Air

Let me start off by saying that I can be known for despising moe with the pure unbridled passion of a thousand blazing suns. BUT! I thought it only fair to explain why I hate it with a review of possibly the best show that moe has to offer up. “So, why the bile, JesuOtaku, what’s wrong with the heartwarming moe story?” you may ask. You may not have asked that nicely, but whatever. Well, before I get into that, I should probably praise all the things Air does right that make it by far my favorite moe title. Don’t get too excited, that’s likelooking in a dirt pail for me and picking out a “favorite” worm to use as bass bait. Air is emotionally a rewarding experience. Unlike in most moe shows, the other characters actually express Misuzu’s trademark moe quirks: the mental retardation, animal noises, strange tastes, and clumsiness, to be really weird and cause for real concern instead of just finding them charming. This makes her character more accessible, and on the whole the characters in Air are relatable enough to make the emotional gut-busters of the conclusion truly gut-busting. The story is emotionally honest, raw and unflinching, and will have many individuals clawing for their Kleenex when they least expect it. I was genuinely touched by Air’s conclusion, and my heart is a dried brown potpourri ball fit only to spice up the lavatories of a state penitentiary. On the technical side of things, Air is smashingly well-animated, something enthusiasts of Kyo-Ani have come to expect, as they produced the famous Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya among other girl-aimed shows with the budget and finesse usually reserved for boy-aimed shows. The music is oddly intricate, usually light, feathery orchestral ballads that never overtake the action onscreen, but flow underneath it subtly enough to work well, and the same can be said of the fluffy opener and closer. The voice acting in both languages is sufficient, with moments of greatness. The three main roles are cast nigh perfectly in the dub, with Luci Christian making an incredible star turn as Haruko, as if I didn’t like her enough as an actress, her work here is phenomenal and as I said, Vic Mignogna and Monica Rial sound born to play Yukito and Misuzu respectively, never missing a beat. The rest of the cast is fairly average to melodramato-bad, but you know what, they aren’t important. How could I possibly say the other characters aren’t important? ... I must, for I must bring out the ugly stick now. Yeah, I was moved by this story, but that’s because Air basically planted its petite well-animated foot up my backside and shoved me on my face, which of course just watered up from the abuse. You MUST turn your brain off to think this is a good story. It would be vile enough with the number of badly written platitudes that pop up now and again, but the plot, no matter how you slice it, is CONTRIVED and MANIPULATIVE, and therefore, so is the emotion that you feel when you watch it. The other girls never serve any purpose to the main conflict, in fact, I want someone to messagel me and tell me WHAT purpose they honestly served at ALL except to serve the schoolgirl fetish population. Yes, I went there, because moe is Freudian. It is created innocent so the male viewers won’t feel bad fantasizing about the nonexistent fanservice that is fed to us through arbitrary tragedy rather than panty shots. I know there are women that enjoy it and also men that enjoy it in a non-dirty fashion, but that’s not what it was created for, you bet your sweet potatoes. All of these characters have an inexplicable tragic past or terminal disease that is usually tied to the supernatural and rarely has anything to do with the main idea of the story, if there even was one to begin with. Air tries to have a point, but only obtains one in the relationship between Haruko and Misuzu in the very end that I sorely wish had been the focus of the entire show instead of the typical boring boy learning about helpless girls in town pattern that proved pointless when all was said and done. That’s also a staple of the hentai games these shows came from... In the end, all Air really does is exploit your tear ducts without giving you a reason as to why anything happens, besides the words “magic,” “gods,” and “destiny,” which I will follow with the words “deus ex machina.” And also the words “screw that.” If I’m weepy at the end of something, I want it to be because the story meant something to me, because I learned something about the characters, maybe even about life, if that’s not too heavy to consider. I don’t want it to be because, yes, I was sucker-punched by pretty art, pretty music, and good acting pasted on a plot with all the finesse of a bad fanfiction written by that fetish guy I mentioned earlier. You know who you are. Go ahead, give me a good reason WHY there are so many girls near death or madness in this show, so I can stop beating this poor dead horse and let it gallop back to its home on the set of Days of our Lives! I recommend this to moe fans, really I do. After that, I recommend you click off this review and scan your TV for Lifetime channel where you will find live-action versions of the well-written drama presented in Air. All in all, a beautiful title where the tears and angst really are only ink-deep. Still, the pretty exterior and tenderness did trick me. It held my interest every step of the way until I stepped back and saw how silly it really was, so I’ll be kinder to that favorable result. *THIS IS A PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF MY VIDEO REVIEW THAT CAN BE SEEN HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ib-l3CIbv8 Thanks for reading!

