Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Hooray, time for another review from Whim! As you have probably guessed from the thread title, I’ll be telling you about an anime named Air. Well, I’m going to try to tell you about it, but really, do you have any idea how hard it is to write a review for people that haven’t seen a series without giving away spoilers? Ugh, it’s so much easier when it’s a second season or something that you can assume your readers will be familiar with… Right, review. I promise this one will be shorter. Also, I will try for some sort of comprehensible format this time: summary->animation->music->story->conclusion; so go ahead and skip to the end if you want to bypass all that. Oh, but still no scores; got to make that brain of yours work a bit, eh?

Okay, on the surface Air is an obscenely cute vaguely harem-like series with a loli-con bent. (In non-anime speak that means it is very cute, has one guy and a lot of girls, all or most of the latter being underage.) It starts out as your typical somewhat older guy meets questionably young girl, then her hot mom, then her also questionably young schoolmates, then their hot caretakers, and then some sort of dog…thing. Well, the guy (Yukito) is actually this wandering street performer with exactly enough magical power to make a six inch tall puppet move (and no, there is no sexual undertone involved). Oh, and the girls may or may not be somehow related to this lost sky girl the guy’s mother sent him out to find as she died. The whole thing takes place in this rural town on the coast in modern day Japan. For some reason, it’s almost always sunset and pretty. Anyway, I call it a harem because it is a single guy surrounded by all of these beautiful young girls and their caretakers, but the girls aren’t out to have sex with Yukito and he is not angsty about how hard it is to not have sex with them. In fact, they all want to be friends like it’s going out of style. Ha ha, in your face most modern harem anime series. Unless you find cuteness itself to be sexy, the ecchi factor of this show is almost nonexistent. And there go half the people who were interested.

Air is one of the prettiest anime series that I’ve seen in a while. The art style is a little strange with the faces on all of the female characters; if you thought eyes couldn’t get any bigger in anime you are wrong; but the character design is otherwise solid if a little typical . The backgrounds are well designed with a nice sense of continuity throughout the town (the buildings always face the right direction and buildings don’t change location from scene to scene or episode to episode). Air does a great job portraying the rustic country coastal town we typically only see in Miyazaki films, albeit without the overwhelming sense of nostalgia. While there’s nothing terribly unique in the overall art style and application, Air is two things: cute and detailed. Air is so cute you just want to pinch its cheeks and hug it and fawn over it until you realize that the story if so much more mature than that and then you have to apologize for treating it like a five year old; then it starts playing with a stuffed dinosaur and you can’t bring yourself to point out how cute it is. Shut up, that sentence wanted to run on. The attention to details, particularly in the way character design relates to the story, is one of the things that makes this series worth watching twice. There’s a richness to the art and character design that really makes the series vivid. Given the title, you can also expect some really dramatic shots of the sky, so if you get vertigo easily you may want to watch this from behind a railing or something.

As you’ve probably guessed from my review of the Paris chapter of Nodame Cantabile, music is a really key element for how I evaluate an anime series. For me, the soundtrack can make a great series terrible or make a terrible series pretty good. Noir, for example, would have been a mediocre series save for the best soundtrack to come out for a couple year span there (well, that and the single best kill I’ve ever seen in an anime ever). Anyway, Air has a pretty good soundtrack. The opening and closing themes are good enough to make it bearable to watch them every episode; while the in-episode music is masterfully used in relation to the story. The only complaint I would have would be that some of the music gets a little repetitive (a complaint I’ll come back to later). Overall, the music does what it’s supposed to, but isn’t something you’ll catch me humming to on my Ipod later on.

Alright, now on to what really makes this series: the story. While Air isn’t earth-shattering deep or revolutionary, it is very very good. The characters are deep, the episodes are varied and complex, and the path the series takes is not easily predictable. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but just as this series has some really funny moments, you’ll need a box of tissues and a comforting shoulder/plushie at least once while watching it. For a series about the 1000th summer, the feel is both epic and homey and it works well. Unfortunately, Air loses a couple points because it gets a little repetitive at times and the pacing for the story suffers a little for it (not much given that the story is never in any particularly rush to begin with); however, the writing is solid enough to cover for it and there’s even a few points where the series repeats itself in a fresh way.

So, I guess we’ve reached the conclusion of this review all too soon. See, I actually think rather highly of Air and will readily recommend it to just about anyone. It’s solid from top to bottom, from story to music to animation. Air gets bonus points for being pretty, cute, and making me cry; kind of reminds me of an ex-girlfriend when I put it that way. If you’re looking for a solid story and something you can relax and enjoy on a rainy with a hot cup of tea or cocoa, you’re really going to enjoy this. There are some mature and complex themes, so preview this series if you’re considering watching it with children. If you’re looking for a boob-tastic harem love/sex comedy, I don’t know how you even came across this anime.

~Whim

PS – I watched this series as a fansub from Kyo; it is now available on DVD. There’s also a movie that is actually just a condensed version of the series and I don’t recommend it.
PS2 – There’s an OVA covering the 1st summer that doesn’t actually cover any new story, but does deepen the experience a bit while flushing out some of the characters and is worth looking up. Not worth writing a review though.
PS3 – Not enough venom in this review for you? Well, just wait for the next one when I review a series that needs to be roughed up in a dark alley for its mistreatment of underage girls.