Air

Oh boy, I'm not gonna be popular after this, meethinks. I saw the japanese version, btw.

Well, I think you can immediately tell what I thought about this and downvoted me respectively. Cool, whatevs. But I really did not like this series...mostly. Haven't seen anything else from this series, I believe it's based on some visual novels or whatever. I don't know, but these 13 episodes were ulitmately not a good experience by themselves at least.

There is technically an overall story to all of this. It's a shame it's far too vague and pointlessly cionfusing in an attempt to be deep. I mostly get what they ... were going for but it just didn't work. It was just boring and with some painfully obvious sky, above the clouds, birds etc. metaphors all about the same general idea.

The characters are a different story. Normally I complain in a series that the secondary characters aren't used enough. This series has the opposite problem. Those 3 other girls that aren't Misuzu I honestly can't stand. It is the perfect mix of the most generic and boring comedy from them, followed by some poorly written tragedy. The 2 "sisters" story is honestly one of the best examples ever of making tragic events combined with magic and suicide symbolism...and being boring. It's just dialogue not said by any human being and I can't stand it. I just feel somewhat depressed watching it, yet at the same time bored. And it really feels like it's trying way too hard to be deep and annoys me. So by episode 6, I was hating this series (and while previous episodes were better, they weren't that much better). And I came into this series expecting it to at least be good, so I was truly dissappointed.

And then those characters were basically never seen again, focused on characters that mattered and it got better real quick. I was actually enjoying it after that. Flashback episodes with character names I can't remember had characters that were fun and kinda funny and enjoyable to be around and not depressionly boring. My god, that was fun. They have an adventure and find her mother. I liked those characters for what they were. It wasn't like amazing but I liked it, and I do admit I like any sudden increase of action in a series that at first has none. The ending of that story was silly but ok.

And then we spend the rest of the series focusing on Misuzu and her mother. Again, some weirdness, but the sad parts work. I can see why her mother acted as she did and her struggle with her relationship with Misuzu felt genuinely touching. Not to mention the twists, while kinda dumb, made you sad but not bored this time. You wanted to see both characters are ok, which is always important, I think especially for a series like this. I was not exactly in tears but it was really sad, a good story, I enjoyed it.

And of course the big final episode is a recap...wait what? Really? Couldn't let the show end on a high note I guess or it was used to advertise some sequel OVA or I don't know. The point is that I hated the first half but kinda liked the 2nd half for the most part.

The art was ok. I don't know, the faces I didn't exactly like but...the art was ok. It was too bright at times but it still looked decent. Sound was mostly ok, although the voice acting could get annoying for those secondary characters I don't like. But that's made up by the performances of Aya Hisakawa and the late Tomoko Kawakami. Misuzu's aunt is the best character and the voice acting helped...or maybe vice versa. But I did buy from her voice the drama of those last few episodes. Misuzu herself was also good, a role that could have been annoying is made genuinely sweet yet tragic. Most of the rest are just ok, not worth mentioning at all really. Same with the music, but that being said, I really like the OP. Good stuff.

Yeah, maybe this series isn't one made for me. But one of my favorite series is the fairly depressing Welcome to the NHK!, which was written infinitely better and got how to make characters act and talk like real people more than almost any fiction I've ever seen. This show, rarely got remotely close sadly. And I know a decent amount of people who agree so at least I know I'm not alone. It isn't an awful series if you can get past episode 6, and in fact if you ignore episodes 2-6 I would likely call it a good series. But those episodes were awful, could not enjoy it at all, and the rest of the series was unable to make me fully forgive that. And I've kinda not interested in other series that I at least assume are similar anymore.

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 Kinder­garden ... because 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.

Why is this anime rated a 4 by me? Did it have an interesting plot? Did it even have a plot to begin with? Air is an anime that has recieved much praise from many people and I just have to say; it must be me who is in the wrong in thinking this anime is below mediocre, it must be me right?

When I first started watching Air I had rather high expectations and you know what? They were shattered right off the bat. The first episode did not deliver the way I had thought it would, the only thing it delievered was good animation ... and art yet characters that were so unbearable that if it hadn't been for all that praise by so many people, I'd dropped the anime after the first episode. In retrospective I should have.

