Sakura-Con 2023

Ayaka: A Story of Bonds and Wounds Screening

ANN's coverage of Sakura-Con sponsored by Yen Press!

At Sakura-Con 2023, Crunchyroll screened several premieres. Although most of them were of current premieres or movies set to be released shortly, one was the first episode of Ayaka: A Story of Bonds and Wounds, a TV anime scheduled to air in July 2023. The episode was headed by a short introduction from the director Nobuyoshi Nagayama addressed to… Anime Frontier, where the episode first screened back in December. Awkward!

The anime was created by GoRA, a collaboration of several manga artists and light novelists who created the series K in 2012, and King Records. Nagayama described the series as having a lot of action using traditional Japanese imagery.

The story of AYAKA actually sounds pretty cool when I try to describe it. Years ago, a pair of young boys escaped a volcanic eruption on a small island while people in traditional-ish Japanese clothing fought to stem the destruction with their superpowers. Years later, one of those boys, Yukito Yanagi, grew up in foster care on the mainland. Now that he's graduating middle school, he's being called back to Ayaka Island, where his father's friends will take over his guardianship.

The problem? The guy here to pick him up, Jingi Sagawa, is a total douchebag, surrounded by empty Chuhai cans and wearing wraparound shades. When Yukito objects to leaving with him, Jingi tosses him in a river and throws a suitcase down at him, which snaps shut in a way reminiscent of the Discworld series' Luggage. Yukito emerges on a boat taking him to the rural second island of Ayaka, where his new guardians pick him up and explain that his father was a powerful Ley Master, aka someone with superpowers. Ayaka is full of supernatural beings, including creatures called Mitama.

Jingi notices that Yukito is holding everyone at arm's length, and Yukito explains that as a child, he accidentally used his powers on the bullies in foster care. To prevent accidents from happening, he stopped getting close to anyone so he wouldn't get annoyed. Jingi annoys him, Yukito goes out to cool his head, and they get attacked by a malicious Ara Mitama; Yukito defeats it with his water powers, blah blah.

It has a solid enough concept for a fun action series, but boy, was the execution lacking. The animation had that strange, dull gloss that tends to mark low-budget productions in an attempt to disguise poor coloring and compositing. The animation was stiff and lifeless, and the character writing lacked any charm. Yukito and Jingi bickered constantly, but it was hard to care at all because neither was remotely interesting or likable.

It's almost impressive how stiff the animation was. Water powers are cool! We've known for years that, handled well, water is one of the most beautiful, versatile, and dynamic of the elemental powers. You would not guess that all from watching AYAKA, where it just splashes around and makes waves. The staging and framing completely lacks any dynamism, whether in dialogue scenes or action. It was just a snoozefest.

Every season, there are dozens of action anime, and unless they're a big Shonen Jump series, they really need to do something special to set themselves apart. AYAKA has nothing going for it.