Yukikaze’s smart story and high-tech, sci-fi, aerial-combat may attract fans Top Gun and The Right Stuff to The X-Files.

Yukikaze. V.1, Danger Zone. V.2
OAV series (5 episodes) 2002-2004 Director: Masahiko Ohkura. V.1, 2 episodes/74 minutes (+ 30 minutes of extras). Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Limited edition: $39.98. Distributor: Bandai Entertainment.

Bandai Visual, the Japanese entertainment megacorp, commissioned the GONZO Digimation studio to produce this Bandai home-video 20th anniversary five-episode OAV series in “the latest cutting edge computer animation.” GONZO is known for producing excellent animation even if it has to run way behind schedule to do it right. That seems to be what is happening here; the releases of the first four episodes of Sento Yosei Yukikaze (Battle Fairy Yukikaze) have been stretched out in Japan from August 25, 2002; February 25 and August 22, 2003; to April 23, 2004. The release date of the final OAV has not been announced yet.

This air combat/sci-fi drama is heavy on very realistic in-the-cockpit visuals that give the impression of an actual fighter-pilot training display (or an exceptionally realistic videogame). The setting is a military community on an Earthlike alien planet, Fairy. 33 years earlier, alien monsters from Fairy tried to invade Earth through a hyperspace passage. Earth beat the aliens back through the passage, established a beachhead on their world, and has been fighting there ever since. The human community that has grown there is heavily dominated by an Air Force mission and mentality

Like many troops in the field, they feel more in touch what is really going on than their distant commanders (back on Earth). They also have mixed feelings about the latest experimental artificial intelligence technology being added to their fighter planes’ computerized controls. Some welcome anything that may increase their chances of survival, while others resent that their superiors may be using them as expendable guinea pigs.

Jack Bukhar and Rei Fukai are the pilot and co-pilot of the Boomerang Squadron’s plane B-3, the Yukikaze (snowwind). Bukhar is a normal fighter jock while Fukai is a loner, introspective to the point of surliness. Despite this, they have become close friends. Bukhar is eventually promoted to a command position and Fukai becomes the unit’s top pilot. Fukai is not interested in promotion out of his fighter’s cockpit; he is developing an obsessive fondness for the Yukikaze that makes Bukhar increasingly nervous. Fukai thinks the Yukikaze’s latest AI upgrades have given it awareness and that it talks to him.

Is Fukai is becoming unstable? Is this making him a worse, or better pilot? Could it be true? If so, could the Yukikaze’s intelligence be a scientific accident, or a Top Secret experiment that he is not supposed to be aware of? Could it even be a new type of stealthy attack by the aliens to infiltrate the humans’ defenses?

Yukikaze may not have the CGI-level animation of The Animatrix, but it is still extremely impressive. The GONZO crew has crafted an intelligent story that plays to their technical strengths; a good-buddy high-tech sci-fi aerial-combat drama that will appeal to fans of movies ranging from Top Gun and The Right Stuff to The X-Files. But fans will have to wait for the series’ completion. This American DVD vol. 1 contains only the first two episodes (47 and 27 minutes), although there are lots of extras. There is no telling when the second DVD with the final three half-hour episodes will be released in America. Vol. 1 comes in both a one-disc standard version and a Limited Edition two-disc version with DTS enhanced CGI.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment’s The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).