Kaiba

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.

Tropes used in Kaiba include:

• 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.
• 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.
• Anime First
• Art Shift: The entirety of Episode 5.
• Art Style 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.
• Big Damn Heroes: Vanilla at the end of Episode 3.
• Black Blood: Green
• Blatant Lies: Vanilla. "I do constant backups and can get a new body anytime"
  • Which doubles as an Empty Promise. Horribly so.
• Brain Uploading
• Conspicuous CG: Most notably shows up in the first episode's chase scene.
• Crap Saccharine World
• 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.
• 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.
• 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
• Gainax Ending
• Gag Boobs: Butter's lover at the end of episode 2.
• Gambit Pileup: Towards the end of episode 11.
• Gender Bender: Kaiba uses Chroniko's body for literally half the series.
• 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 Résistance 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.
• 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 Résistance: 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.
• 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.
• Mind Screw: The entire series is a little difficult to understand, but the last episode pulls out all the stops.
• 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.
• Off-Model: And how!
• Our Souls Are Different
• Out with a Bang: Parm.
• The Pawn
• Pokémon-Speak: Hyo Hyo.
• The Professor: Patch.
• Quest for Identity
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Issoudan is really not nice at all.
• 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 unimaginable Squick of seeing her give herself such a big orgasm that she goes to a gory green death. Well, of her current body at least.
• 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
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia
• Twelve-Episode Anime
• 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.