- Hawk, falcon, eagle, and...
Listen to this a little longer...
about those with flightless wings...
We, Without Wings: Under the Innocent Sky starts in Yanagihara City, where three stories playing out in parallel. The first is Takashi Haneda, who has to deal with his little sister Kobato and Asuka Watarai, his girlfriend...maybe, all while dreaming of a fantasy land called Gretagard. The second is Shusuke Chitose, a freeter who's pals with Karuo Karube, the bartender at Alexander, a restaurant where he's in an unsteady relationship with a fellow employee, Hiyoko Tamaizumi. The third is Hayato Narita, who's captured the attention of Naru Ootori, younger sister of his acquaintance Kakeru, who's looking for her bike. What do these three have in common? Overseen by the mysterious DJ Condor, a story begins.
Originally a Visual Novel by Navel (SHUFFLE!, Soul Link), We, Without Wings, was adapted into an anime in April 2011.
The anime can be legally viewed at Crunchyroll here
and on Funimation's Youtube.
Tropes associated with this show include:
- Actor Allusion: UNIVEEERRRRRRRRRS-*cut off. Not said by the man himself though.
- He finally says it in episode 8.
- Adorably Precocious Child: Haneda Youji, who Itami Karura addresses as "dad", who has been sitting away from any action for a long time due to his Angst Coma.
- Alice Allusion: Down the Rabbit Hole: The Alice of this series is an Elegant Gothic Lolita trying to learn Japanese with a Token Black as her parental figure.
- Alliterative Title: The official English title is We, Without Wings.
- All Just a Dream: It is revealed that the Gretagard sequences are this. You could consider the "Castle in the Sky" as one, but there's a special reason why it applies.
- Anime Accent Absence: Averted since a few characters have heavy accents.
- Antenna Hair: All four of the main girls.
- Art Shift: Occasionally, episodes will transition to a different art style than the one shown, most often a still of the background in Deliberately Monochrome. Episode 12 runs with this, but makes crayon drawings horrifying.
- Ax-Crazy: Garuda Darkblack, also known as Itami Karura. He's the fourth personality.
- Badass Bystander: Hayato is this compared to the two groups fighting each other.
- Black Dude Dies First: Averted with Martinez, Hayato's friend. He's also not the first person to get shot either, although he's the only one with a serious enough wound to be taken away by an ambulance. He survives the shooting, and can be seen in later episodes doing okay.
- Book Ends: The first
omake has the main girls in love with the main character, all trying to grab his interest. The ending shows all of the same girls falling for the Haneda's personalities. It's the exact same animation, but with slightly different dialogue. - Cast of Snowflakes: There are a lot of named characters. In fact, the OP shows off every major character. It gets to a punny extent when new characters are introduced via a snowflake animation.
- Catchphrase: May peace prevail in the world. Turns into a Madness Mantra when Hayato gets a Grand Theft Me courtesy of Itami Karura.
- Censor Box: Done as a "'Caution!"' tape rolling across the screen to cover up everything mostnote of the time.
- The Chew Toy: Despite being the badass of the three personalities, something always happens to Hayato.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Asuka is one after finding out that Haneda has three personalities as seen in the 10th episode.
- Most of the major girls display hints of this as well throughout the series.
- Close-Call Haircut: Naru Otori experiences this when the guy Hayato confronted at the cafe shot the both of them.
- The Comically Serious: KARURA
- Dark and Troubled Past: The Reveal in Episode 12. This trope alone is what sets off this episode off from all of the others.
- Deadpan Snarker: Hayato can only just snark at the Fanservice unloaded at him.
- Defeat Means Friendship: When Hayato puts the beat down on Bishop, some of his former gang members decide to help him out finding Naru's missing bike.
- Dirty Old Man: The bartender. Younger than most examples but still qualifies.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Played for ridiculously awesome laughs when we are are shown Shuusuke's wound being taken care of by Hiyoko. We are only shown a small area, and every time she's healing his wound, the anime focuses on it with a special animation and a subtitle declaring This may or may not be a wound. and Shuusuke blushing and groaning as if he was having sex.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Takashi
- Earn Your Happy Ending: And how. The first few episodes seem disjointed and confusing, but if you can manage to get through them, it starts to make sense.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita/Alice Allusion: Alice.
- Evil Laugh: Itami Karura shares this with Kakeru. "You're the best, amigo."
- Fictional Counterpart: Wing Quest is a fairly obvious pastiche of Dragon Quest.
- This trope is apparently
as accurate as you can get when comparing the dream world and it's real counterpart Wing Quest. All of the dreams are fake, since they were based on the game Haneda played as a child, and translated to one of his personalities.
- This trope is apparently
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Karura thinking that he can interact with a snowman promptly beats it up!
- Five Lines, Overflow: By reading the description at the top, you would assume that all of these "timelines" are all separate from each other, which they are. That's not the point here: all of the timelines are done at different points of the same day, by the same person. That "Gretagard" sequence, however, is fake.
- Genki Girl: Naru, and Miyako at times.
