Perhaps I must be the only one who is looking forward to something as relatively harmless as this. I liked the initial story and the character designs immediately. Plus it being set in another one of those anime alternate futures is a sort of plus for me. With deep shows like Ajin, Durarara! and Dimension W airing this season, another show that would “switch me off” would be a plus……until I realised that this is an adaptation of an eroge.
- …but I shouldn’t feel awkward about that at all; several shows that came out to be harmless were eroges originally. And is this harmless? Of course it is! In fact, from the get-go, it looks like none of these main characters (comprising of one guy and many girls) would even want to touch each other. Maybe give occasional suggestive glances, but that’s all. And that’s what makes this show, I think, rather charming, even if from the outset, it looks rather samey.
- So okay, ‘samey’ is a rather mean thing to say, considering how unnaturally hooked I got into this. It is most definitely a show where simple things work just as fine as in shows with heaps of lore and that have deep metaphorical meaning. Our resident airhead girl and transfer student, Asuka Kurashina, arrives on a rather charming southern island…could be south of Kyushu, or Shikoku, or even way down in Okinawa…it’s rather nondescript and ambiguous. An island where, along with an archipelago, lets loose anti-gravity technology to their students. Makes one wonder how such technology can even be policed, but hey, does that even matter? I mean, we have a fine equation in this pretty-looking show:
Island where it looks like it’s summer every day + very polite students + everything is clean = a society where crime just does not exist!
- So our airhead Asuka finds out, soon enough about how these Grav-Shoes work, how they let these polite students fly, and how they don’t let the users crash. Later, she also learns about something that becomes the central part of the show: Flying Circus. I like the name already.
- The Flying Circus sport is, in essence, a racing sport and that is something that most certainly fits right in a not-too-distant futuristic Japan. You’d think something like that would be something even Asuka could understand, but big words being big words, added to the fact that she still can’t fly quite right…at least it has a minimal amount of contact. So far. I think. Having not played the eroge and only watched the PV, I did kind of realise that these competitors wouldn’t be beating each other up in the sky. While that would make a rather cool show of its own, the fact that Flying Circus is a minimal-contact sport played by nice pretty moe girls with long flowing hair that needs heaps of conditioner (and not a fighting sport played by mean spoilt girls with serious vendettas) has made me actually want to get to know more about it. And not just that, but the rest of the characters too (despite how atypical they may seem). Not sure if something like Girls Und Panzer would be a comparison to this, but the more I think about it, the more I think that comparison is rather true.
- Both shows have rather atypical and samey main characters (the geeky one, the moe one, the airhead one, etc.)
- Both shows are set in a very different kind of Japan; Girls Und Panzer takes place in a Japan with a passion for a tank sport, while Aokana‘s Japan has a futuristic flying sport.
- Both shows have the main character appearing to be your pretty average person, but turning out to be a complete genius in what they aim to do.
- I am probably just thinking too far outside the box on that one; I mean on one side, I’m saying this is a ‘harmless’ show, and on the other I’m comparing it to the likes of Girls Und Panzer (of all shows)! Okay…from now on, no deep thinking…just enjoy the show for what it is.
- We haven’t really been given the chance to get to know the other characters: male MC Masaya, fellow second-year Misaki and the petite twin-tailed first-year Mashiro; hell, we only get a mere glimpse of Masaya’s new neighbor Rika. In the eroge, all 4 of these girls would be the potential love interests, but so far in episode 1, the makers seem to have ditched that idea completely. As far as I know, in fact, it’s Masaya who is the one who is supposed to step into his Grav-Shoes and play Flying Circus once again, despite the fact that Asuka will most likely steal the show with her airheadness.
- While the other 2 shows I’m reviewing in this column have opening episodes that made me worry a little about whether I would enjoy them, Aokana‘s first episode has somehow hooked me completely, even though I can totally see how people can be put off on how ‘plain’ and ‘uninspiring’ it seems to be. It has a seriously unnatural hook, and it’s something I can’t explain. And I guess that’s a……good thing?
