Product Description

Yukito is a traveling performer - a wanderer. He survives with only the clothes on his back a puppet and a story from his mother -- the story of The Girl in the Sky. He doesn't know who or where she is; only that he must find her.On the verge of starvation he is befriended by a young misfit named Misuzu whose eccentricities serve to hide a troubled home life. Misuzu offers Yukito a place to stay and in return he listens to her dreams -- dreams in which she lives in the sky. To make ends meet Yukito takes odd jobs from the local doctor where he meets Kano - another girl with an odd fascination with the sky.As his search moves forward Yukito finds that the possibilities are as numerous as the pitfalls. Will he find the girl in the sky? Does she even exist? The answers change with the breeze. The questions are up in the Air.System Requirements:RUNNING TIME: APPROX. 100 MINS Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ANIMATION/ADULT SWIM Rating: TV-14 UPC: 702727172823 Manufacturer No: DART/001

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51561 in DVD
• Brand: ADV Films
• Released on: 2007-08-14
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: Animated, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Japanese
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
Yukito, the hero of the shojo (girl's) fantasy Air (2004), is an itinerant puppeteer, seeking The Girl in the Sky, the heroine of a story his mother told him. His quest takes him to a seaside town, where he meets four local misfits. Bouncy blonde Misuzo acts like a case of arrested development; Kano suffers from the aftereffects of a magical encounter; astronomy club president Tohno seems to conceal secrets, including why she tolerates obnoxious Michiru. Yukito moves in with Misuzo and her drunken mother, and starts doing odd jobs for Kano's older sister, the town doctor. Each of the young women seems linked to The Girl in the Sky, but Yukito can't figure out the hidden connections. Neither can the audience. Director Tatsuya Ishihara tries to blend mystery and comedy, but the mysterious elements lack the requisite sense of urgency, and the comic moments feel forced. (Rated TV 14 V: alcohol use, comic violence, risqué humor) --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews

Good story
I was looking for something good to watch last year, and I watched Air TV. It's got a complex story, beautiful graphics, towards the end very sad, and nice music. Overall, I loved it, I just hated the ending like so many other anime series I've watched. The graphics are really something though, it almost seemed like it could jump off the picture.

Freaky alien potato?
This DVD is full of lovely art work, great character designs, a promise of a supernatural story that spans the centuries. And a freaky alien dog that is named Potato and seems to understand everything said to him. Love the voice talents,such as Vic Mignogna, Monica Rial, Kira Vincent-Davis, and there are a ton of them in the credits I know and have even met in person. The feel is wonderful. A mixture of romantic hope and dark fantasy. There is an underlining feel of doom and death just around the corner. The first DVD is full of promise. But it lacks a touch, that spark, that makes a nice anime into a great one. Maybe the dog makes it too cute. I would suggest getting it used.

Messy finish ruins great story
I've been on the look out for sad and depressing anime ever since finishing Now and Then, Here and There (Complete Collector's Boxed Set), so when someone pointed me towards Air TV I was more then happy to try it out. At first glance Air seems like the pure definition of a heartwarming, yet sad tale, but once you get past the initial tear jerking moments found in abundance in volume one, the story really has very little to offer. Yukito is a young traveling puppeteer who moves from town to town searching for a mysterious person who he calls "the girl in the sky." one day, tired and hungry, he stumbles into a small coastal town and meets a young, energetic, girl named Misuzu who seems to be as clumsy as she is cute and charming. Although Misuzu is the main focus of the show, Yukito meets three other misfit girls, each one, much like Misuzu, hide their own secrets and deal with their own personal problems, some of which will leave you breathless. If I were to compare this show with another anime, I'd say it has a lot more in common with Haibane-Renmei: Complete Vols. 1-4 then anything else, but where Renmei slowly builds up its momentum to a captivating finish, Air slowly fizzles out and allows itself to die long before the closing scene. This show, in all honesty, should have been four episodes shorter, for although I understand where they were trying to go with the ending, I couldn't help but feel that it was rushed, unprepared, and mellow dramatic. Where the opening is nothing but pure heartbreaking tragedy, the ending manages to somehow turn an otherwise great story into a cheesy soap opera with Misuzu and her mom taking center stage at the expense of every other character the creators of this show worked so hard to develop.

And that's where this show ultimately fails, in my opinion. Characters like Kano, Tohno, and Michiru get so much attention in the first half of the series that when they suddenly drop off the map nothing felt right anymore. They are very well developed characters with some very serious problems but after maybe two episodes devoted to each, after their lives are suddenly and magically put back together thanks Yukito they are no longer necessary parts of the story and are dropped altogether. Why, I wonder, did the writers bother to put them into this story if they weren't going to play any significant role in the overall plot? Why bother? It isn't as if the story needed them, although they did add some touching moments. Their characters were far too well developed and their stories far too touching to be dropped completely after they served their purpose.

The art work is nothing sort of amazing. I defy anyone to show me an anime series more visually beautiful then this. Every frame is a masterpiece of artistic brilliance found only in anime movies such as Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. The character designs may be a bit cliché, with the stereotypical long hair, enormous watery eyes, school girl uniforms, etc. but they have a personal feel that ultimately made the characters seem more real, more alive, and that's all that matters in the end. To accompany these visuals, this show boasts a very quiet, very sweet and haunting musical score, mostly piano pieces that reminded me very much of Voices of a Distant Star. I didn't even realize until the last few episodes that they were just playing the same three songs over and over again, and even then it didn't matter. Numerous times I found myself ignoring the dialogue and just listening to the sweet melodies of the soundtrack and watching the beautiful visuals.

In all this show starts out extremely strong, but somehow manages to ruin an amazing story with an ending soap opera writers would be proud of. The series really ends at volume three, or at least that's where it should have been, everything after that, although it has its occasional moments, ruins all credibility this show had as a drama. Watch this show for the visuals, the soundtrack, and heartbreaking opening, and nothing else.

Replay value; Very low.