Akamitsu's Profile

[right]I finished Koi Kaze today on Jul. 13, '11, finished in about two days. I'm not exactly sure how I'd go about talking about this particular show. Overall I gave it a 6 / 10 (fine). Every single thing about this show scored a 5 / 10 (average)with me, except for the story. I've seen legitimate, non-Rx rated anime about lustful romance between complete strangers, classmates, and occasionally cousins. But I don't quite remember the last time, or at all, if I've seen a romance anime between siblings like this. The story felt to me like a 7 / 10 (good). I gave it that because it felt new to me, so I wouldn't know about it being cliche or repetitive.

Like mentioned before, everything but the story scored a 5 / 10 for me. The animation, artwork, backgrounds, character designs, voice acting, sound effects and music. I know it being a show from the first half of 2004 adapted from a manga with only 35 chapters wouldn't merit much. But even in 2004 standards, it's still just average. At times the artwork would score a 4 / 10 (bad), just gets awkward. And the OP & ED themes aren't much to look forward to. Actually I'm glad the Flash stream I was watching this on cut them out for most episodes.

So the story starts off with a 27-year-old man who was just dumped by his girlfriend of who knows how long, because she fell in love with someone else. Koshiro brushes it off like nothing even happened. Later in the same episode, he finds out that his 15-year-old sister is going to be moving in with him and his father because their house is closer to her new school. But the thing is, he accidentally met her on a train, then later at an amusement park, not knowing that they're both siblings. While they're riding a ferris wheel some emotions fly around, and I'm pretty sure Koshiro fell in love with Nanoka at that point. But they didn't find out they were siblings until after they left the park. So that's where it all starts.

The entire show bounces around, they have fights, dates, make-ups, sudden confessions and a whole bunch of other crap. Naturally, the feelings they develop and have for each other don't climax until the last couple episodes. By that point, I had been surprised at how well they kept secret their relationship from other people. In fact, only one person caught on and found out about it. Yeah she tried to stop it all, but to no avail, she wound up dealing with it. Not even their parents found out which surprised me the most.

The show did though have some meager attempts at comedy... however the poorly done animation and voice acting by some of the supporting characters pretty much nulled it out. Although there is one thing that I can give this show credit for besides the story. The realism. What it says, is that yes, incest is destructive to the families and people involved. It's a life-destroyer for sure, taboo and looked down upon by society as a whole. So if you happen to pork your sister or something, keep it a secret, it's not a problem if no one finds out. Like in this show, no one important found out.

This isn't a particularly mind-blowing anime. So the only circumstance I that I would recommend this to a friend or stranger is if they're looking for something different, or looking for a sibling romance/incest anime or something. It's not typical but it's not amazing. If this show had been done some years later, with better animation, voice acting and everything, then it would have scored higher with me.
But the last thing I liked about this show, was how smoothly it went. I couldn't really find a good reason to put it down for something else. And I found myself drawn into watching the next episode pretty easily. So in an almost literal sense, it was smooth sailing from start to finish. I didn't laugh or cry once during the entire 13-episode streak. It's so easy to watch you won't even notice. [/spoiler][/spoiler][/spoiler]