AIR
Somewhere in the sky, there sleeps a mourning, lonely girl, waiting for someone to rescue her. She dreams unbearable dreams.
Yukito Kunisaki has inhereted two extremely odd family traits. One is the ability to control a funny little winged puppet without strings; although it’s sort of like magic, Yukito’s pretty used to this strange gift and puts on shows to make his living. The other is a mission: his is a family of travelers, who wander unceasingly searching for a girl with wings. The girl is sad, and they want to save her from her sorrow—but Yukito has made the choice not to pursue this mission too vigorously. He is not running from his fate; he is simply drifting.
One day Yukito arrives in a new town and, nearly penniless, falls upon the mercy of Misuzu Kamio. Misuzu is a weird—sometimes infuriating—girl; clumsy, neurotically clingy, and unwilling to talk to her classmates, she has an obsession with dinosaurs and tends to roar quietly when she feels down. Something seems off about her, like her whole personality is just a shell… Against his will, Yukito becomes involved with Misuzu, her distant mother, and the other inhabitants of the town, all of whom seem to share a strange obsession with the sky. Why is Yukito unable to leave the town–could it be that one of these sad girls is the girl with wings?
And why does Misuzu always dream of flying?
Undoubtedly the best anime ever to be based on a dating game (almost nothing is left of its source except the unlikely gender ratio and some odd hair colors), AIR has the ability to invest a simple skyscape with a strange yet familiar power. It is a show as immersed in the power of human emotions as its characters are in the beautifully-drawn sunlight; by turns quirky, funny, and tragic, it reimbues one of the oldest of all stories with a primeval immediacy. Life, it says, is important. But sometimes, because it is important, life can be very, very sad…
This lyrical series is 12 episodes long and will be viewed over the course of the entire semester.