Yukikaze

Original Title: 戦闘妖精雪風
Romanized: Sentou Yousei Yukikaze
Literal: Combat Fairy Yukikaze

Plot Synopsis

When a huge portal opened in Antarctica, the world changed--on the other side was a world that came to be known as Fairy, but also a faceless and relentlessly hostile alien force known as JAM. Decades later, life on earth has changed little, but half-forgotten on the other side of the portal the Fairy Air Force (FAF), composed of humanity's best, fights the JAM in semi-autonomous planes developed to combat the JAM's incredible technology.

Within this force is the SAF, an elite reconnaissance division also known as Boomerang Squadron, who make use of advanced aircraft with AIs capable of detecting JAM. The top ace in the SAF is Lt. Rei Fukai, who trusts his plane Yukikaze more than he trusts the humans who built it, more even than James, the loyal comrade whose painful duty it is to send him out time and again to combat the JAM. But what are the JAM, what is their real goal, and why does Rei's fate seem to be part of it?

Quick Review

Rating: 3.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2008-08-16

I'm not quite sure what to make of Yukikaze. On one hand, it's absolutely gorgeous--the aerial combat sequences between the wickedly fast JAM aircraft and the just-the-far-side-of-real human planes are arguably the most spectacular ever put on screen, and the mechanical design and animation is uniformly gorgeous. The drama, as well, is emotionally nuanced and full of multilayered allegory about how those who devote themselves to fighting to protect others distance themselves from that which they risk their lives to protect. On the other hand, the dreamlike setting makes it hard to get emotionally invested in the characters and over-pruning from the source novels leaves the series lacking the setup, background, and backstory that makes the characters' relationships and the how and why of the setting and political story make sense. It's also rather slow at times, though the skilled voice cast does a lot with the taciturn characters and subtle drama.

If you're the sort who goes for vague implications and read-between-the-lines characters, you might well love it, but in the end I can't get past thinking of it as an extraordinarily pretty, somewhat experimental series missing too much substance to get caught up in.

US DVD Review

Yukikaze is available on three individual DVD volumes or a single, much cheaper set. The first individual DVD is also available in a "limited edition" that kicks in a second copy of the disc with DTS sound, plus a Boomerang Squadron patch. Audio is Dolby 5.1 or DTS in both English and Japanese. Extras include a making-of featurette, interviews with the director and voice actors, trailers, and promos, plus a variety of technical and background information that's more necessary to understanding the series than with most.

Blu-Ray: As with the rest of Bandai's Honneamise label Blu-Ray discs, the set's most notable feature is that it's fantastically expensive--list price is $150 and street isn't a whole lot less. That works out to US$30 per episode; even when you factor in the bonus disc, which has an interview with a JDF fighter pilot on the accuracy of the series and a 5-minute "experimental movie" with a bit of extra material, that's still kind of ridiculous for the US market. I assume the "reason" is that the discs are identical to the Japan-release version other than the packaging--the first thing you do when you fire up the disc is select the menu language--but that isn't much of an excuse for paying the same usurious prices as you would for an import.

As for what your money gets you, less than you'd hope. The physical set is beautiful--a very nice, heavy, matte-finish box for the three attractive discs, plus a small, well-illustrated booklet with plenty of technical info, interview text, and such. The video, however, has an old-style 4:3 ratio, not widescreen, with 1080i resolution according to the box (my PS3 output it as 720p). The 4:3 is because the source material wasn't widescreen, either (odd, though it is older), but if you have a high-def TV (and if you don't, why the heck would you buy the blu-ray version?) this of course means that you're watching with black bars on the sides. Likewise, the 1080i means the resolution isn't as big of a step up from DVD as a 1080p version would be, even less since it's 4:3.

This isn't to say the picture isn't pretty--if there are any interlacing artifacts, it wasn't visible on my setup, and the images are sharp, with no noticeable banding in soft coloring and gradients, which the series makes plenty of use of. But, it just doesn't feel right, and more importantly, I'm really not sure how much the extra resolution will be noticeable versus the drastically cheaper DVD version.

The audio consists of bilingual TruHD 5.1 to show off Gonzo's trademark 3D soundtrack. Certainly no complaints there--sounds beautiful to my ears. No uncompressed tracks at all, though.

Since the booklet extras don't amount to anything over the DVD version, this brings it down to the interview and "movie" on the third disc (which is widescreen--there are currently a bunch of screenshots from it on the Japanese website for the set). The interview has no reason for being hi-def (it's just two guys talking on a stage) and the "movie," while it is a step up from the series in that it's widescreen, is only 5 minutes long. It may be intriguing from a story standpoint, but isn't anything more than a teaser for a potential sequel, and the new footage amounts to maybe a couple of minutes (the rest is a very brief recap of the last episode). Certainly not worth getting the set for. The audio on the bonus disc is 2-channel PCM (the short is mostly James narrating, so that's not an issue).

The bottom line here is that while it's the best quality you're going to get Yukikaze in, and the physical end of the box set is quite nice, you'd have to be both a massive fan and incredibly picky about video and sound quality for it to be worth triple the price of the DVD version for marginally improved quality.

Content Guide

Though relatively violent, most of the combat takes place in the air, so there's little blood. There's little else to find specific objection to other than generally mature themes, so I'd call it a 13-up.

Violence: 3 - Apart from a couple of scenes late in the series, the violence is mostly during airborne combat sequences, which are bloodless but intense.

Nudity: 0 - None.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - There are broadly mature themes, but nothing specific.

Language: 2 - Relatively mild language in the subtitles.

Notes and Trivia

Yukikaze is based on a pair of novels of the same name by Chohei Kanbayashi.

"Yukikaze" is a word meaning "wind that brings snow." I've seen it translated as "blizzard" which isn't exactly accurate--the word for "blizzard" is either "fubuki" or "moufubuki," while "yukikaze" has a more gentle connotation.

The Blu-ray release includes a 5-minute bonus "Yukikaze Experimental Movie." It's basically a 5-minute teaser for a sequel (which, as of this writing, doesn't exist). This is a bit of a spoiler if you haven't seen the rest of the series, but it consists of James narrating a brief recap of the last episode, then saying that the JAM are preparing for an invasion; this is backed by some new footage implying that Rei is back along with the JAM (which is entirely possible, given the extra bit after the end credits in the series proper). Interesting, and certainly changes the story's ending, but no more than a teaser.

This has nothing to do with the review, but I found it mildly amusing that the box art has all the hallmarks of shoujo-style prettyboy melodramatic romance. I had seen an episode some time ago, so when a friend commented on the box art I insisted that it was just coincidence, and that the actual series didn't look like that and was more about confusing politics and really pretty dogfights. It indeed doesn't look like that, but my memory was either selective or just plain wrong, because the actual feature is so loaded with ambiguously "Just friends or something more?" overtones it's pretty much impossible to ignore and borders on a Gundam Wing fanfic.

Availability

Available in the US from Bandai on three individual bilingual DVDs, a budget-priced "Anime Legends" box set of the entire series, and a very expensive 3-disc Blu-Ray box set under the Honneamise label. RightStuf carries the Blu-ray set for about $135 and the DVD set for about $35. AnimeNation charges about $120 for the Blu-ray set and $32 for the DVD set. Amazon also has the DVD set, though like most other non-anime retailers they don't generally carry Honneamise Blu-ray releases (though they do have a nifty 1/100 scale model of Yukikaze).

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store