Potato should DEFINITELY pop a cap in hiss with the power of the Constitution.
The founding fathers would be so proud.
That being said I just finished the 21st
Yukito is so mean to Misuzu and it breaks my heart cuz I just want to cuddle with Misuzu and feed her chocolate while wearing dinosaur onesies ><
Houjutsu nothing really it is used in a couple of other anime like Getbackers but there it is the ability to control logic. The closest I got was Hojutsu which is a Japanese martial arts style focused on firearms.
法術
The first Kanji can mean law, doctrine, or magic
The second Kanji can mean art, skill, or magic
So put those together and in the context of Yukito’s ability it means something along the lines of a magical skill
How far did everyone get today?
I got halfway through the 22nd when Yukito is sitting on the beach wall and Minagi comes up
I really love Minagi in the visual novel. She didn’t really get that much screen time in the anime (same with Kano) so I really like seeing more of her personality in the common route and not everything in her route specifically.
I also loved when she was about to say her name and said Mi- and then stopped herself and asked Yukito to call her Toono-san. Key always does a great job with their foreshadowing and I love picking up on those kinds of things.
Michiru trying to talk with Potato is adorbs too
As expected, I’m doing 1 day in-game every day that I play. So I just finished the 21st and met up with Kano and Hijiri. I don’t quite understand why people dislike Kano so much, but I guess I’ll find out in her route 
I am one of those people who really dislike Kano
I find her to be extremely annoying and Hijiri is someone I really like in the anime but she really hits a wrong nerve with me in the visual novel
And the fact that Kano’s h-scene totally breaks her character really makes me mad
Minagi is my favorite~ :3
Same here, I don’t remember disliking her much from the anime but that has been a while and I’ve forgotten a lot about her, but from the limited run-ins in the common route I’ve like her and Yukito’s interactions. (Maybe slight common spoiler) I laughed pretty hard when she refuses to let the sumo world championship thing go when Yukito is trying to figure out why she is at the school Also helps that when she shows up Potato is never far behind…and I need me some more Potato.
So I was thinking… Would anybody like to volunteer for the job of chronicler for the AIR bookclub? All you’d have to do is go through each day and list every noteworthy event in the order they happen in this topic. Kinda like what I was doing with Little Busters in the common route topic, but less reflection and more just stating what happens, maybe in dot points. It’d be really handy to have a reference of what events take place when.
You mean like how I did Heaven’s Door…? Sort of?
I wouldve been able to do this if I had known when I started ><
I don’t have the free time to go back and replay to jot down everything though ><
For the other routes (besides the common) I’d be more than happy to do it though~
Having never experienced AIR, I jumped into the common route with certain expectations. Certain characters will probably have some similarities to Kanon’s cast, the routes would be somewhat straightforward, and there would be quite a few classic themes, such as dreams, friendship and acceptance of death. While AIR’s common route had some of what I expected, I did not expect how the execution would play out.
First off, I want to talk about the characters briefly, particularly Yukito and Misuzu, since they show up the most often in the common route. Yukito’s main goal is to find someone from a legend his mother told him about before her death. When he meets Misuzu and learns about her other self, he feels that this other self is the person he is looking for. This perfectly cements Misuzu as the ‘heroine of focus’ in the story (I will avoid saying ‘canon heroine’ because I believe in no such thing in Key novels).
However, in accordance to the bad ending, Yukito prefers to be self-sufficient and externally passive, which is why he decides to leave town so quickly. He is very attached to what he does that he refuses to expand beyond his comfort zone. With a linear story, that’s bound to kill character progression rather quickly, but AIR is no such story. So, with that in mind, I will continue to play AIR, and see how these characters develop and grow in order to reach their goals.
Theory.
AIR was a warning about the state of work and family in Japan.
When you think of AIR, what themes remain consistant throughout the whole story? The first is family. Every character has a family-related issue. The second is the girl in the sky. Yukito’s obligation to find this girl is what brings him to Kasumi. Yukito goes there because his job leads him there.
Despite the stereotypical image of being a robot-loving nation, Japan’s work force is very focused on the human side of things. Machines have tunnel-vision. They only see what they are told to. A person is free to look at things from outside the box. Creative thinking is big.
Japan is more reliant on their employees than us western countries are. Ever since the industrial revolution, children have been raised with work and family as the priority. You study hard, get a good job with long hours, you spend a lot of time travelling from place to place, and you take good care of your family. Maybe even find a partner if your family pressure you enough.
Back in 2000, some months before AIR released, the prime minister of Japan, Keizō Obuchi, passed away. His death was attributed to Karōshi (or death from overwork.)
Obuchi spent a lot of his time trying to fix the failing economy throughout the 90s but never did much more than slow the recession down.
Karōshi has been a big thing since the 80s. It’s still a pretty big problem, and it’s one of the many reasons why people are reluctant to have kids. Somehow get housing. Somehow get a daycare. Somehow avoid working overtime every week while remaining a good employee. Somehow afford to get the child delivered, then pay for childcare and checkups regularily. There’s a reason why I respect Naoyuki from Clannad as much as I do!
