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Visual Arts/Key's AIR Visual Novel Gets Steam Release in English on March 5
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The release will include retouched HD visuals and CG coloring, and will also include the side story novel "First Sky Chapter" in visual novel format.
The Windows PC version of AIR has previously not had Japanese audio, but the Steam version will have "full voice support." The cast includes:
- Hikaru Midorikawa as Yukito Kunisaki
- Tomoko Kawakami as Misuzu Kamio
- Asami Okamoto as Kano Kirishima
- Ryōka Yuzuki as Minagi Tohno
- Aya Hisakawa as Haruko Kamio
- Yumi Touma as Hijiri Kirishima
- Yukari Tamura as Michiru
- Chinami Nishimura as Kannabi-no-Mikoto
- Kikuko Inoue as Uraha
- Nobutoshi Canna as Ryuya
The game will also be playable on Steam Deck, and is compatible with DualSense, DualShock 4, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch Pro controllers.
Visual Arts/Key released the original adult visual novel on the PC in 2000, and shipped an all-ages version in 2001. The visual novel has since been ported to the Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and iOS/Android devices. Prototype published a port for PlayStation Vita in 2016, which introduced the spinoff novel "Hatsuzora no Shō" (New Year's Sky Chapter), which focuses on Kanna and Uraha, and how they first met. A port for Switch released in September 2021.
Prototype describes the game's story:
In the town where summer has arrived, only two children stand to watch a young puppeteer's show. To his audience, his art is too boring. Losing interest, the children leave.The young man is a traveler with only two companions on his journey: An old doll that walks without being touched, and a distant promise forced upon him by those who hold "power." With the sights of summer surrounding him, the days pass by. Again and again, he meets girls bathed in the sunlight. The summer continues on and on forever underneath the blue sky.
The girl waits in the air.
In 2005, Kyoto Animation produced a 13-episode television anime series based on the visual novel, and Toei Animation produced an anime film in the same year.
