We Without Wings Anime Review

(Adapted from my MAL review)



No matter how much you may want to escape, you cannot fly without wings. Even if you try to deny who you are, you can't change exactly who you are. That being said, this anime came to me as a surprise. I first discovered it from an English-dubbed trailer released by Funimation, and because of it, I expected it to be a nonsensical ecchi. I came for the ecchi and ended up staying for the amazing story that blew my initial expectations right out of the window.

Adapted from the visual novel created by Navel (the company that created Shuffle and Soul Link, two eroge that also got anime adaptations), We Without Wings, known in Japanese as Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai: Under The Innocent Sky (or Oretsuba), is the anime which I will be reviewing today.

We Without Wings centers around three young men. The first one is Takashi Haneda, a high school student who is known in another world (which he frequently "escapes" to) as a hero named Lord Hawk. The second is Shuusuke  Chitose, a freeloader who works several part-time jobs. The third is Hayato Narita, a man who only hangs around at night and is nicknamed "Drac" as a result. The anime focuses on the relationships between these three boys and the girls they respectively encounter..... and we find out later that they have a lot more in common than you would think.

The story is probably the best part of the whole anime. I'll admit that the first few episodes don't make the best impression, but once you really get into the story, it really grips you and refuses to let go. Without trying to spoil anything, I'll just say that it's a wonderful story with a good amount of character development. Speaking of which, there is quite a variety of characters in this anime. While not all of them are completely likable, there are a lot of great characters that really make you feel like you want to know what happens to them.

The animation, done by Nomad, was very solid. Although it wasn't anything too groundbreaking, it was very nice animation. I watched the English dub, and I can say that the voice actors did a pretty good job. What do you expect, though? After all, it WAS Funimation that dubbed it! The opening and ending themes, which respectively are "Spread Wings" by Aki Misato and "NEVERLAND" by Miyuki Hashimoto, were also quite nice to listen to.

Overall, We Without Wings is a pretty good anime. If you can have some patience for the first few episodes, I suggest you watch it for the great story it has. I can only hope this way that the world may know peace!

Grade: B

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