Nina Viento’s history is revealed, as Kal and Claire find themselves under attack.
What they Say:
“Episode 5 – The Girl Who Calls the Wind”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers).
After being in the midst of their journey for four months, the group of students is starting to look like a troupe of real pilots. Their command of their vehicles and weaponry has improved greatly. Soon they’ll be approaching the Holy Spring itself, and they need to be physically and mentally ready to do so. They spend a warm day training at the beach, and after the day is done several of the students stay behind to play in the water and have fun. Even Claire joins in. While many of the other students return to town, their group sets up camp and makes dinner. While gathering firewood, Kal and Claire are separated from the group and become lost, but are interrupted before any romantic moment can take root. Left alone under the starry sky, Kal remembers how he was essentially exiled to Isla in lieu of becoming a political tool. Now he begins to question his feelings towards Nina Viento and his purpose there.
Nina (or Claire) herself feels abandoned by her home country, just a doll that’s no longer needed. For as long as she could remember, she had the ability to control the wind. Despised as a witch, she was driven out of town and eventually sold as collateral to a money lender. Discovered by a priest, she was heralded as originating from the same power as St. Aldista. She served a role in the rebellion, but as she got older she lost the ability to control the wind. Offered the opportunity to fly on Isla, she takes it. Claire takes on her persona as Nina Viento since she has no other place, but her recollection of Kal, or Karl la Hire as she first encountered him as, weighs on her.
It affects her during a practice dogfight, and Kal still isn’t sure to make of her behavior. Eventually, though, the two band together again and pull through. It’s happens to be just in time, because they come under attack from the Sky Clan, the protectors of the Holy Spring.
Now that we’re a bit more informed on Claire’s backstory (though not as illuminated as I would have hoped, sadly), it’s interesting to start drawing parallels between her character arc and Kal’s. Both characters were young people swept up in the tides of history, taken in or manipulated by adults who desired to further their own goals. Both Claire and Kal, in their former lives at least, looked at one-another as an enemy even without really knowing each-other. Both suffered in exile. And, probably most importantly, both were sent away on this deadly errand, seemingly for the benefit of everyone else who wouldn’t have to factor them into rival political machinations any longer. Though their personalities at first seem very dissimilar, their mirrored histories probably provide enough of a connection to foster the romantic tension that’s shown up from time-to-time already.
I can’t help but think, though, that Kal seems like more of a complete person at this point than Claire does. He’s ostensibly the main character even though I get the feeling that the intention was to share the burden between him and Claire. His personality seems more full and there’s been a lot more time spent on his particular story. Claire, perhaps as an effect of her more quiet nature and her existence on the periphery of the other characters’ lives due to her curfews and hidden identity, just doesn’t feel as complete to me. With several episodes left to go I hope that there’s more to come in terms of her character development, because I just don’t think I can fully buy into the romance and conflict between her and Kal if there isn’t.
With Isla’s proximity to the Holy Spring and the introduction of the Sky Clan at the end of this episode, it seems to me that the “training arc” might finally be winding down and that there might be a little more action lined up for the characters to deal with. I’m not one to decry character drama as a perfectly valid way to explore a story, but with such an interesting fantasy world and the strong focus on powered flight as a common unifier between the main characters, I think it’s high time that there was a little action and some actual dogfights. Encounters with actual danger, in essence.
In Summary:
It was satisfying for Claire to receive a little bit of character development, especially after the plot twist last week. It’s nice to see that the backstory in which both she and Kal were involved wasn’t by any means one-sided and that in some sense she was as much a victim as he was as the rebellion got out of control. On the other hand, her story is still the lesser of the two, and I think she deserved more singular focus before all is said and done. Romance stories are about couples, and when one member of the couple isn’t as fully fleshed-out as the other, the imbalance can be very obvious and irritating. I’m excited for what the next episode will bring and I’m hoping for things to pick up somewhat, but if it comes at the expense of the characters it will only end up being frustrating.
Episode Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: Acer P235H 1080p LCD Monitor connected via DVI input, Logitech S220 2.1 Speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
