Wind: A Breath of Heart (TV)

Okano Makoto transferred to the school in his home town. There, he spent normal but happy school days with his sister, Hinata, a jokey classmate, Tachibana Tsutomu, Shikouin Kasumi, Tsutomu's childhood friend, and other friends.

One day, after school, Makoto heard someone playing the harmonica. That melody made him feel something old, and it brought him to the roof of the school buildings. There, he met a girl in the dusk.

It was Narukaze Minamo who turned her face to him with a smile. She was a childhood friend, but they had lived separately for years.
Hiding their true thoughts, Makoto and his friends spend their lives in school. Their stories in a mysterious town are about to begin.

(Source: AniDB)

Tsukishiro, Hikari Main

Hirai, Riko Japanese

Narukaze, Minamo Main

Kouzuki, Miwa Japanese

Okano, Makoto Main

Suganuma, Hisayoshi Japanese

Fujimiya, Nozomi Supporting

Okada, Junko Japanese

Okano, Hinata Supporting

Kasai, Ritsuko Japanese

Fujimiya, Wakaba Supporting

Aoki, Sayaka Japanese

Shikouin, Kasumi Supporting

Kodama, Satomi Japanese

Tachibana, Tsutomu Supporting

Suyama, Akio Japanese

Nakamura, Makoto Producer

Yamazaki, Asuka Producer

Takechi, Tsuneo Producer

Nakayama, Nobuhiro Assistant Producer

Reviews

Mar 14, 2020

kekekeKaj

Mixed Feelings

It's all too easy to make fun of an anime christened with an unfortunate name like "Wind: A Breath of Heart" (try saying the title fast) ... but that would just be immature of me.

"Wind: A Breath of Fart" is one of those patchy anime that feels like it got stitched together from three different shows. Starting off with some horribly crappy first scenes, it improves into a borefest with the occasional amusing moment, then magics in a dramatic story towards the end.

When I first watched "Wind: A Breath of Fart", I found its mix of highschool hijinks with a dash of magic rather ... peculiar, but this was before the time when Kyoto Animation studios conquered the anime world with its adaptations of Key's haremy magical realist visual novels. Even taking that into account though, I still think the anime's poor execution of the premise added to my confusion. There's a scene early on where a group of friends were casually discussing their superpowers. I didn't really take it seriously, thinking that the girl who claimed she can jump really high was just athletic, and sympathising with the one who said she can create wind because I assumed she was simply suffering from flatulence. Either that or they're delusional chuunis who think they can do things like shoot ninja stars out of their arses just by yelling out the name of their special attack. Anyway, like I said, I didn't think much of it, particularly as the series plodded on as a dull highschool slice of life. Then it turns out those superpower are real. I was like "WTF?!" If the anime had been less casual about those earlier conversations then I would not have felt so shocked.

At around the three quarter mark, I started to wonder what's the point of this anime. I think the people who made it must have pondered the same question, cos the all of a sudden "Wind: A Breath of Fart" started breaking wind in a different direction and actually - to my utter amazement - began to carve out a story line. On one hand it's sure is an improvement on fuck all happening; on the other hand, the change of pace and direction made it feel like a completely different show. While I won't deny the newly made-up-as-they-went-along-story had points of intrigue, there weren't many episodes left to play with. Predictably, this resulted in a half-baked story that didn't feel like it's been thought through properly, and an ending that cuts off so suddenly it left me wondering where the rest of the story was.

"Wind: A Breath of Fart" then took the odd decision of making the last episode a recap. It flashed back to all the boring part of the show, and it's a testament to the extraordinary depth of the dullness that I don't even recall seeing some of these scenes, so they actually felt like new material to me!

Like the story, the characters are a bit boring, and could have done with better designs that distinguished them by more than just their hair colour. The character writing also leaves much to be desired, particularly around consistency. I struggled to discern convincing motivations for when characters do something unusual, like when a cheerless girl decided to break character by dressing up and going to a fair. Also, the main character has a habit of under-reacting to what should be shocking revelations. On the positive side, at least he isn't too annoying like a typical harem lead, though I am a bit puzzled by why his harem seem to look up to him as though he's a much older senpai rather than a peer.

