Sara Talks Anime

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Do you ever wish you could help people in some far away world with an issue there because you were actually from that world, and as a result, have powers that can help out? How about meeting other people with those powers to help you hone yours, even if you can’t exactly control yours yet?

If the answer is yes, then you may enjoy AYAKA.

After an attack on the Ayaka Islands, Jingi is forced to evacuate Yukito to the main land as per the instructions in the will. Skip forward to after Yukito graduated middle school, he’s gotta be taken back as per the instructions in the will. And now, with help from Jingi, Yukito is learning how to be a Ley Master, who can do cool stuff with his powers…like control water! …that’s all we’ve seen Yukito do with his powers in the first three episodes so far, but, hey! The other characters do cool stuff!

So, yeah, Ley Masters can utilize Ley Energy from the world…but what exactly do they do aside from training? That’s probably the question weighing on your mind right now.

The answer is simple: help take care of Ara-Mitamas, either by purifying them back into mitamas, or by exterminating them. And if you’re curious, mitamas are basically made of ley energy or something, and ara-mitamas are corrupted mitamas. But with the fact that there’s two methods to take care of ara-mitamas, I’m getting the vibe that the story is meant to comment on the fact that no mater what we do, evil will exist. While some people will try to get the evil to change to good, others may try to eliminate the evil altogether. Or maybe I’m thinking too much about this. I don’t know.

I like how the ara-mitamas are animated. While they do have that “CGI graphics in a 2D enviornment” look…I think it actually works for them. They’re not supposed to exist in that form, so the decision to use CGI instead of 2D animation makes sense for them.

As for the music…I mean, the themes are good enough to be used as theme songs for an anime, though I’m not going to actively seek them out.

Something that I hope does get talked about in the series, however, is the whole “ayakastic” thing. Like, is this some cultural thing that we (aka the viewer and Yukito) don’t understand three episodes in? Is this some inside joke at our expense? Or is it just the writer(s) trying to be hip with the kids? I HOPE we get an answer at some point in the series. Because not knowing what this means is killing me!

The characters are also enjoyable, and it’s nice to see how some of them have different views on how to solve the same problem. Like I already pointed out, I know. I haven’t looked at any reviews for this show yet (going to avoid doing that for as long as I can), but I plan on continuing to watch this show to get the answers to questions that I have (both that I’ve already brought up and that I’m still keeping under wraps) that were not answered within the first three episodes.

AYAKA is simulcast on Crunchyroll, and is available in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States.