Overall, Aokana is mediocre. It definitely has flaws and it doesn't excel at anything, but there are some things to enjoy here too. Far and away the strongest aspect of the show is its invention of and significant focus on an entirely new sport, flying circus, which looks like it would be a blast to play and is fairly creative and well thought out as a whole. They spend a ton of time on it and they go over tactics and strategies and they do a good job keeping the viewer in the loop as to why things are occurring. The rules, for the most part, are clear, but there are definitely a few aspects of flying circus that require a viewer to suspend their disbelief. They never went down this road because it's simply not that kind of anime, but in a real life setting flying circus would be incredibly dangerous and would have a lot of potential for serious injury, and that's to say nothing of the many ways to skirt some of the less than defined rules and limitations or to outright cheat.
As an example, since the game is more or less a mid air, high speed game of tag with shoes that essentially function as a jet pack, there is a physical component to it. You have to tag the other person's back in order to score a point, and you're doing so at very, very high speeds. What is there to prevent a player from (accidentally or intentionally) "tagging" another player in the face as opposed to the back? What happens if your jet-pack shoes fail, fall off or your opponent knocks them off? What happens if you're moving so quickly and you crash into your opponent or one of the mid-air buoys featured in the game that you break your hand or wrist? What if you full on crash head first into one of the buoys going 100 miles per hour? Other than vaguely mentioning that the shoes have some built in safety measures, the anime simply isn't willing to go down this rabbit hole and the game is represented as extremely safe and recreational, which feels less than realistic.
While the main character is intended to be free-spirited, very positive and a total "glass half full" kind of person, English language voice actress Jill Harris goes way too far with this and more often than not sounds not only fake but simply extremely hyper. Also one of my biggest personal pet peeves- having a person use a fake accent to play a character from a country or region they're clearly not from- is featured in this anime with Alexis Tipton, who is from Texas, attempting to sell us that she's from the UK. Anyone over the age of 12 or just anyone who has ever actually been to the UK should be able to tell you immediately that she's not. Is it out of budget to hire an actual British person for this role or must Funimation continue to give every single role to the five men and five women they hire for anything and everything?
Other tropes are ultra present as well, such as the female friend who wants to be more than friends with her also female best friend, the teacher/mentor character who happens to have been one of the best in the world at the game/sport you're interested in and of course the ultra convenient amnesia/we used to know each other as children but we both forgot!
Being a 2016 anime the visuals are what you'd expect- smooth, clean, colorful. Everything visually is up to present day standards and the colored streaks the flying circus players leave in the sky in their wake are pretty.
The story as a whole is rather light and bare-bones, but it's certainly an easy, inoffensive watch even if sometimes it maybe isn't the most exciting thing in the world. More or less the whole anime is about a new girl getting into flying circus, making friends with her teammates and improving at the game. There's nothing heavy or dark here and the anime shoves it down your throat at the end that you should not take games, or life, too seriously and you should just have fun. I don't know that I entirely agree with that message, but I can at least appreciate it. The ending as a whole feels rather rushed and several key matches in the final flying circus tournament are obnoxiously played off screen, but at this point, beyond playing out the tournament, the plot doesn't really have anywhere else to go.
At the end of the day, if you're in the mood for a light sports anime Aokana, with its very quick 12 episode run time and overall inoffensive nature, should suffice. Beyond that there's nothing overly memorable here and this is certainly not among the top anime of its release year, nevermind the decade or anything crazy like that. Give it a watch if you're specifically craving its niche or pass on it if you're not. It's not good enough to force yourself to watch it if you're not specifically in the mood for it.
OBJECTIVE RATING- 6-6.75
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 6.25-6.5