I fundamentally like anime, I like almost all genres when they are executed well with some redeeming points as a good storyboard (or even a storyboard at all), good screenplay and/or good characters and character development. But you see, when an anime fail in delivering any of these the way you expected them to be delivered you start to wonder. I can agree that some of the issues this anime address are interesting, or would have been if the two main characters hadn't been such drags. Seriously where did they find the two main characters? I am absolutely certain there must be some factory that produces mediocre bland characters that you can just copy and paste into your story-lacking anime. In a word you can describe this anime as boring.

Many people like this anime though, many see it as one of the best ever made, many find deep meanings and important themes and issues being addressed in a wonderfully executed manner, but you know what; you're wrong.

In a short summary, Air tries to do too much in it's limited time and flops. Air forces a complex plot on the viewer that doesn't fit well, which leads to its downfall.

Air's story starts out pretty simple, but soon takes some emotional turns with characters we've barely met. The logical choice would be for our MC to leave or ignore these girls who need help, but he becomes ever so close into figuring out his mother's tale. 1 cour was not enough to fill even 1 route from the VN and in turn, leaves the anime viewer ... confused as to what's happening. 3/10

The art and sound are excellent for the time, and still hold up today. The animation would still be considered nice to look at now, and the music is very emotional and works in favor of the writers wishes. 7/10 art and 6/10 sound.

The characters aren't anything amazing. Right at the start, we meet almost an entire harem for our MC, each with stereotypical traits and problems to be solved. This creates a predictable sense I don't like to have while watching a show for the first time. MC on the other hand is interesting and fun to watch; if only he found his way into a better plot. 4/10

I did not enjoy this as much as similar pieces (Kanon 2006 and Clannad). It was simply a bunch of sentimentality for characters that haven't been fully developed. The anime was boring after a while and confusing at that. 2/10 for enjoyment.

Overall, this is an average anime for our time. It did not excel enough to stand out, and is left in the dust by better SoL drama romances that came out after it. Not bad, but not worth the watch. The VN is a better option here if you want to enjoy the story to its fullest. 4.4/10

i personally thought this anime was horible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
it had no plot....
no storyline....
just a bunch of people who could draw good :P

this always happens too...
everytime the apperance looks good doesnt mean the story is good
i fell for that trick many times and it makes me mad !!!!!!!! :(

but i really liked the art and i cant lie there :P
...
but if ur into like really, really deep emotional stuff then you'll like it......
bt if you just like a story with a good storyline and good characters and alot of action with adventure and maybe a little romance then i dont think you'll like this anime !!!!!!!

I've never wrote a review before but after watching Air i felt like warning those who haven't.
Mind you, i'm not a hater of this genre. On the contrary i loved Clannad , Canon etc. So it's not like i'm biased against it or something.

Concerning the Story and the Characters

For me story and characters are 95% of an anime. If those are great then the anime is a certain winner. If those suck, no matter how great the art or the sound the anime is gonna suck too.
Here we have incoherent story-telling, with the story itself being quite confusing. Several points of the ... plot are left unexplained or the explanations come too late. I mean i found myself watching whole episodes wondering wtf is going on, only to find out at the end a (usually) poor and not very satisfying explanation.
As for the characters there really isn't much to say.Apart from the fact that the best and most interesting one gets transformed to a crow(!) there are also many other problems like the main heroine , Misuzu, being retarded beyond any redemption or the side heroines not having enough development. This led to another problem as well. Watching such uninteresting characters i couldn't feel any sympathy for them. I didn't really care for their problems which made the dramatic aspects of this anime seem way too forced to a point of being laughable.

Concerning the Art and Sound

The art was ok in general. Nothing to complain about but nothing impressive either. The sound was probably the best part. I liked the songs and the voice acting was ok.

Enjoyment - Overall

While the art and sound are fair, the story and characters are POOR. I started with great expectations only to be horribly disappointed. I didn't drop it just because i was curious whether something unexpectedly great would happen in the end, something that would justify all those great reviews with 9s and 10s. Unfortunately nothing happened. It was pure bad.
I'd certainly recommend to avoid it.

