Finished Kino no Tabo. tldr: watch 10th ep it's good, rest is upper-mediocre I like 10th episode and 5 minutes about dude who saved points his whole life. For the rest I had constant feel of underdevelopment. It seemed that every ingredient for S-tier is there: image good, animation ok, setting ok, whole conception ok. But the cities themselves are not sophisticated enough and their set of conflicts is either shallow by itself, or just shown in simplistic way. I think this anime could made it into my top-50 if authors tried to incorporate some real political science or historical sociology into plot, but that didn't happen. It looks more like fairy tales, simple stories of which illustrate simple things in our world, which together generate its complexity. But this is not enough. Maybe it would be a good watch for early teens, I'd like to watch this way earlier in my life. Titles like this makes you desire scripts to be produced in some slow way, being well-cooked in writers heads and survive though lots of edits maybe. Because you see the potential, but it's just not fulfilled. (spoilers begin) For example, in one location people tend to lie to each other for their own comfort and well-being of others, and it works, except there's no need to actually lie because people underestimate each other ability to see the truth. Ok, so what? It's like I don't want to think more about this situation, there's just nothing interesting in it Or there some places where people have some beliefs that objectively worsen their existence, but that beliefs are too rooted in their heads so there's nothing to do about it. Ok, that happens. But it does not provide any fuel for thought Or the first city, where it's "permitted" to kill but in the end it turns out, that kills are supposed to be only for the good of society (lynching basically) or otherwise justified. And that's it. Ok? It's cheap plottwist that does not change your interpretation of any past actions or just anything. Or straight up political statement that lynching is good lol. Either way it is very plain Or there was an episode where mass murders were explained by society with radio-waves and people who commit those are being cured in psychiatric hospital. I see this as allusion either to US or to medicalizing approach to crime that does not admit personal choice, but this allusion goes nowhere, it just there, (spoilers end) Well I understand that in modern media references that "just there" are a norm and I would not react like this, if title would not promise development of theme I'm interested in, namely bizarre societies and jurisdictions = varied views on others and oneself. Promise is there with every new city, and every time it's not satisfied which is frustrating. It's interesting that when people's lifes are coming from nowhere and lead nowhere, I see as norm and expected way of things. But when societies and their policies are mere plotdevice and not some complex thing-whithin-self, rejection builds up.