Air - Episode 9 - The End of Kanna's Dream

air-ep9-scr1 — Mother, don't leave me! 🙁

It was nearly a year since I have watched Air. The reason I left the show collect dust for the reason of being occupied on other Anime. It was not until recently that I started where I left off because Flak was taunting me by trying to spoil the ending for me. This is probably an incentive to complete the remaining 4 episodes I haven’t seen yet so I can write a final review on it.

As you notice, this is the end of the Summer Arc, thus ending Kanna’s dream. I have previously reviewed Air in Summer, which was relatively lighthearted with Kanna going tsundere on Ryuya. However, this episode was pretty heartbreaking to me when I watched Kanna’s mother gradually pass away from her injuries. Soon after, Kanna gets eternally cursed from the monks in trying to protect Ryuya and Uraha from the enemy forces. In a way, this scene felt like a tragedy, especially for Kanna since she was so innocent; she just wanted to live together with Ryuya and Uraha for the rest of their lives.

To start their journey in breaking the curse, Ryuya and Uraha goes to the temple to learn the history, magic and how to break the curse on Kanna. This scene is important to understand the suffering that Misuzu is going through. A wing being inherits the planet’s dreams from previous generation and has mysterious powers. However, they are viewed negatively and used against people for war. This is probably explains why her mother does not want Kanna to come in contact with her.

Another explanation on why Misuzu mysteriously breaks down when she becomes too close to someone. The reason can be traced back to the curse on Kanna. When Ryuya and Uraha went into Kanna’s dream, Kanna felt that everyone had left her alone. In addition to that one curse, there were other curses that were placed on her. Once of them being someone for whom they get close to her or the reincarnated self will gradually die and the cycle repeats. That is pretty grim and adds to the tragedy. Since they know that Ryuya isn’t going to make it after a year, they needed offspring and teach them all the knowledge and magic to help continue their efforts on breaking the curse,

In my opinion, this had to be the second tragic arc in the story. I enjoyed Kanna’s personality not because she is a tsundere, but she felt so sweet. Even if it was sad, Yukito needs to finally break the curse with his second chance so they can live a happy life… or is it since I heard that the ending is bittersweet (Don’t spoil it if you know the ending!).

Next Episode is the Sky arc… as you can tell by the black crow.