I had the AIR movie sitting around for probably a year before I finally
convinced myself to watch it. The reason it took so long is that honestly, I'm in love with the TV series and was worried about how this one would stand up next to it. ...About that.
First off, I would just like to say that you should not go into the AIR movie expecting to get the exact same story as the TV series in a pared
down version. But you also shouldn't go in expecting it to be so different
that we actually get something happy for once. Because really, as far as
AIR is concerned, fuck happy.
Air Movie Anime Review
Anyway, in the movie, we once again get Yukito Kunisaki coming to a small
town with his little dancing puppet and meeting Misuzu Kamio. It's summer
vacation and she's doing some sort of project on the town, all on her own
because of course she doesn't have any friends. She's been absent from
school so much due to how sickly she is that it just...leaves her on her
own.
Well, she meets up with Yukito and manages to convince him to help her
with her school project, promising to show him where there are a lot of
people so he can do his puppet show and actually make some money. From
there it's mostly them spending time together and such.
The Characters: Air Movie
...Are sort of a disappointment. Even acting like the AIR
movie was completely a different entity from the TV series (which yes, it
was) it was hard to ignore how much better the characters were in the
anime.
Yes, Misuzu was still an adorable, ditzy airhead, Yuktio was still
kind of an anti-social buttface, and Haruko is still prettymuch a slacker
parent.
Everyone else can be disregarded because guess what? When you've
only got an hour and a half to work with, you cut 85% of your cast and
keep just the ones you absolutely have to show (the ones who live in the
same house).
The thing is, even the characters you get are sort of...blander versions.
In a movie, at least this sort, you're supposed to act like the person
watching has never seen these characters before.
Actually, considering the
timing of the TV series and the movie, it's possible that the original
movie-watchers hadn't seen the TV series, so unless they'd played the VN,
this really was their first time meeting these people.
So I tried to act
like I'd never seen Yukito or Misuzu or Haruko before, like I'd never
cried for them. But that's the thing.
Considering how watered-down they all seemed...if I
hadn't met them before, I don't think I would have reacted to them. At
all. Period. I wouldn't have been able to smile at how stand-off-ish
Yukito was. I wouldn't have been able to just sigh and shake my head at
Haruko.
I wouldn't have been able to cry my eyes out over Misuzu. The only
reason I could was that I could sit and think about them in the TV anime
and know them better. So on the whole, the movie-editions of these folks were just...kind of
failures.
The Fact That I Can't Think of Anything For Section 3: Anyone who reads
this blog on at least a semi-regular basis should know at this point that
the third section is always something that stood out to me.
Whether it
stood out in a good way or a bad way always depends on the individual
review, but it's something that really caught my attention outside of the
basic story and characters.
With the AIR movie, there really...wasn't
anything. Other than maybe the animation difference. I may have done my best to not compare the two, but seeing the animation
like this:
When you're used to having the animation like this: ...It's kind of hard to ignore. Let's face it, the KyoAni version is about
a billion times prettier than the Toei version.
Conclusion?
All right, let's be honest here. It's pretty much impossible
to go into the AIR movie and see it as something 100% different after
watching and loving the hell out of the series.
It's like when I try to
look at the Harry Potter movies as something completely different from the
books, I try my hardest, but I still end up bitching about all the things
they fucked up (but that's something for a different sort of blog...like a
Harry Potter blog...I'm not going to do that...).
Now, as a result of trying, I did not loathe the AIR movie. However, I can
say that if I'd seen the movie first, I probably would have assumed the
series wasn't going to be a very good one and never watched it.
So thank
the anime gods that I watched the series and then got around to the movie
as an eventuality. But would I recommend the movie? Sure I would.
If you
like AIR in general and you think you can handle crying all over again, go
for it. Or if you want the less-version of the series so that you don't
have to devote the time to the series, or if you just want to do a taste
test before getting into the series, go for it.
Just don't expect it to be the amazingness that I always hear people
saying the series is. (The series is in fact Amazingness and if you
haven't watched it you really should).
My rating: 6/10
Points for Misuzu being cute still and for it keeping
more-or-less the basics and not flat-out punching the storyline in the
face. But points taken away for kind of failing anyway.
Fan Art: AIR Movie
AIR | |
| Episodes | N/A |
|---|---|
| Genre | Drama, Romance, Supernatural |
| Aired | February 5, 2005 |
| Directed by | Osamu Dezaki |
| Producers | Toei Animation, Frontier Works, Visual Art's |
| Opening Theme | N/A. I think |
| Closing Theme | If Dreams Came True by Eri Kawai |
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