Air was the first of the Key / Kyoto Animation series and in my opinion, it's the one that has left the most indelible mark. Running on an ethereal kind of magical realism and raw human emotion, it is a roller coaster for the heart that, even three years later, I can't bear to forget. Air is about a young girl named Misuzu Kamio, who meets a drifter named Yukito on the first day of summer. Misuzu wants to make Yukito her friend and so she offers to let him stay at her place with her and her mother, Haruko. Yukito reluctantly takes advantage of herhospitality, and in doing so, learns that Misuzu may be a clue to something he's been looking for. From there, the story progresses gradually, focusing on the characters, including other girls Yukito meets. Each girl brings another piece of the puzzle to the story. What's so wonderful about the story is how multi-faceted and multi-layered the story is. Because it is so densely packed with vital information, some of it gets lost along the way. This gives the series a massive amount of rewatch value until you can gather all the pieces and understand the entire story yourself. Of course, this doesn't mean you have to watch the series repeatedly to enjoy it. It's just a good idea to watch it more than once if you want to understand everything. Though the players in this magical tragedy are moe cliches, each is given certain aspects to their personality that set them apart. In most cases, each character comes with a backstory with the intention of ripping out your heartstrings. This may seem overdramatic for some viewers, but I think it works. Especially as it makes some not-so-enjoyable characters early on pretty darn amazing in terms of characterization. Though it was Haruhi that put Kyoto Animation on the map, Air offers the same lush fluid animation that the studio is now revered for. The character designs are quite wonky, especially regarding the eyes, which are abnormally huge even by anime standards. A blending of Key's design and KyoAni's style, the character look won't appeal to everyone, but you can't fault the quality of the rest of the production. The animation is accompanied by a grand soundtrack. This is one thing that really sets Air apart from other game adaptations in that the anime keeps the soundtrack of the original game rather than create it's own. This was a brilliant move as the many pieces of accompaniment are epic on an emotional scale, from the OP music, to the background pieces, and especially the unforgettable insert, "Aozora", from the final episode. The soundtrack works perfectly every time, every scene. Overall, this is one of my favorite anime of all time. Extensive replay value, raw often brutal emotion, set against a rich animated tapestry and set to one of the most beautiful soundtracks known to anime. Overall I give Air a 9 out of 10.

The prob­lem with cri­tiquing Air is that the many reas­ons I have for not lik­ing it are also reas­ons why oth­ers do like it. A small example of this would be the extent this show went to show how imma­ture Mis­uzu was. It went to quite ridicu­lous extremes. The sum­mer diary, the teddy dino­saurs, the ‘will you play with me’, right up to the point when she cut her hair, she could have just as eas­ily been 6 years old and I wouldn’t have bat­ted an eye­lid. But that’s not really cri­ti­cism, is it. It’s just some­thing I didn’t like. It’s like cri­ti­ciz­ing Hanamaru Kinder­gardenbecause no real child has the depth of know­ledge Hiiragi has. It’s like “so? that’s what makes her awesome!”. The entire second half of the show was basic­ally one huge sob drama story. Everything was tossed in to make this story even more sob-inducing than before. I’ll keep away from spoil­ing any­thing but mak­ing the lead female char­ac­ter sicker with every passing epis­ode and mak­ing the mother feel even more attached to her with each epis­ode felt way too manip­u­lat­ive. Not that there’s exactly any­thing wrong with being manip­u­lat­ive. Often it’s the sign of a good story teller. But never once did I give a fuck what happened to any­one in that show. Some people get sucked in incred­ibly eas­ily into sob stor­ies and for them, Air con­stantly throws them moments to feast upon. I sup­pose you could say that Air needed more epis­odes to make me care about these char­ac­ters but I don’t buy that. Double the epis­ode count and all I can see hap­pen­ing is doub­ling the amount heart­break­ing situ­ations involving Misuzu. I don’t care. I just don’t care and fail to ever care about these manip­u­lat­ive sob stor­ies. I liked Clan­nad for the double blow of excel­lent storytelling and the char­ac­ter of Tomoya, but rarely cared that much about the sob stor­ies bey­ond how they fit­ted into the story. Air never felt like it was com­pos­ing a coher­ent, well struc­tured story. It was just fling­ing these bloody baawwww situ­ations at the screen over and over and never once did I care. In fact, I can only think of one time I did care. That was when that winged girl was try­ing to juggle for her mother. As someone who’s quite good at jug­gling myself, I know the pain of hav­ing to con­stantly pick up those blas­ted things, although I get the feel­ing that wasn’t what I was meant to be sad about. The first half of the series wasn’t exactly that bad either. At least it cre­ated the atmo­sphere of sum­mer well and I quite liked the lead male char­ac­ter. If the second half of the story had con­tin­ued the for­mula of ‘guy spend­ing two epis­odes chat­ting, two epis­odes solv­ing magical prob­lems for these girls’ I might have made some unenthu­si­astic review where I said it was a rather aver­age anime. But the second half wasn’t that at all (they turned my favour­ite char­ac­ter into a fuck­ing crow!). The baawww heap­ing is what made me severely dis­like the series, which is also why oth­ers love the series. Hence it’s not really cri­ti­cism of what it did wrong. Just what I didn’t like about it.

Air was the very first anime from the amazing due Key/Kyoto Animation, and it was definitely one of the best romance/drama animes that you can find out there. Story: I'm not gonna lie, this story made no sense to me, I watched all the episodes and was left thinking WTF IM SO CONFUSED? but after rewatching it I slowly began to understand it more. The tragedy of Misuzu and the whole theme of flying and freedom and destiny was pretty cool and the story ended up being an enjoyable one despite the complexity behind it. Art: OMG...Air has to be THE best looking anime I have everseen, everything on this show was just stunning gorgeous and the colours were bright and alive. The sky and the water and the characters and the background were all just a feast to the eye and made the show VERY pretty to look at. The sky being a main theme looks so great you wish the real sky would look like that once in a while. Kyoto Animation never lets a show have less than perfect animation quality. Sound: I dont really have much to say about this section since I was mostly just WATCHING the show than LISTENING to it. But the background songs really made the show enjoyable and sad to watch. Character: Other than Yukito I never got attached to any character and its understandable since these type of shows focus on a certain girl for a set number of episodes and this being only a 12 episode series (ep 13 a recap) you just dont get the chance to truly get used to the characters since their airtime is relative short. But other than that it was still sad to watch their tragedies/problems unfold Enjoyment: This was a great show to watch, I wish it wasnt so confusing otherwise I would've given it a higher score but Air is still a show I sometimes rewatch because of how pretty it is. Overall this is one show that does not disappoint and is definitely STUNNING to look at, it was because of Air that I started to watch more Visual Novel adaptations, specially if they were from the dynamic duo Key/KyoAni

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