Anime Review: Air

Review Air written by warpshadow Rating excellent

When most people think of dating sim anime their minds are filled with images of vapid girls who are all obsessed with the same boring guy. While this picture is accurate a good deal of the time there are shows that manage to do better than that. Air is one of them.

Yukito is a traveler who makes a living performing magic tricks with a puppet. One day he travels a backwater town and starving meets a girl. Her name is Misuzu and she decides to take him in. Misuzu's mother agrees to let him stay if he will look after Misuzu. While looking around the town he meets two other girls Kano and Minagi. Yukito has a purpose beyond simply traveling, he is trying to find a girl with wings. Could the thing he is looking be found among the residents of this town?

Air is perhaps the best anime show based off of a video game that I have ever seen. Almost all of the clichés attached to dating sim shows are done away with leaving for rich and original story. I don't want to give away any spoilers but I can tell you that this is not a story about cute girls swarming all over Yukito. While most shows of this type have five or more girls to share time for character development Air only has four girls and their respective foils so there is more time to flesh out each of them. The animation is not only well done technically the cinematography is also very good. Overall Air is a wonderful show and one that I recommend watching.