andrew has a nice site here where he reviews different light novels. Worth giving a look. To my dismay, Tokyopop once again replaced the books nice original cover, below, with another garish piece of popart that hardly has any relevance at all, as seen above. I wish tokyopop would get it through their heads that their out of place original art doesn’t help sell the book at all.

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Kino no Tabi is another excellent light novel that has finally seen the light of english translation. If you want something dark and fanciful, yet short, for your reading, give Kino a try. And if you’ve seen the anime, well, what are you waiting for? Though, personally, I haven’t seen the anime myself, but I hear it’s good.