Windy tales and Wind-Manipulators

[Michael Hopcroft]

Although the series itself does not have combat (and indeed combat would be incredibly out-of-place in it, in the way that a truly heterosexual female character would be out-of-place in Project A-ko), I was wondering about the Wind Manipulation powers that are the centerpiece of a wonderfullyh lyrical anime series called Windy Tales. There seems to be aburgeoning "magic reality" genre in anime, in which ordinary people and places have fantastic qualities, and Windy Tales is one of the very best of these series. At the local club it is the biggest hit among the membership since Azumanga Daioh, the rapturous recpetion only heightened by the glacial pace at which the fansubbers release episodes.

 

Windy Tales is the sotry of Noa, a girl in junior high school who one day, while standing on the school roof, sees a cat flying by. She is so excited that she falls off the roof -- and comes to a soft landing. On one hand, everyone is worried about her because the accident has been mistaken for a suicide attempt. But on the other hand, her survival gains her entry into another world. One of her teachers is a Wind Manipulator, a man who can make the wind do his bidding, and he has been teaching his skills to the local feline population.

 

Trying to explain why this series is so appealing is like trying to put words to the feelings engendered by a Beethoven quartet, or describing comprehensibly what goes through one's mind when viewing a Van Gogh painting.

 

But along the way we meet a flying squirrel who doesn't know how to fly, a storytelling teacher with his own unique and melancholy gift, elementary school boys whose own wind powers are linked to their innocence, and a rural village that secretly controls Japan's weather.