So I watched Air the anime after putting it on hold since grade school + ending discussion

Ah, Key. A visual novel studio known for their tear-jerking drama and weird facial anatomy. Creators of iconic visual novels like Kanon, Clannad, and Little Busters! Among them is a visual novel with iconic concept and characters… POTATO! *cough* Sorry, I meant Air.

I had this one friend in grade school who was obsessed with Air for a long while. She would stand in front of her TV for 24 minutes to record the episodes with her phone, and show us episodes. (Mind you, this was 2009) so before I even knew what Air was about, I knew about the ending. The first scene from this anime I saw was the one from episode 11. So, I went in knowing what I was in for. And I still felt the kick. Oof that ending.

Air is the result of trying to chug 40 hours’ worth of content into a 12 episode anime. Kano and Minagi’s routes are so rushed that even with how dramatic the scenes were, I didn’t really feel much for them aside from the usual ‘oh good they got good ends’ kind of deal. However, I’d say it’s different for Misuzu. With what little time it had, the anime dumped all that screen time to get Misuzu’s arc to be good. I don’t know about other people, but I felt it is good.

For some reason, I felt like I’ve already completed watching Air before I even started watching it. That stuff about the sky, carrying our wishes up, etc, etc, it’s something I see in a lot of anime before this. If I watched it when I was in grade school, I would have liked the series a lot more. It would have been something new and tear-jerking and all, but at this point I’ve seen some visual novel adaptations (OreTsuba, Island, Norn9) so I see the flaws that anime adaptations of visual novels usually fall into, and that reduced the enjoyment I had with Air.

One thing I really liked in Air is Yukito, the protagonist. Yeah, some visual novel adaptations had really bad or bland MC (Makoto from School Days is one, I’d say Setsuna from Island is as well, and also maybe Takuma from H2O). However, I find Yukito likeable. He’s mature, and he seems to always be helping the girls with their struggles even though he has the look of someone who cannot give a damn. I won’t spoil much but man, the friggin dedication he has for Misuzu is absolutely impressive. It’s almost as if he gave his life in exchange for her happiness.

Although the facial anatomies are a bit weird, the animation was really fluid (sasuga KyoAni). The way the characters’ hair flows, the clothes, the ocean, etc everything looked really smooth and pretty. The only issue I have is Ryuya’s friggin hair. Gosh, I knew it was common in that era but it bugged me so much. Those bangs.

The soundtrack seemed to come straight from the visual novel, so some of it seemed pretty old-fashioned and maybe not the best for the mood. One track that stood out was Natsukage, which is a beautiful song that I’d love to learn how to play. The other was Aozora, the insert song in episode 12. Both were sung by Lia, and you know Lia, her voice is that of an angel’s. It pulls heartstrings. I feel this squeeze when I listened to Aozora for the first time during episode 12. 10/10.

I watched episode 1-3 on Japanese dub, and watched the rest on Thai dub because it was the only legal version available lol. The thing that bugged me throughout the series was how both every male character was voiced by the same person (Yukito/Ryuya/Sora is okay, but even Misuzu’s dad?). Also, every heroine (Kano/Minagi/Misuzu) sounds like they are voiced by one person. Moreover, I think that Haruka, Kano’s sister, Kanna, and Uraha are also voiced by her. Heck, I think even Potato is voiced by her as well. I hear this person’s dub a lot as a kid and I never noticed until now. Basically this series’ dub sounds like the entirety was voiced by two people. It probably was. However, the dialogue was translated extremely well, so I won’t complain much.

Overall, I think Air was a good anime. A lot of things detracted from the enjoyment; the fact that I’m getting old, the dub, the soundtrack that sounded like it came straight from the VN, and the facial anatomy. Still, for an attempt to squish 40 hours into 5, it was good and managed to accomplish what it set out to do (given that it was meant to give an overview of Air and adapt its final ending).

