Welp...this is going to be a controversial review. Yet, I feel I have to write it. I heard that Koi Kaze was a very beautiful and moving romance, so I put it on my watch list. I just finished "His and Her Circumstances", and I loved that one so much I wanted to start a new romance anime. Koi Kaze isn't exactly what I went in expecting.
Can a talented artist make any foul subject beautiful? That's one of the things Charles Baudelaire experimented with in Flowers of Evil. Within that collection, there is a poem called "Une Charogne" or "The carcass". The poem was called indecent and grotesque upon release because it vividly describes a rotting female corpse and describes the corpse in sexual terms. The speaker isn't at all repulsed because he accepts that death comes for us all. Even the most beautiful women will one day resemble the horrible corpse.
Koi Kaze is the writer of Baccano and the director of Baccano attempting to tell a beautiful romance between a 30 year old man and his 15 year old sister. Not step sister mind you. I mean full on blood relative. There is a LOT of sister fetish stuff in anime, but it's always played as a joke. They know it's a gross fetish and don't want to be accused of seriously condoning it. It's the stuff of echii and hentai where one can indulge in their most depraved and secret fetishes. Koi Kaze is a dead serious romance for adults. The series doesn't say our young lovers are correct, but it doesn't say they're wrong. The series wants you to see the relationship as beautiful, but it's up to the audience to decide.
I've decided...and I don't like it. I watched a series where a guy has sex with a robot girl and I was fine with it. She's full artificial intelligence and they're in a consenting relationship. They won't produce children, but not everyone needs to have kids. I watched an anime where the guy ends up with the girl who murdered his family. I thought it was a tragic, yet beautiful and moving romance. I'm pretty liberal with my anime romances. I have to put my foot down on Koi Kaze though.
It turns out that deep within the dark recesses of my soul, there lives an angry and self righteous eugenicist. I call him Fritz! Koi Kaze manages to bring Fritz to the surface. He wants to kill these 2 immediately to protect the gene pool. He also wants to use government policing to reduce the global fertility rate and genetic engineering to increase human IQ. Fritz is an asshole and I don't condone his opinions. Thanks to Koi Kaze though, I've had to confront my own shadow. I now know that he lives within me and I'll never be truly rid of him. Thanks Koi Kaze!
The first episode starts with our male hero Koshiro meeting the high school first year Nanoka on a subway. Both of them have recently been dumped and can each sense the other's loneliness. Nanoka invites Koshiro to a theme park and he accepts. They share a romantic Ferris Wheel ride together and you already know these 2 are going to bang soon. At this point it's just pedophilia, but we find out they're siblings at the very end of the first episode. What follows is a carefully written and wonderfully presented romance...that makes me want to vomit and summons Fritz from the dark depths where I keep him repressed.
The art is by the same studio that did the first Kino's Journey, which I love. I'm not a big fan of the character art though because everyone has a white mouth instead of a red one during lip flaps. It's a minor detail, but I hate it! The music is another strength of the series. Of course, it could be playing the most angelic music in the world and I would still hate this show.
Overall, I would suggest this anime only to those who can be VERY open minded. There is talent and effort here. However, I was too repulsed to get a lot of personal enjoyment out of it.
