Ranked #3310

Wind: A Breath of Heart

Wind is an example of a show that sounded great in theory and on paper, yet falied to deliver on almost every level. Based on the visual novel by menclave (also behind the masterful ef - A Tale of Memories) the story set-up is quite interesting. Inside a town, every person, bar our hero Makoto, has a special power, whether it be high jumping, calculator memories or sound cancellation, the power is unique to the person. A blimp constantly flies over the town and Makoto meets a girl he promised as a child to marry at school once again. He also meets another strange girl that seems not to talk much and be part of a some strange ritual. Alright alot of the story isn't unusual for a visual novel-based anime, yet has enough uniqueness to be interesting.

The problem is that it fails to deliver any potential set-up from the plot, and this maybe due to time constranits, being 12 episodes long, at 12 minutes each. The characters, although enteraining in their own way, and personify the typical arachetypes for a harem show, jump around too much, and suddenly changed their minds on life with very little convincing. The whole blimp and the mystery behind the town is hardly explained, and the concusion to the main problem and *spoiler* the sacrifice ritual to keep the town safe from harm* is quickly concluded with the aformentioned easy changing minds of characters, with no real conflict at all (Hell, even a fall off a cliff for two character's is totally lost due to constraints, and dodgy episode timing. *end spoiler*

That's another problem. Very rarely the episodes seem to have a link up to the previous or following episodes. It's almost like watching a sketch show of different aspects of different character's lives, without ever attempting to conclude anything. One time there at school, with problems about cooking lunch, then we're back in the past, to look at some character'sold life (and i mean really old), then we're at a beach as if nothing happened. There is no fluidity in the story and it feels like the show would have been alot better as just a feature length movie focusing on the main love traingle.

With all that complaining, the saving grace to the show is that it actually looks pretty nice. The backgrounds have alot of 3-D rendering that rival Gonzo works, and the character's look cute and colourful Characters move realistically and it at least made the time i wasted watching the show easy on the eye. The Sound was nothing brilliant and mostly forgetable, but did nothing to enhance the atmosphere, ending up falling into clichés of the genre. Voice acting was solid rendition's of the character's, who are actually an interesting bunch, especially the waitress sister's, and the white haired girl (sorry i can't remember there names after general loathing of the show I felt it best not to need to keep it in mind), that only falls flat because of a dodgy script and the worst time constraints I have seen for a show.

Overall, this show was a waste of my time (although it doesnt last long so luckily it wasn;t as much of a waste as 52 episodes of Kiba). The decent set-up was ruined by poor directorial choices and makes the series fall flat on its face. If anything the show does make me wan't to play the visual novel to see a group of character's not so mutilated by an animated version that doesnt even give the time of day to care about its creation. The only hope for the franchise is if SHAFT pick up a TV remake after the success of ef - A Tale of Memories and show this bunch how anime is done right. Don;t waste your time on this tripe, no matter how gorgeous loking the tripe may be. read more

Spoilers included, if it could be spoiled.

Its not a standard 25minute or so episode per series, its done in half standard format; 15minutes, 13 episodes.

[Spoiler Ahead]

Basicly, it starts off as a normal highschool romance love themed anime and you'd expect it to be another warm fuzziness emotion trip series. You'd expect me to say its not, but IT IS, and its the MOST generic kind, shit I could write off better stuff than them. Some guy meets up with some random girl through some even more random event and it turns out that they were childhood friends or something. Then all of a sudden FOR NO REASON everyone has special powers... I mean magics cool but, in this series you get some crap thats not even EXPLAINED, developed, or ever USED, its just there. DID They think that with some crappy ass "NICE TRY" random magical powers that their ratings would be higher? I think they paid the pizza man for suggestions. So this pansy ass guy, main character, does you know... stuff? and then attracts a harem of girls. Some failure plot inserted inbetween till it reaches a BAD ending, which i will flame soon enough, about how some emo chick is protecting the village with sacrifices of people and it jsut happens that the main character and his HOE's parents get the shit. So he stops her from the endless sacraficing cycle which has gone on for tens of hundreds of years with his HAREM attracting capabilities. Then everyone is happy... OR IS IT.. THEN WE HAVE THIS CRAP ASS ENDING, its a fucking recap of his relationship with his childhood friend which is supposively his girlfriend. for 11 minutes it was the same words and animations. THEN the last 30 seconds, you get a scene with the girl all alone in the room yelling at the main character. THEN IT ENDS. NO CONCLUSION, NO nothing, it just ends with her saying she wish she never met him again HOWEVER IN THE EPISODE BEFORE THEY WERE SO HAPPY. WTF happened there huh?

So I wasted like 13*15 minute of my crappy ass life to watch something even more crappy. BUT theres a OVA & special that I found because the ending was so unsatisfactory. 3 OVA episodes, 30 minutes each - SAME BAD STORY, 30% better animation quality, condensed into a bar, good thing is it didn't include the ending of the original. If your gonna watch this, just watch the OVA.

And the special is a epilouge of the original disregarding the ending? cause, the main characters dating his childhood friend, the one that hates him. Again. WTF?

[ BREAK DOWN ]

Story : i'll give a 4 for being able to cookie cut one out. -1 for the ending.

Animation : Wasn't bad, your standard animation at the time.

Sound : Nothing that grabbed my attention, I could be biased.

Characters : Development either happened without me knowing or didn't happen at all.

Enjoyment : Maybe im masochistic, this rage is the only thing enjoyable.

Overall : Shit Sux

Don't touch this unless you WANT to be ENRAGED, MC Hammer wouldn't.
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