Dialogue wise, "Wind: A Breath of Fart" tends to fail the hardest when the writers tries to go deep. For example at one point in the show a cat got stuck in a tree and they had this bizarre discussion on whether or not to rescue it, with the content of the discussion serving as a metaphor for something more serious that was going on in the story. Now, perhaps I'm just an uncultivated buffoon, but "to rescue or not to rescue a cat" does not strike me as an intellectual heavyweight question worthy of philosophical debate, so the aforementioned dialogue made no narrative sense, and I found the whole thing unintentionally hilarious.

As much as the last few episode jars with the rest of the series, I have to say I rather enjoyed the plot development and the unfolding of drama, and vastly prefer it over the pedestrian portion of the show. And for me, this last unexpected charge salvaged the show somewhat. I also quite like the music, though admittedly it had an easy job to do for most of the series as nothing was happening on screen. The opening theme initially made a decent match for the anime, though it matched less well once the anime radically changed direction towards the end.

I really struggled to judge this anime as a whole because the different parts of it is SO different. But on balance, "Wind: A Breath of Fart" probably averages out as a mediocre show. But ironically, despite its inability to do anything particularly well, I much prefer its incompetent mediocrity to the meticulously engineered terribleness of those KyoAni visual novel adaptions. In the very least, it doesn't make me want to throw things at the screen.

Personal rating: -0.5 (mediocre)

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jun 11, 2007

cirnoh

Not Recommended

Spoilers included, if it could be spoiled.

Its not a standard 25minute or so episode per series, its done in half standard format; 15minutes, 13 episodes.

[Spoiler Ahead]

Basicly, it starts off as a normal highschool romance love themed anime and you'd expect it to be another warm fuzziness emotion trip series. You'd expect me to say its not, but IT IS, and its the MOST generic kind, shit I could write off better stuff than them. Some guy meets up with some random girl through some even more random event and it turns out that they were childhood friends or something. Then all of a ... sudden FOR NO REASON everyone has special powers... I mean magics cool but, in this series you get some crap thats not even EXPLAINED, developed, or ever USED, its just there. DID They think that with some crappy ass "NICE TRY" random magical powers that their ratings would be higher? I think they paid the pizza man for suggestions. So this pansy ass guy, main character, does you know... stuff? and then attracts a harem of girls. Some failure plot inserted inbetween till it reaches a BAD ending, which i will flame soon enough, about how some emo chick is protecting the village with sacrifices of people and it jsut happens that the main character and his HOE's parents get the shit. So he stops her from the endless sacraficing cycle which has gone on for tens of hundreds of years with his HAREM attracting capabilities. Then everyone is happy... OR IS IT.. THEN WE HAVE THIS CRAP ASS ENDING, its a fucking recap of his relationship with his childhood friend which is supposively his girlfriend. for 11 minutes it was the same words and animations. THEN the last 30 seconds, you get a scene with the girl all alone in the room yelling at the main character. THEN IT ENDS. NO CONCLUSION, NO nothing, it just ends with her saying she wish she never met him again HOWEVER IN THE EPISODE BEFORE THEY WERE SO HAPPY. WTF happened there huh?

So I wasted like 13*15 minute of my crappy ass life to watch something even more crappy. BUT theres a OVA & special that I found because the ending was so unsatisfactory. 3 OVA episodes, 30 minutes each - SAME BAD STORY, 30% better animation quality, condensed into a bar, good thing is it didn't include the ending of the original. If your gonna watch this, just watch the OVA.

And the special is a epilouge of the original disregarding the ending? cause, the main characters dating his childhood friend, the one that hates him. Again. WTF?

[ BREAK DOWN ]

Story : i'll give a 4 for being able to cookie cut one out. -1 for the ending.

Animation : Wasn't bad, your standard animation at the time.

Sound : Nothing that grabbed my attention, I could be biased.

Characters : Development either happened without me knowing or didn't happen at all.

Enjoyment : Maybe im masochistic, this rage is the only thing enjoyable.

