Adventurers

Kino is a hoydenish adolescent, traveling through a strange world on Hermes, her Motorrad (a talking motorbike), like an animated Peter Fonda. In an extended flashback in episode 4, the viewer learns she's escaped from a eerie country where children are surgically transformed into conformist adults on their 12th birthdays. Kino wanders from country to country, encountering individuals who range from slave trader-cannibals to millennial religious fanatics, but she remains a detached outsider. She expresses no more interest in the lives of the slavers she kills than in the people of a city that has made sorrow into a ritual. As Kino, voice actor Kelli Cousins sounds considerably older than an adolescent; Cynthia Martinez (Hermes) speaks in gravelly tones that suggest Marge Simpson with a head cold. The subdued palette, fragments of poetry, and alienated heroine will appeal to fans of Serial Experiments Lain. (Rated 15 and older: violence) --Charles Solomon