When first playing the game, the player assumes the role of Yukito Kunisaki and the scenarios for the three heroines are available in what is called the Dream story arc.

After the plot lines for these three heroines have been completed, an additional scenario called Summer is made available where the player assumes the role of Ryūya.

"[7] Scenario assistant Yūichi Suzumoto has commented that his impression of Air is similar to that of a folk song due to the rural setting and heartwarming story progression.

Other characters show a similar relationship to the sky, such as Minagi who is a member of the astronomy club,[9] and Michiru who has a fondness for bubbles that float in the air.

Misuzu Kamio, the main heroine of Air, makes Yukito quite mistrustful at first by being too friendly, but eventually earns his affection.

She is a cheerful but introverted, slightly clumsy and simplistic high school girl, and often utters the pseudo-dinosauric phrase gao when she feels troubled, a habit she retained from childhood.

Air's story begins on Monday, July 17, 2000, when traveling street performer Yukito Kunisaki arrives at a small seaside town.

As a young adult, he has been traveling around Japan in continuation of his late mother's search for the "girl in the sky" who, according to a family legend, has been cursed to spend eternity all alone.

[15] Yukito's sole way of earning money is by performing a puppet show by moving a doll that has been passed down in his family with magic, but he fails to gain anyone's attention by doing so in this town.

He accepts her offer to eat lunch at her home, and Misuzu's aunt and foster mother Haruko Kamio is later persuaded to let him stay for the time being.

Yukito recalls his mother telling him that after the dreams, the girl in the sky would start to first physically weaken, followed by feeling pain from an unknown source, then forgetting about those closest to her, and finally be doomed to die alone.

In the summer 1,000 years prior during the Heian period, Kanna is one of the last winged beings who has been held prisoner at a Shinto shrine for much of her life.

Kanna is set to be executed following a political change in the Imperial Court, but she escapes with the help of Ryūya, a member of her samurai guard, and her loyal retainer Uraha.

In an attempt to save Ryūya and Uraha, Kanna sacrifices herself, leaving herself cursed by Buddhist monks to relive painful memories in the sky for eternity.

As a result of Misuzu dying happily with her family, it is implied that she takes her happy memories back to Kanna, effectively breaking the curse.

[8] Maeda put pressure on himself to make something structurally different from Kanon, but he also took it upon himself following Hisaya's resignation to continue to produce "crying games" for Key's fan base.

[8] According to writer and critic Shūichirō Sarashina, a common aspect of bishōjo games at the time was to treat the individual heroine routes equally, producing a coherent narrative as a result of a sum of its parts, and he notes that Kanon also followed this pattern.

[8] When developing the plot, the basic structure of having multiple points of view and an overarching storyline had already been solidified, which according to Maeda was not something he was aware of having been done in visual novels at the time.

Fellow scenario writer Yūichi Suzumoto was apprehensive about this structure when he first heard about the plot from Maeda, but Air executive producer and Visual Arts president Takahiro Baba had already given his approval for the project by then.

[19] In terms of gameplay, Air was designed to emphasize its story compared to its adventure game elements, with the development team opting to include very few choices to diverge the plot, which Maeda later regretted.

[8] Three heroine routes were developed to show a range of different possibilities the player character Yukito Kunisaki could take in parallel universes.

In the planning stage, Maeda did not specifically include adult content due at least in part to his self-described inability to write detailed sex scenes.

[3] An updated adult version called the Air Standard Edition was released on April 8, 2005, with added support for Windows 2000/XP as a DVD-ROM.

[27][38] A short story, titled "Hatsuzora no Shō" (初空の章, New Year's Morning Sky Chapter) and written by Yūichi Suzumoto, was published in the Kanowo appendix to Kadokawa Corporation's Comptiq magazine on December 1, 2000.

[54] A DVD released on March 31, 2005, called "Air Memories" contained promotional commercials for the series, staff commentaries, and clean ending sequences from the 12th and 13th episodes, lasting 92 minutes.

In July 2008, the license for the anime series and film was transferred to Funimation, which is now branded as Crunchyroll as of 2022, who continued to produce them in North America in English.

[70] Of the six music tracks not used in the visual novel, but of which were included on the game's original soundtrack, the first two were failed attempts at creating a theme for Minagi.

[69] The game's original soundtrack was released in September 2002 containing two discs with 31 different tracks along with remix and instrumental versions of the opening and ending themes.

[72] A bonus symphony CD titled Shinwa e no Izanai was released with the special edition Air film DVD on August 5, 2005.

[88] Air was described as a game that stands out, much like Key's first title Kanon, due to an intricate plot that keeps the player interested, and has a good replay value as well.