Always nice to see a show like Kino's Journey receiving attention. For me, its appeal can be summed up in the quote from the show:
"The world is not beautiful; therefore it is".
I think on the point of it being depressing or showing a lot of darkness in the world, it's constantly posing the question to the viewer of whether would even be possible for the world to be a beautiful place without also being a cruel one. How would we recognise and appreciate the light was if there was no darkness? Both need to exist in order for the world to be beautiful, because they'd mean nothing without the other.
Kino as a (mostly) neutral observer is always grateful for people's kindness, but never particularly surprised at their cruelty either. I wouldn't say she suffers from a lack of characterisation or development, I think it's just that she's a much more Zen character (in quite a
literal sense) than anyone is used to seeing as a protagonist, one who rather than seeing the world as just or unjust and striving for a goal like most protagonists, she simply accepts the world as it is (apologies for dropping such a massive quote in here, the entire book is legally available online but there's no way for me to link directly to the relevant part of the pdf):
"There is nothing better than this, more than this, other than this, thusness. To intuitively realize tathata is to see the truth of all things, to see the reality of the things which have deceived us. The things which delude us are all the things which cause discrimination and duality to arise in us: good-evil, happiness-sadness, win-lose, love-hate, etc. There are many pairs of opposites in this world. By not seeing tathata, we allow these things to trick us into believing in duality: this-that, liking-disliking, hot-cold, male-female*, defiled, enlightened. This delusion causes all our problems. Trapped in these oppositions, we can't see the truth of things. We fall into liking and disliking, which in turn leads to the defilements, because we don't see tathata.
What we must see constantly and deeply is that good is a sankhara and that evil is a sankhara too. The pleasant and unpleasant feelings, sukha and dukkha, are both sankhara. Getting and disappearing, losing and winning all are sankhara. There isn't anything which isn't a sankhara. Thus, all things are the same -- tathata. All things are just suchness, just this way, not otherwise. Further, we can say that heaven is a sankhara and hell is a sankhara. So, heaven and hell are tathata -- just thus. Our minds should be above heaven and above hell, above good and above bad, above joy and above dukkha in all respects." - Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
While obviously not everyone shares that view of the world (I struggle with it myself) and the show doesn't stick with this concept 100%, I think perhaps the character of Kino and Kino's Journey becomes more understandable when viewed from this philosophical angle, one which isn't particularly well known or appreciated in the West. I think Kino is "seeing the truth of things
" as the quote above describes, or at least seeking to, which makes her a very unusual and unique protagonist.
*Kino's androgynous nature being another possible reference to this concept.
