edited as per lilgumba's reccomendation! good call, my friend.

Kino's Journey is not terribly new, nor is it terribly old. The complete series of 13 episodes has been released in thin-pack DVDs as a collector's set with a nice box. The price was right at $30 in Best Buy, so I picked it up. The picture of a cute and dangerous girl on the box helped sell it to me as well.

Minor spolier:
The box art turns out to be a tad misleading as the picture is theoretically of the main character, Kino. While I am only through 12 of the 13 episodes, not once have I seen Kino be sexy, cute, or hot. She happens to be female, but that is about where her gender ends. In fact, several of the people in the anime don't even realize that she is a woman.

The main premise is that Kino is a "Traveler." In the world that this anime takes place, travelers are people who basically wander from "country" to "country" experiencing life as outside observers. They don't get involved if they don't have to and they never stay anywhere long. Each country seems to be pretty small as Kino travels between them on a "motorrad." Take a motorcycle, give it the ability to talk and smart off a bit, and there is a motorrad.

The whole premise of the series is that each country has its own customs that are very different from anything the viewer considers to be normal. Entire societies are built on morals that work for the country (for the most part) but are quite often terrible compared to our own realities. It all works like an animated discussion in ethics and philosophy. Kino only stays in each country for three days, so the viewer is given just enough time to dip into the strangeness, get a grasp on what is going on, and then get whisked away to a new strange country.

I have not finished the series, and if episode 13 proves to be extra crazy, I may add to this overview. As it stands, I recommend Kino's Journey to anyone who wants a good value anime that they won't be tempted to marathon through, but has a lot of cerebral backing.

Just finished ep 13. This series ends on a very strong note. In fact, it is probably one of the best final episodes I have ever seen of a series. This is not to say that it is one of the best episodes of any series I have ever seen... just that as far as endings go, this was great.

I've seen the show and it's great. However I'd have to say you need to spoiler your second paragraph in your first post because that is half the surprize of the show. They did that for a purpose. Also...

spoiler
The show is shown out of order so what happend last really isn't what happend last. The true last episode happened earlier without you even knowing it. I haven't gone back to watch the true order yet though. Personally I had a different experince because I accidentally watched Vol 4 before 3 but in the end it didn't make much of a difference because I thought that vol 4 was the last ep but boy was I wrong.

It's a good show though that is very different from the rest. I'd recommend it for sure.