Air: 1000th Summer (Jan 6, 2005 – Mar 31, 2005) 
Director: Tatsuya Ishihara
Drama, Fantasy, Romance, 
Key Words: Moe, Angels, Wishes, Meta-fiction, 
Studio: Kyoto Animation Licensed American Publisher: Funimation

Episodes: 13

My Thoughts:The story line is rather cute and sad, part of the trinity of Key Animation. I am really sad that this show is so short. They don’t seem to take enough time to flesh out the story lines or the characters. There are way too many girls that are really strange and you never really get much story line about them. The only girl you get to know is Misuzu but she doesn’t have much personality except for the whole girl in the sky thing.

They also never talk about the girl in the sky much even if she was supposed to be the main focus or even give us an answer about her. The answer we do get comes too late in the story line and it leaves more questions than answers. It’s mostly about what strange effect happens when someone finds one of her feathers but even then I don’t quite understand it. Are the feathers some sort of wish maker and if so, then why does it always end up in sadness?

The ark with Minagi Tohno feels very out-of-place in a sense and as though it was rushed. There really was no backbone to the story and the ending, though it made me cry seemed rather out-of-place.
All in all, this story is really slow and hard to keep watching; sometimes almost dull in some parts.
The animation is rather pretty, bright and colorful. Unfortunately, some of the characters are actually lacking a bit and I’m not really happy that Misuzu’s mom looks more like an older sister instead. All the artwork is pretty much fan based. Potato the dog doesn’t even really look like a dog too which threw me off. The beginning has a lot of aspects of a beginning for a visual Game rather than an actual anime so it means that it looks good and helps set the mood of the show.

The music is beautiful, both the beginning and ending made me want to find the actual music. The background music is sometimes not very loud and hard to hear, mostly consisting of silence or sweet gentle feelings. The montages that help make time pass seem to be used way to often with the same sappy song. The voice actors are good but some don’t seem good enough. I have to say, I like the English voice actors better than the Japanese, probably just because I’m more used to English voices.

I like this but it is rather slow and I don’t think I will be watching the whole show at once again. I may watch one or two of my favorite episodes though.

Rating:
Good, It’s not the best out there but it’s worth watching at least once. I wouldn’t buy it off hand.

Link to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_(visual_novel) 

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