- Genre-Busting: It gets hard to classify this after Episode 4. Episode 7 shoves that in a cake and throws it out the window. Episode 12 is completely different from everything else.
- Gratuitous English <-> Gratuitous Japanese: One of the rare justifications for both tropes. Alice is trying to learn Japanese, but, as noted by Hayato, her grammar is still off. Over the course of the anime, she improves.
- Heroic BSoD: Takashi after finding out that Gretagard doesn't exist. This leads him into an Angst Coma and it takes Asuka to beat it out of him. While the three other personalities including Karura get beaten up!
- Hot Springs Episode: The OVA included with Oretsuba R. The episode is titled "90% Increase in Skin", and they are not kidding.
- Hotter and Sexier: Let's just say without that Censor Steam in episode 8, they pulled off a Yosuga no Sora on us. With the same seiyuu to boot!
- I Work Alone: Hayato tries to invoke this trope, but unfortunately for him, Naru, and later a lot of the gang members help him look for her bike, whether he wants them to or not.
- Large Ham: Itami Karura and Kakeru Otori embody this trope so much.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Episode 7.
- Meganeko: Hiyori herself wears one, complete with attempts at Fanservice for Hayato, which only work for the viewer.
- Mêlée à Trois: What happens when Hayato attempts to stop a Mob War before it gets brutal. He ends up almost fighting against the leaders, before the leaders decide to retreat.
- Mob War: YFB and R-Wings are pretty much this.
- Motor Mouth: Miyako in episode 9, for quite a while. She does it again in episode 12. A far cry from her original quiet persona.
- Ms. Fanservice: In-Series Nickname for Hiyoko in the Omake in the beginning episode 7, since she had the most panty shots.
- Mundane Made Awesome:
- R2001 of the YFB has raps for his normal speech.
- Throwing cakes on the streets! Double points for Karura actually declaring that it's war!
- Explaining what an Imouto Moe is has never been as Serious Business as this.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The omakes. They combine several genres together (even though all of them are Fanservice), but have no relation to the plot. They could easily be made into their own series. For example, 108 Hot Teachers fighting off against each other using their teaching utensils to teach a class?!
- No Social Skills: Karura
- Omake: The two minutes of pre-credits action is not part of the main story; each one is a completely different genre of anime. That does not mean the omakes aren't important, since they act as Foils to the main story.
- Pool Scene: That serves no other purpose other than Fanservice.
- The Reveal: Gretagard was a place on an old video game named Wing Quest.
- Rule of Symbolism: The use of TVs to change the channel. The constant hints of parallel lives. The numerous allusions to birds.
- Serious Business: Karura takes stuff way too seriously
- Shout-Out: DJ Condor: UNIVERRRRRRRRS-*cut off*
- There seem to be several Gundam shout-outs throughout the series.
- Episode 10 had Karuo do a Newtype Flash in the style of UC Gundam as he communicated, (Telepathically) with Eriko, who herself did one in the style of a Gundam X Newtype.
- Episode 11 has what can be seen as a Love-Love Colony Drop.
- Before going Motor Mouth, Miyako is a lot more like Yuki Nagato.
- The use of televisions appears inspired by Persona 4.
- The training manual in Episode 3 looks so much like a Master Card Priceless ad. The YFB shirt, too.
- There seem to be several Gundam shout-outs throughout the series.
- Shrinking Violet: Kobato has some shades of this.
- Split Personality: Takashi, Shusuke and Hayato are revealed to be the same person. There are also hints of a fourth one as well. Said fourth is crazy.
- The anime does a fairly decent job hiding this fact. While everyone in the show saw the same person, viewers see what appears to be different characters, which makes sense because each split personality would view themselves differently. There are clues sprinkled throughout the anime that hints at this, such as when Shuusuke gets hit in the back of the head with a chair, and then both Takashi and Hayato have the same exact wounds later on.
- Talking to Themself: The three personalities are aware of each other, and if necessary they meet in some Pocket Dimension that resembles a church. And it seems they work in specific shifts according to the one and only conversation two of them have had so far. They also refer to their host body as a "cockpit".
- And if the opening is to be believed, the five personalities aren't exactly the only ones who exhibit this trope.
- Spoiler Opening: Why there are five people shown on the TV sets.
- Theme Naming: Birds are the motif in this show, in names, titles, everything.
- Title Drop: Dropped by Takashi in episode 8. And then repeatedly in 11 and 12.
- Tomato Surprise: The fifth personality, Haneda Youji, is the original personality of the "cockpit", who was in a Angst Coma (in the form of the place with the TV) since the death of his mother. The others were "created" so that Kobato could be cared for.
- Tsundere: Asuka, who's not afraid to beat up Takashi or his split personality counterparts.
- Updated Re-release: Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai R, which adds two new routes and a couple new CGs.
- White Hair, Black Heart: In the opening, you see one guy named Itami Karura in the TV sets while Kobato is looking for someone. He's designated as #2.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Takashi, and his split personalities, which unfortunately means he won't stop the beat down that Asuka is giving him.
