Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Rescue Wings – episode 3

March 23, 2006 on 6:57 pm | In Rescue Wings | Comments Off on Rescue Wings – episode 3

“A Painful job”

A very good episode; I learned to fall in love with the sometimes grandiose nature of Rescue Wings and I learned that things cannot always go to plan in the world of rescue operations.

Uchida runs to save a little girl who has gone missing and finds her crushed by rubble. A vigil is set around her to keep her stable, and then Hongo’s helicopter comes to take her away. The helicopter is beset by difficulties in its search for the mainland …

This episode is told largely in shades of grey, and makes very effective use of concurrent scenarios and of music to create a sense of drama. While Uchida is tending to Sakura, Hongo is shown performing other hopeless rescue attempts.
We learn more about Hongo, who is strangely becoming the real star of the piece: he is a genius tactician, and he used to be a fighter pilot himself. He is quite obviously an older version of Uchida, with the sensibility and rationality that role entails.

The episode runs several risks, by having those sorts of big set pieces that are supposed to uplift. The “headlight” runway is one such example, but the fact that it looks grandiose does not ultimately discount the fact that it is the sort of thing that would happen in real life.

In my notes I wrote “you can’t intrude on grief” – and seconds later Uchida is confronted by someone … with quite unexpected results. My thought lines were along the same as the situations presented here, and so I feel in my own very selfish way that Rescue Wings has been made more human.

On another positive note, we get more insight into the dependence that Uchida has on Megumi, and the concern that she feels for his situation. I had thought that with their phone tag there may have been problems in the relationship but the fact is that they’re making an effort.

Top notch stuff, and a definite highlight of the dreary season.