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Now in Japan
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Thursday, 03 November 2005 00:00 |
 The thing with releasing a movie adaptation of a story within
a few months of a TV series covering the same story, is that it's far
too easy to make comparisons. Air's theatrical
release tries to make itself stand on its own by making a number of
changes to the fringes of the story, while leaving the main events
intact & recognisable, but it still doesn't manage to have enough
of itself in it to make it worthwhile.
I'm not going to go over the Air story again, as it's covered fairly
well in the TV series reviews (linked at the end of this review).
The movie covers the same territory, but in a slightly different way -
Kanna's story is told as Misuzu reads it from a library book in bits
and pieces throughout the movie, for example, and the way she meets
Yukito is slightly different, but while the fringes of the story have been redone, the essentials are all there where
they should be, right up to the infamous "Goal!" scene.
"Essentials" unfortunately doesn't include the Kano and Tohno
sidestories, which have been completely removed.
Other differences include an increased emphasis on Misuzu's illness,
and Yukito hanging around in human form until the end. The way
Kanna's story is woven into Misuzu's throughout the movie makes it a
lot easier to understand what's happening to her, and makes the
connection between the "summer" arc and the main story a lot clearer to see.
On the technical side, the character designs have been tweaked slightly
and in theory a proper "theatrical release" budget has been thrown at
it - but you'd be hard pressed to tell. If I was being completely
honest, I'd have to say the TV series looks better. The use of
static frames in a lot of places just feels cheap to me.
I was also sad to see Tohno and Kano get completely left out - while
they weren't important to the main story, their presence in the TV
series added a lot and filled out Yukito's personality, but that's what
big screen time limitations will do to a story. The "Summer" arc
was almost unrecognisable - whereas the TV series shows Ryuuya and
Kanna escaping to find her mother, in the movie most of their
appearances cover her time in captivity, with their escape being their
final act.
One thing in the movie's favour is that it doesn't try so hard to rip out the
heartstrings - sure, the ending is still very emotional and will get a
reaction out of you, but it isn't done as cynically as I felt the TV
series did the same scenes. Apart from that, I have to say the TV
series was better in just about every other respect. Air's theatrical release is worth checking out for curiosity, but that's about it.
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» TV Episodes 11-13
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