Kaiba - Technology

Technology

Despite its appearance, Kaiba is in fact very much science fiction. Many powerful and futuristic devices are present throughout, creating a very different landscape of the possible vs. impossible than are present at the time of its making.

Memory chips

One of the most important features of the Kaiba landscape is the ability to store a person's memories, preserving them after death and allowing them to change bodies if needed. Not everyone opts for the change, but many do if they can afford it. While it does provide a great advantage and convenience, as well as prolonging the life of their ego, it can also make a person shockingly vulnerable, because their chip can be removed putting them at their attacker's mercy.

Memory chips are small metallic cones which generally insert into the top of the head. With some assistance, it is easy to switch bodies at will. It is also possible to modify, copy, and trade memories on the open market or at a clinic, for good or nefarious purposes alike.

Memory tanks

When a person dies, their memories are released as small yellow-orange beans which float away out of the atmosphere, creating vast rivers of dead people's memories out in space. On some planets, these memories are collected in huge yellow memory tanks like anchored hot-air balloons, the contents of which can then be searched and viewed.

Memory readers

Odd shaped green devices, these can be used to not only read the memories of a living person, but to actually physically walk around inside the memory-bubble created there and explore their mind. Memories usually appear like books, though the style varies greatly depending on the person. It is also shown that the room the memories are in stays the same regardless of who is in the body; changing the person using the body merely changes all the memories inside.

The devices can also copy the memories from a living person and play them back later, as if the person was still there. As a secondary function, they are even capable of freezing their target in place over a limited distance.

Popo's exclamation seems to indicate that the official name for these devices is "horeito," and that they are additionally capable of completely erasing memories, effectively killing the target.

Artificial bodies

All different manner of artificial bodies are shown in the course of the show (most notably Kaiba), though they all seem to be inferior in quality to bodies that grow up normally. Advanced cloning and biological fabrication technologies are also very well developed.

Weapons

The most common type of weapon used in the show is never called by name ("kabairu" according to the official site and the ninth episode), but nearly omnipresent. They are shaped like a gold-colored globe with a ridge over the top, then a pointed end and a handle opposite. These weapons vary in size from handheld all the way up to very large, wrapping around the body and carried similarly to a large marching band drum. These weapons are devastating in power, and are capable of exploding a person into blood in a single shot (It is notable that the blood in kaiba is green). They destroy most objects, with the exception of memory chips.

Another different sort of weapon comes as a feature of the memory readers. They seem to be able to freeze their target in place, even stopping their thoughts in their tracks. Memory readers seem to also have the function of erase the memory chip, killing the target.