Oh hey, double (triple?) episode of Air Crush Investigaytions. Thoughts:
Vol. 3: This series continues to grow more intriguing with each chapter, deepening and dyeing characters and themes in each others' hues, blurring and bending like light in flight, painting what-ifs on feather-brushed skies, and I am just loving it. Sometimes you get these wonderful stories that unite themes and aesthetics so profoundly that you can nearly taste a message's meaning, feel thoughts and reflections and art-dipped ideas thrum and drip across rivers of paint and text, and this is very definitely one of them, conjuring wintry gasps and hot flushes in contemplations upon freedom, singing cloud-strips to garland an elegy to childhood dreams, thatching nests with weavings of service and purpose, awash in humming exegesis of its own melodies. Shizuki soars in tandem with her shadow, painting herself with every wing-beat, particles of mineral dyes too tiny to see dotting the trails she sweeps down the blue, a reminder of heaven-fixed roots in glory, and yet also brambles that nettle her loftiest arcs. Paradoxically fitting, then, that she find refuge in branches, in perching-places, in cozy beds of leaves and ferns where the warmth of life can outshine the glare of the sun, Kureha's flame thawing a heart chilled by altitude, yet melting also those wings of wax that are both her flight and her fall. The chasm between her confinement, pressured into a gem with no choice but perfection, and Kureha's devotion, a purpose she writes upon her body to connect the symbol within, slowly erodes and unites, just as the sky in medleys of dawn and dusk, giving them salvation in witching hours, a place to descend for those granted and gaoled by the skies. There is no name for the passion ensuing, no brand that may impose upon it an obligation or deception, and in these heavens so contested and cartographed, they create in each other's arms a new space, a tender pocket untouched by seasons, unbound by treasons. I adore my birb daughters. Also, Amakake seems... kinda cool? I'd been apprehensive about her whole touchy-feely teacher schtick in the first chapter, but fortunately the author seems to be taking her in the himbo-princess direction for now, and she absolutely rocks the whole jock-schemer, I-crush-celestial-empires-within-the-curls-of-my-bicep vibe. Hope she gets to stir some cyclonic degrees of shit.
Vol. 4: Okay, so this was a very plot-oriented chapter in various ways and I'm mostly here for the brooding, meditative flight sequences and the flashy splashes of worldbuilding; I will say that the tidbits about the human conspiracies and the badass seasonal abilities (there's probably a metaphor there about the transient-yet-recurring nature of rulers) were damn cool, even if the author had to wrap stuff up early for practical reasons. I do hope we see more in this universe, whether as more doujins or the promised VN, because I continue to be enchanted by its messy-yet-layered profusions of ideas and imagery, its windswept, horizon-striding characters and ever-deepening and turning setting-spaces. Also, damn do the future versions of these (g)avians have drip- I would give a hand if the other could wear Kureha's murder-opera glove, and Shizuki's hair ornament is so pretty? I'm praying we someday get stories of these two as adults navigating political intrigue and a long-term relationship like the author intended.
Extra Chapter- On the Nocturnal Behaviors of the Mountain Tit: I see that Komera's carrying on the long tradition of multi-route VNs with jarringly introduced and oddly narrated H-scenes. I'm just going to assume that the amusingly awkward likening of a boob to an orb is an in-character extension of Shizuki's fondness for all things mineral, gemmed and bejeweled. Centuries later when she's a legendary figure in tengu history, historians will pore over her memoirs and engage in lengthy debates about the symbolic meaning of the numerous descriptions of orbs, beads and veins scattered throughout her narration of life in the palace. All in a day's (night's?) work for our erogay protagonist, I guess.
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