To be completely honest, I was really into the show up until the last few episodes. The show starts off with a lot of potential and intoduces several characters that develop the story in a positive way; however, this was short lived. The story, in my opinion, fills you with hope and leaves you wishing for this wonderful ending, and then crushes your soul in a matter of two episodes. If you do not want to feel as though you just wasted your time by breaking your heart hoping for a good ending, then do not watch this show.

If u're a fan of these mini series, what i might write here might not be please you and the fact is that for me, the story plot kinda messed up and the characters are not really that memorable and have a certain personality that distinguished them.

Story : 5/10
- to be honest, i understand the plot of the stories is a bout a girl named Misuzu who happened to be the incarnation of Kanna ( the winged maiden) that had been cursed to somehow have a sad life full of pain and this guy name Yukito who is the descendant of Ryuuya and Uhara was ... kinda destined to make her happy, ( either by giving her a happy memories or break the curse). But somehow in the end, Yukito decide to leave and only left her a doll that kinda have some sort of power and stuff that will become Misuzu companion since both them can't be close together or both of them will die. The point is that, I'm not sure where this storyline is going, YES we do learned the history about Kanna and how Misuzu is the incarnation that will redo the curse all over again. Not sure what the solution of the anime, and the storyline is pretty much messed up. I started to skip each second on each episode 10 to 12. by far, my favorite episode is 8 to 9, that tells the story about ryuuya,uhara and kanna back then.

Art : 5/10
- the art is moderate, although there is no certain elemnts on each characters that reminds me and have an impact on me. But overall it is nicely done, since it's kyoto animation afterall.

Sound : 5/10
- I don't really enjoy the OP and ED .

Character : 4/10
- the characters have so much slacks. No offence but the main hero and heroine really doesnt have a special personality that attracts me to them except for Ryuuya and Uhara. They have this sparkles in their character that makes me attracted to them. Meanwhile, Kanna and Misuzu are both childlike. If it's Michiru then it's fine since she is still a child but somehow I just had this thing for characters who can't stand up for themselves, it bores me to death since I like independent and strong characters.

Enjoyment : 4/10
- I haven't reach the climax of this anime yet, infact i dont even know which part is the climax. I still need more.

Overall : 4/10
- I'm not satisfied yet. The fact that saves this anime for me is episodes 8 and 9 itself. It perfectly tells the history behind the curse. But for tohno arc and kano arc is not related at all. It just Misuzu pity them and decide to give them help with the feather, heck i dont even know . Anyway, this is just based on my views, depends and other viewers on how they feel when they watched. This is merely my personal opinion.

So this anime was by the same creators as one of my absolute favorites, Clannad, but somehow it just didn't do it for me. I don't want to spoil anything bu the ending of this anime really makes you feel dreadful- terrible and too sad. I wasn't too fond of ANY of the characters, the story was bland and a tad bit confusing. the art was beautiful as all their work is! That's all I have to say about this one really. I would recommend the sub if you really wanted to watch it. I love Vic Micnogna but his voice in this one was ... very unfitting for the main character. I would not suggest this anime for anyone since I did not enjoy it at all really. That is purely my opinion.

Rule: I start at 5, and add or take away points based on anything that stood out. I have listed below.
+1 Beautiful Visual Art (The use of lighting, camra angles, and sunsets is the bomb.)
-1 Poor Story Arc (It goes on and on without a clear or meaningful resolve).
-1 Characters Dialogues (What do the Dilly Dallians do all day? They don't do anything that is the sad fate of the people of Dilly Dally).
+1 Music (I haven't seen this in years and I still remember the tune that plays when Yukito first sees Misuzu.

This is kind of a dating sim turned into an anime, but ... the dialogues are not enjoyable.
The art style and music is where the effort went.
I think the characters had weird personalities. Lacking in entertaining qualities.
I think the draw to it is the art and music. The writing could be better. The romance is meh, and the arc is unfulfilling.