I first became interested in Wind – A Breath of Heart after this guy gave it a surprisingly positive review. After watching it, I can understand why. Wind is a typical series that’s short (it’s only got 13 episodes of fifteen minutes), simple, but effective.
It doesn’t start out that way, though. Especially the first few episodes are an exercise in “spot the overdone cliché”. I spotted the annoying spunky sister, the childhood sweetheart, stupid and energetic best friend, girl who keeps abusing this best friend, classmates with a part-time job in a café, there’s a priestess, a girl with heart problems, parents gone, the terrible cook, school sports festival, shrine festival (complete with yukatas) and of course the beach episode. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a sakura tree.
And yet, this series works. The biggest reason is a great cast of scriptwriters that manages to keep the story going and the dialogues meaningful. The airtime is short, but every character gets at least a bit of depth and goes beyond the usual stereotype. The cast feels fresh, and the main storyline is also a pretty good one. Don’t expect anything amazing, but it’s well told and surprisingly dark. My only complaint is that its conclusion may have come a bit too easy, in the way of “why didn’t you do this in the beginning?”
This series is also interesting in terms of graphics. At first sight, the CG and sloppy animation may seem like a turnoff, but it’s got a sort of “I don’t care whether I’m ugly but I want movement”-feeling, which I appreciate a lot. It’s so much better than nearly ninety percent of all other bishoujo-series, which are way too obsessed with creating the perfect female body.
Overal, this isn’t the most complete series but what it does feel is a whole (if that makes any sense). The different storylines are carefully woven into each other and not a second is really wasted. The scriptwriters know exactly how to use their time, and pleasantly surprised me.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 6/10 |
It’s funny you should review this now, as I’ve been on a real Makoto Shinkai kick lately, and just recently discovered that Shinkai did the movies and backgrounds for the ero-game this was based off of. Same with the ero-games “ef – a tale of memories” was based off of. As is typical of Shinkai’s work, the movies from these games are nothing short of breathtaking.
I know Shinkai didn’t actually work on the anime, but even so, his involvement with the game – and the fact that the game was made by minori, the same company that released the ef games – makes me really interested in seeing the show. I’m guessing ef is probably a lot better (how can it not be? That show was amazing!), but I bet I’d still enjoy this one.
-Tom
Hmm, I’m probably missing something here but I don’t remember Wind having any sort of closure. The final ep was a mishmesh of abrupt scenes that wasn’t coherent.
The series actually started out promising with a nice touch of mystery and character charm. Sadly they squandered that away with a meandering plot that amounted to little.
Interesting that you compared the series with Da Capo since the 2 series are at diametric ends of my anime rankings.
Am glad you managed to enjoy the show still. 🙂