Overall : Shit Sux

Don't touch this unless you WANT to be ENRAGED, MC Hammer wouldn't.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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May 3, 2008

froseph

Not Recommended

Wind is an example of a show that sounded great in theory and on paper, yet falied to deliver on almost every level. Based on the visual novel by menclave (also behind the masterful ef - A Tale of Memories) the story set-up is quite interesting. Inside a town, every person, bar our hero Makoto, has a special power, whether it be high jumping, calculator memories or sound cancellation, the power is unique to the person. A blimp constantly flies over the town and Makoto meets a girl he promised as a child to marry at school once again. He also meets another ... strange girl that seems not to talk much and be part of a some strange ritual. Alright alot of the story isn't unusual for a visual novel-based anime, yet has enough uniqueness to be interesting.

The problem is that it fails to deliver any potential set-up from the plot, and this maybe due to time constranits, being 12 episodes long, at 12 minutes each. The characters, although enteraining in their own way, and personify the typical arachetypes for a harem show, jump around too much, and suddenly changed their minds on life with very little convincing. The whole blimp and the mystery behind the town is hardly explained, and the concusion to the main problem and *spoiler* the sacrifice ritual to keep the town safe from harm* is quickly concluded with the aformentioned easy changing minds of characters, with no real conflict at all (Hell, even a fall off a cliff for two character's is totally lost due to constraints, and dodgy episode timing. *end spoiler*

That's another problem. Very rarely the episodes seem to have a link up to the previous or following episodes. It's almost like watching a sketch show of different aspects of different character's lives, without ever attempting to conclude anything. One time there at school, with problems about cooking lunch, then we're back in the past, to look at some character'sold life (and i mean really old), then we're at a beach as if nothing happened. There is no fluidity in the story and it feels like the show would have been alot better as just a feature length movie focusing on the main love traingle.

With all that complaining, the saving grace to the show is that it actually looks pretty nice. The backgrounds have alot of 3-D rendering that rival Gonzo works, and the character's look cute and colourful Characters move realistically and it at least made the time i wasted watching the show easy on the eye. The Sound was nothing brilliant and mostly forgetable, but did nothing to enhance the atmosphere, ending up falling into clichés of the genre. Voice acting was solid rendition's of the character's, who are actually an interesting bunch, especially the waitress sister's, and the white haired girl (sorry i can't remember there names after general loathing of the show I felt it best not to need to keep it in mind), that only falls flat because of a dodgy script and the worst time constraints I have seen for a show.

Overall, this show was a waste of my time (although it doesnt last long so luckily it wasn;t as much of a waste as 52 episodes of Kiba). The decent set-up was ruined by poor directorial choices and makes the series fall flat on its face. If anything the show does make me wan't to play the visual novel to see a group of character's not so mutilated by an animated version that doesnt even give the time of day to care about its creation. The only hope for the franchise is if SHAFT pick up a TV remake after the success of ef - A Tale of Memories and show this bunch how anime is done right. Don;t waste your time on this tripe, no matter how gorgeous loking the tripe may be.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	Poll: Wind: A Breath of Heart (TV) Episode 7 Discussion rsc-pl - Sep 30, 2015	2 replies	by AdityaRizkiS »» Nov 9, 2023 9:19 AM
	Poll: Wind: A Breath of Heart (2004) Episode 13 Discussion greenmarty - Mar 30, 2011	2 replies	by rsc-pl »» Oct 4, 2015 11:15 AM
	Poll: Wind: A Breath of Heart (TV) Episode 8 Discussion rsc-pl - Sep 30, 2015	0 replies	by rsc-pl »» Sep 30, 2015 8:36 AM
	Poll: Wind: A Breath of Heart (TV) Episode 2 Discussion rsc-pl - Sep 29, 2015	0 replies	by rsc-pl »» Sep 29, 2015 11:44 AM
	Poll: Wind: A Breath of Heart (TV) Episode 1 Discussion rsc-pl - Sep 29, 2015	0 replies	by rsc-pl »» Sep 29, 2015 11:12 AM