I’m really happy I got to see the conclusion to one of my childhood anime after all this time. It was bittersweet, true, but it was enjoyable.

Now for the spoiler section!

I see a lot of analysis of the ending. I haven’t read the VN so I’ll just discuss what I picked up from the Thai dub.

There were two curses placed on Kanna. One was from her mother (curses from those who fell to her powers during the war) and the other was from the monks (the red chains). Those who are close to her will be affected by the curse as well, so Ryuya died as a result while Uraha already has immunity to it and lived on to give birth to their descendants. (Given how similar they look, I’d say Yukito is his reincarnation. There’s a lot of beliefs where you are reincarnated as your descendants).

Yukito’s mother passed on their ‘mission’ (search for the girl in the sky) to him, which led to Yukito meeting Misuzu. Misuzu’s inability to make friends or be close to anyone is probably a manifestation of the curse, or a protection that somehow came about from multiple reincarnations of suffering to push other people away.

I’m not really sure if Yukito’s presence as her new friend triggered the curse or it was some other thing, but I think it’s just that the more she grows, the more Kanna’s soul as a winged being flowed into her and broke her body slowly.

After leaving Misuzu, I think Yukito realized that he had to stay by her side. We could see that Yukito was also affected a little bit by Kanna’s curse, and if I’m not mistaken he recalled bits and pieces of what happened in the past by being close to Misuzu. However, I think after viewing the events of Summer (the Kanna arc) he somehow borrowed some magic from his predecessors and transformed himself into a crow, then sent his crow self (Sora) back in time. I can see this as a POV change in the visual novel, but in the anime it was just weird. Sora then set the events so that Misuzu and Haruka can be close together (the dinosaur doll) and Misuzu can find happiness with the person who’s been by her side all these times. Resuming off the previous timeline, Yukito tells Misuzu to fight for her goal. Misuzu’s goal is to be close to her mother and do things she always wanted to do, but I think Yukito also means her goal as Kanna’s last reincarnation. Sora could do what Yukito couldn’t do, which was being close to Misuzu all the time with zero effects from the curse. (Guess it was because he’s a crow, not a human.) Since Sora was with her as a friend from the very beginning, which means that Yukito was always with her, that managed to snap the curses that were starting to wear off anyway. Wait, no, I think it was Yukito/Sora that set the stage for the curse to be broken, but it was Haruko’s decision to be Misuzu’s mother that really lifted the curse. Maybe.

At the end, we see the two kids at the beach that Misuzu met way back in episode 1. The timeline gets a bit messy here. I think it’s a timeline overlap, where two people with the same souls from multiple timeline meet at the same place because of some dimensional shenanigan. (They even amplify this by giving the episode 1 preview after episode 12. Air is the only anime I’ve ever seen to do that as a post-credit, making a loop lol) Anyway, the boy said something like ‘they will suffer but we will have a new beginning’. I guess the only explanation is that the monk’s curse finally wears off after (almost) a millennia (the OP sequence during Summer says the 100th summer, while during AIR it’s the 1000th summer if I’m not mistaken). Kanna and Ryuya are in their last reincarnation, finally living long, happy lives free of the curse because it was lifted by Yukito and Misuzu in the past. Judging from the fact that the boy said something like ‘you may not remember but I do’ and that he refers to Yukito as ‘they’, I think he remembers everything from their many past lives. Hey, so winged people carry the memory of the planet and Ryuya’s bloodline carry memory of their past lives. That’s cool.

What really was the ‘ohhhh’ moment was when they revealed where the logo came from (and even placed it in the ending song sequence). It felt like that time when FFXV’s true logo was showed after you completed the game. It was a nice touch. Considering I spent more than 10 years not knowing where the logo actually came from. Ha.

Well, that was it for Air. I won’t play the visual novel just to get an explanation because I think the visual novel people are as confused as I am (and I don’t have the time or energy to). The anime felt complete already, and I’m glad I decided to come back and finish it.