April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

octopedingue requested something better than "omg it's soooooo good u shoulod watch it!" for commentary on some shows I was pimping, and I am a world-class pimp, so I obliged. However, that entry is friends-locked, and if I want people to lavish me with attention, it helps if they can see me. So, for your viewing pleasure, here are brief, non-spoilery reviews of AIR, St. Luminous Mission High School, and Futakoi Alternative:

( AIR )

( St. Luminous Mission High School )

( Futakoi Alternative )

So this is me, flipping through the AIR Artbook: "Gee, how pretty, awww, cute! look at the little dog WHOA PORN."

>_> Uhhh....I guess it wasn't all that risque as porn goes--mostly just the girls flashing their boobs and making "come hither and fuck me" eyes except for the one with incest, but it surprised the hell out of me. I'd completely forgotten that AIR was originally an H-game before it was a non-porn TV show. And it's one thing to pick up a doujin where you expect to see porn, and another to find the porn randomly stuck in next to the pictures of Misuzu and her stuffed dinosaurs.

Two to go.

Bishoujo game adaptations aren't generally my thing, although I enjoyed Kimi ga Nozomu Eien quite a bit, and I felt Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito had oodles of potential to squander. I picked up Air because I kept hearing two things about it--"pretty" and "good." And it is. It's also very sad. I started out several episodes behind everybody else, so I inadvertently spoiled myself at a couple of blogs. ( Spoilers. )

I can't help that Air would be improved by dropping Kano and Minagi's stories entirely from the show. They're distinct from the main narrative, even if they do carry the same themes (WINGS and MOTHERS); I don't know how this sort of thing works in game format, but I actually found it jarring to go from disconnected arc to disconnected arc, and neither Kano nor Minagi are as compelling as Misuzu.

Misuzu is intriguing. She seems like the embodiment of the klutz cliche, but she's focused beneath her ditzyness--"Gao" and the tripping are superficial; on a deeper level, Misuzu knows exactly what she wants and needs in life. What that is becomes a little clearer, later, and why she fixates on Yukito so. (Random emotional fixations in anime are normally my bane, but I've never seen one so plausible or sympathetic as this before.) Misuzu's problem is painfully close to my heart. It's a horrible thing to see someone so...abandoned. The circumstances that have led to Mizusu's isolation are unusual and fantastic, but the loneliness itself is utterly accessible.

Anyway, I'm very interested in the movie adaptation, which, I'm told, focuses entirely on Misuzu's story; perhaps it will have a happier ending, too.

The art and animation for this show might be the most beautiful I've ever seen in anime. Depending on how I feel at the end, I think I might well want to acquire this on DVD.