April 24th, 2005
Nao gets sick, and ends up in the nurse’s office, where the nurse, Taiki-sensei and the affable Makino-sensei (who only teaches for part of his lessons and tells scary stories the rest of the time) chat about holidays in Malaysia and what they want from life.
Yaaaaaawn. I’m not averse to slice-of-life as such, but dear GOD that was boring. I think it’s such a shame that a series with such lovely art and an intriguing premise chooses to spend half its episodes on dull stories about fairly uninteresting characters - I just didn’t find this episode compelling at all, and I guess I just didn’t find it relevant to anything that’s gone before. The joy of the previous episodes of Windy Tales has been the stuff involving the wind, frankly, and aside from the “kaze” pun (highly patronising note - “kaze” is both a fever and wind in Japanese) and the occasional splashes of oddly coloured vibes around Nao, it was barely relevant at all. The next episode, however, looks a bit more interesting, and since I’ve been watching them so far apart from each other it won’t be that much of a hardship to watch it, but I find Windy Tales ultimately incredibly frustrating.
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November 5th, 2004
Jun takes in a flying squirrel, Donguri (which means “acorn”), who Nao and co eventually remind how to fly (hurray for using the wind again!). Of course, Donguri then takes this opportunity to fly away - Jun finds him again, but after one blissful night of flying together decides to give him to a better home.
Okay, I will admit to being horribly confused for a lot of the episode due to the disjointed chronology, but after I finally worked out what was going on I’ve decided I liked the episode after all. Plus it brought back the wind - you know, the point of the series - which was missing from the last episode. I think it’s still a little bit too laidback at the moment, but with the general lack of a serial plot arc it doesn’t feel as languid as, say, Beck.
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October 21st, 2004
Nao and Miki are assigned to take pictures of Atsuko, the school’s only marathon runner. They all come out rubbish until Miki and Nao race around on a bike in front of Atsuko. Nao ends up winning second prize in a photo competition for a photo of Atsuko, beaten only by a random woman with a dog who took a photo of her and Miki on the bike.
I’ve never known a school with so few people in a sports club. I mean, atheltics isn’t the most popular thing in the world, but still…aside from that massive leap of faith, Atsuko has absolutely ENORMOUS thighs. Anyway, aside from the ending that was a fairly boring episode, actually, although nice enough for the slice-of-life genre - more wind antics, please! (that sounds SO wrong…)
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September 16th, 2004
Nao, Miki and Jun descend upon Taiki-sensei in order to learn how to control the wind. He refuses to teach them, however, and so they gain help from Jiji, who works at the local petrol station. Nao’s efforts are all in vain, however, when she seems to discover that the power of wind control relies on love - something which Miki and Jun have discovered. Nao is still fascinated by the wind, however, and sneaks out to watch the dangerous wind festival that Taiki is taking part in - and while the festival takes its toll on the participants, Nao seems to be changed for it.
I’m a little confused by the final scene in some ways, but I think it’ll be explained next episode (like the final scene of episode 1 was elaborated on at the beginning of this one). A really solid follow-up to the first episode here - I read somewhere that this story was written for a competition like the one that produced the short film Super Kuma-san, and then elaborated on for a 13 episode series, and I think you can tell that this wasn’t written by the usual anime scriptwriters because it’s so fresh and exciting.
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September 15th, 2004
OP - Kaze no Uta Windy Tales (YuU) - slow, gorgeous, MISIA/Chihiro Onitsuka-esque song set against school scenes, which suggests this’ll be very much a slice-of-life show with a rather interesting twist.
ED - Yuuhi no (something, damn my complete lack of kanji knowledge!) Dake (Windy-S) - live action shots and an okay, if a little dull, song.
It’s the day before summer vacation starts, and Nao, the president of the Photography Club, is busy taking photos of the sky rather than going to classes. She is greatly surprised when the cat she tries to photograph leaps off the roof - and floats in the wind, alongside hundreds of other cats. Nao ends up falling off the roof by accident, but is intrigued by the photos she’s taken showing one of the teachers with the wind flying around him. Enlisting the help of her friends Jun and Miki, Nao goes in search of the flying cat, and finds it up on the school roof once more alongside a girl named Ryoko who reveals that the teacher, Taiki-sensei, and the cat can both control the wind - the cats were seeing him off as he returned home to the Wind Village for the summer holidays. Taiki-sensei taught Ryoko to control the wind slightly too. Nao decides that Ryoko is in love with Taiki-sensei, and decides to go on a trip in the summer to the Wind Village to take photos of the festival that will take place there.
What strikes you first about Windy Tales is the absolutely inspired visual design - the characters look like paper dolls, with tapered limbs and angular faces. Aside from the clean, computer-styled people, everything else has a slightly “sketchy” look about it, and the wind is portrayed as pencil lines. The whole episode has a sort of wistful, peaceful atmosphere about it, heightened by the soothing music and low-key storyline - I get a vibe very similar to Someday’s Dreamers from this first episode, which can only be a good thing. I’m really excited about Windy Tales now, and greatly look forward to seeing the next episode (which should be fairly soon, given that it’s airing on SkyPerfec! so the second episode should already be out…)
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