overall i still think it was absolutely brilliant and profound but i cant help but notice theres a narrative shift around episode 7 that feels really jarring? its like the inverse of what NGE, wherein as NGE became more abstract in the final episodes Kaiba becomes more concrete, establish a more or less linear thread of narrative that ties together the characters and explains the series' cold opening a little too neatly. on top of it all, the way it ends is with a big climactic showdown, and with the revealing of what seem to me almost arbitrary details of biography and character that come into play too late to have a central role in the story. and while there are explanations and multiple sides to the characters, we're very obviously given a protagonist and something they oppose, so it takes on a pretty apparent bildungsroman character that it sees through to the end.
whereas NGE was very deeply informed by well established theoretical concerns, Kaiba prefers abstraction and association in its presentation of complex ideas, specifically the power of memory and the futile struggles directed towards the attaining of a sort of Absolute Spirit, an absolutely totalized reality wherein knowledge begins to loop in on itself and make apparent its own contradictions. the power struggles towards the end, especially between Warp and Isshoudan, illustrate some really interesting dialectical processes wherein the contradiction of each's ideologies become apparent nearly upon conception. In the case of Warp, this means illustrating the futility of pursuing of an Absolute Knowledge in the face of totalizing and thereby humanity itself (which we can see in the way he seemingly controls all memory and uses his powers to create an Absolute Knowledge that ultimately totalizes and controls him (which is apparent in the way his castle quite literally monitors him), and for Isshoudan, this is shown in their contradictory and ultimately self serving ideology that exists only as a negation of Warp's, and which ultimately inherits the same tools of power and control once it gains control of them. There's also the duality of real warp/fake warp, the futility of attempting to inscribe one's own individuality unto systems of power of which they are constituents, and of course, Lack (both symbolized in Kaiba Warp's growing hole in his chest, the fake warps, Popo, the memory chips without bodies, and Niero's bifurcated self (Niero and PyoPyo, both aspects of the same apparent self yet utterly and irreconcilably different beings)
What's most central to Kaiba though is the question of memory and form itself, the level at which one can experience a whole, totalized reality as both a body and a collection of experiential data, and the way in which the Self as a construct becomes commodified and essentially scattered into the wind through the commodifcation and reification of abstract experience and how the ideal of the Self as a unity is itself produced, the central concern of a great deal of characters as they attempt to become whole in both a narrative and metaphorical sense (Kaiba's search for his memories is the main thread of this).
Ultimately though, what makes Kaiba resonate so thoroughly is in its implicit embrace of decentered reality, which we can see especially clearly in the first half-dozen episodes in the various character vignettes that Warp and Vanilla encounter. The grandmother's memories of her husband (especially the way she screams "he'll never be dead as long as I remember him!"), the cat and the scientist girl who fulfills his every desire from the sidelines even as he loses his grip, and especially in my favorite scene of the whole series, when even as Chroniko's aunt tries to force herself to hate Chroniko and lets her be killed, there exists a very real, very visceral sentiment of love and affection that only reveals itself in a Proustian sequence, as she remembers the way they all used to play together before breaking down and realizing how thoroughly monstrous she's become. To Kaiba, whether or not these experiences, instances of pleasure and sadness and desire that through memory are changed, restructured and consciously recreated are real in the most common sense of the world is irrelevant; they are moments of connection between human beings, narrative threads through which we create ourselves relationally. And this is at the heart of Kaiba, of the romance between Kaiba/Warp and Neiro, two beings who are literally created and recreated numerous times but who find each other through their relational experience, through their memories, through their creations of each other in their own memories.
This is all really confused and jumbled and probably badly edited (read: not edited) but i think ultimately Kaiba and NGE come to a very simular realization, that there can still be human experience in a decentered world, but that this experience will always be located at sites of contention, contradiction and chaos, and in a constant interplay of memory, creation and destruction of every potential notion of reality. unreality, therefore, should only make us more tender towards one another, because at the end of the day, thats all we'll have to hold on to. memories and the tenderness of others.
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