Shining Tears X Wind

Information of Anime

In Tatsumi Town, students from a certain school are disappearing mysterious.  During this time, Kaito Kiriya has visions of a girl with pointy ears telling him about another world.  The student council finds a book about End Earth.  A mysterious cat girl named Mao comes from Realm Earth to this world in search for a person named Zero.  Souma Akizuki & Touka Kureha gets suck into Realm Earth by accident by Mao.  In search for a way to return back to their world, Souma & Kureha gets involved in Realm Earth's war.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story focuses on the End Earth war between races while demons from another dimension are invading this world.  Souma, a Soul Blader & Kureha, the person who provides the Soul Blader her Sword of the Heart, joins one side when learning about that race's civilization's problems.  Along the way, they meet up with Kiriya & Reia Hiruda who joins the opposite side with Kiriya as a Soul Blader.  Hearing that side of the story, Souma & Kureha leave the race they were supporting with Kureha left in Kiriya & Hiruda's care.  Alone, Souma travels Realm Earth as he learns about other races' views of the war & meeting with his missing friends.  Most of the story is focused on Souma's view as Zero selects him to be the protector of End Earth.  Souma didn't know what his role was until he saw the world with his own eyes & tries to stop Trihart & Kiriya from fighting against each other.  They managed to open their eyes when the dark elf lord released his dark powers.  At this point, Kiriya & Souma's party join forces to get rid of this dark power.

In the next arc, Souma learns about Weiss Ritter & becomes their proxy leader until their current leader Mao rejoins them.  Despite Zero helping Souma out & educating him about his past, he disappears & reappears in the story a lot.  With Souma & Kiriya's parties joining forces, they go to the elf kingdom to save the capture Trihart from Killrain who tries to activate the sacred treasure containing the Dark Lord, Elfarin, in making the land filled with darkness.  Although they save Trihart from feeling his Soul Blader dark energy to the sacred treasure, it's too late as Elfarin awakes & consumes Killrain's body & soul.

To defeat the dark lord, Trihart tells Souma & Kiriya that they need the Ultimate Soul Blade, aka Holy Grail, to take Elfarin down.  Once Kiriya & Souma find their Holy Grail (Souma's is from Kiriya, giving some slight yaoi action), the trio manage to defeat Elfarin with ease once they combine their Holy Grail powers & hearts into it.  Afterwards, they seal the sacred treasure with their Holy Grails & peace is restored to End Earth temporary.  Once they learn how to return to their world using the Holy Grail's powers into a certain lake, only Kiriya, Reia, & Kureha return while Killhart stays to restore the elf forest & Souma stays with Mao & continue Weiss Ritter's mission to restore peace.  This is how the show ends.

My Personal Review

Shining Tears X Wind is based on Sega's popular Shining game series.  Although I don't know about the Shining world, I jump in just for the old fantasy world theme.

Animation

The character designs are unique.  Each character has their own facial feature & structure that makes them stand out from other characters.  However, they are quite flat.  This is probably because of the shading.

The backgrounds are okay.  It's got some details, but very simple looking.

The colours are on the dull bright side.  The use of the colours isn't very well done as they make things look flat.  The shading is quite poor which explains the flat appearance.

In terms of the animation movement, it's mainly realistic.  However, there are noticeable problems with the movements as you can see some missing & choppy frames.  This is noticeable when you are given a far view distance of characters walking.

Sound

The sound effects are on the realistic side.  They are pretty clear & nicely cued.

The seiyuus here are ok.  They play their roles pretty well & the cast lineup is strong.  Many of the seiyuus are quite big in the anime industry due to their role in many popular anime shows.

The music is ballads & orchestras mainly.  However, they don't set the mood of the show well as they aren't noticeable.  I don't realize at times that there is music in the background.

Story

The story follows Souma's side as he gets most of the facts & information of all the races in End Earth.  Having knowledge from all sides, he gets some character development along the way by losing a bit of his self pride.  But in the end, it doesn't really change much.  The pace of the show is pretty fast.  There are some characters that jump in pretty quickly with very brief introductions & there are times where appear out of nowhere in another location very fast.  The cast of characters is quite large for a crossover, but not very much.  But, you get some characters popping out of nowhere with very little intros.  People that have play the games will probably pick them up quickly compare to people like me with no background of the series.  We can be struggling to figure out who these people are.

The crossover idea of the two Shining games is unknown to me.  I don't know if it's just to use the characters from the two games or combining their stories into one.  It could also be a new unique story for the Shining world.  I really can't comment on this since I haven't played any of the Shining games or know much about them.  But it seems that Souma plays a bigger role here as the Shining Wind game focused more on Kiriya.

The ending of the show is complete as a lot of loose ends are tied up.  However, the way it ends is too quick.  The heroes defeated the main boss too easily & the last episode focus heavily on the aftermath of the event on what everyone is doing.  It's nice that the writers did it this way, but it's a bit on the dry side as it feels like it's dragging or watching the middle of the show again.

Overall Conclusion

Shining Tears X Wind isn't a bad show to watch.  Fans from the Shining series would watch this.  People new to the series can pick this up easily.  The story is interesting at the start, but it goes a bit downhill as the show progresses.

Shining Tears X Wing gets a six out of ten.  The storyline did caught my attention & the character development of Souma raised my interest.  However, it was a bit disappointing to see how fast the show moved & how things pop out of nowhere quickly.  Although the ending is fulfilling & complete, it's not very entertaining to watch as it feels very stretched out & long.

Last updated on January 16, 2008