Chances are, if you are a single parent/carer like many of the characters in AIR, you are going to spend more time working than seeing your family.
So here we are, the year 2000. Overworking is a problem. The economy is a problem. Parenthood is a problem. Life is stressful to say the least.
In comes Yukito - a travelling showman who barely manages to get by. His mother has passed away so. His whole life is about being a showman, and looking for the girl in the sky. His life isn’t as stressful. He just follows his goal, and holds up a fitting job.
Luckily he comes from a magical bloodline, and so he has a bit of an advantage with his work. Unfortunately that power gets weaker and weaker as the generations pass.
So the magical Yukito ends up in the Kamio household. He gets a glimpse at what family life is like for these people.
Misuzu doesn’t appear to attend school very often. She doesn’t see her mother very often. A country known for it’s hard-working family-loving people has someone like Misuzu in it. Something isn’t right here…
The Mother finally shows up! A woman who works all day, and drinks alone all night. She spends her life working to help her family… family she barely even gets to speak to.
Yukito relies on these two as he continues to try and find work. He eventually becomes so focused on work that he loses sight of his goal, and lets the problem of the girl in the sky continue for future generations.
So how does all of this fit together?
Yukito lived without a society to reinforce a work-focused upbringing. The only obligation he had was to get to his goal - the girl in the sky.
In the common route Yukito gets surrounded by a mother who works hard, and a daughter who suffers because of it. The focus on work gets to Yukito, and he passes up his goal to focus hard on work.
If he just followed his goal, he may have been able to fix the problem. Instead he dumped it on future generations that will have a weaker houjutsu.
Houjutsu’s power started to decline as generations passed. The Japanese economy started to decline as generations passed.
By focusing on work instead of focusing on the problem, workers are throwing their troubles onto future generations that will have a weaker economy and will have to work even harder to solve said troubles.
Of course, the common route is the one in which Yukito loses focus of his goal and switches to a focus on work. With only the common route to talk about, the theory is incomplete. There is more to this theory for future routes~ Soooo… To Be Continued.
Have you never seen the anime either???
Best get those tissues ready
This was really interesting! I’d never thought about that in this context before!
This was actually one of my favorite parts of the common route. (by favorite I mean most interesting - not happy that it was happening).
Misuzu never really getting a chance to see her mother Although this is a huge part of the plot later on and still managing to keep a smile on her face.
But one of Haruko’s best scenes in the common route is where she is just drinking and Yukito looks over at her and thinks how now she is drinking and laughing and having fun with him, but before how many long nights and years has she just been drinking alone till the wee hours of the morning night after night after night.
I think the theme of poverty is really important and portrayed very well in AIR in showing how not it affects a family. With the Kamio TV being old and you having to wiggle the antenna to get it to work right to them having one little fan to keep the house cool, and just from seeing their house there really isn’t a lot. And this theme of poverty only continues to grow stronger as you get deeper into Misuzu’s route and especially during the Air arc.
I like your theory. I especially like how you apply it to Yukito’s situation.
However, Haruko’s situation is a bit different from the regular japanese family involved in overworking. You see, the stereotypical Japanese family has the father working all day and the mother left to take care of the children and be a housewife. It’s a very patriarchal society, and even now, women have a hard time struggling to get a decent job.
As we all can see, Haruko is a single mother struggling to raise Misuzu. In a patriarchal society like that, women don’t have it easy. Actually, it seems it is pretty common in Japan for single mothers to fall below the poverty line (http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201409090005).
This patriarchal society explains many things, actually. Why their house is in a somewhat sorry state-of-affairs; why Haruko has to work the afternoon shift, and so on. And I think these factors contribute heavily to Haruko’s relationship with Misuzu. I’ll touch about that more in the podcast, trust me 
I don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but if Haruko had a regular working schedule, then he would have the time to spend with Misuzu. She might not even resort to drinking alone, but instead, choose to spend that time with Misuzu.
So yes, this does seem to touch on the problem with the labor system of Japan, but it isn’t entirely all about simply being overworked. The patriarchal system, I wager, also contributes to it.
Yes, this will end up focusing on single-parents. AIR is set in Kami in the Kochi Prefecture, a place with a high amount of single-parent households. You see multiple people in this situation in AIR, however all of them manage with it differently.
The common route only has so much in it, so I had to limit my example to only Haruko~
A lot of the situations in AIR are related to the setting. Not many people around, seemingly close-knit community where a single dog can become famous, high amounts of old people and single parents, small clinic run by a family instead of a hospital, and of course all of the characters knowing each other and guiding Yukito around.
Once again, please don’t spoiler-tag things without giving some indication of what you’re spoiling.
Oh god, that’s gonna be tricky… The spoiler is it’s self a spoiler…
I’ll just remove it.
I was wondering about this. How’d you figure that out? XD
