This shift was characterized by the emergence of narratively more complex stories focused on politics, psychology, and sexuality, and came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Takemiya was a member.

[7][8] Beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of shōjo artists emerged who created manga stories that were more psychologically complex, dealt directly with topics of politics and sexuality, and were aimed at an audience of teenage readers.

[14] Other works that informed the development of Kaze to Ki no Uta were the European drama films if.... (1968), Fellini Satyricon (1969), and Death in Venice (1971), which screened in Japan in the 1970s and influenced both Takemiya and Hagio in their depiction of "preternaturally beautiful" male characters;[4] Taruho Inagaki's essay Shōnen-ai no Bigaku (少年愛の美学, "The Aesthetics of Boy Love", 1968), which influenced Takemiya to select a school as the setting for her series;[15] and issues of Barazoku, the first commercially circulated Japanese gay men's magazine.

[27][28] Aware that a male–male romance story was likely to be heavily revised or rejected by her editor, Takemiya intentionally submitted Yuki to Hoshi to Tenshi to... immediately before the magazine's publication deadline.

[21] Takemiya contributed a "one-page theater" (a page in which an author discusses miscellaneous thoughts and impressions with essay-like illustrations) to Shūkan Shōjo Comic in September 1973, in which she described her desire to write Kaze to Ki no Uta.

[24][33] In an effort to overcome the low level of editorial freedom and autonomy that was preventing her from publishing Kaze to Ki no Uta, Takemiya sought to build her profile as an artist by creating a manga series that would have mass appeal.

[34] Shortly after Pharaoh no Haka began serialization, Takemiya published a 16-page preview of Kaze to Ki no Uta in the first collected volume of her manga series Sora ga Suki!

[58] To Fujimoto, this willingness to "[turn] around" these misogynistic statements against the reader, thus forcing them to examine their own internalized sexism, represents "one of the keys" to understanding the influence and legacy of Kaze to Ki no Uta and works like it.

[26] Yukari Fujimoto notes how sex scenes in Kaze to Ki no Uta are rendered with a "boldness" that was unprecedented in shōjo manga at the time, depicting "sexual desire as overwhelming power".

By applying passivity, a trait that is stereotypically associated with women, to male characters, she argues that Takemiya is able to depict sexual violence "in a purified form and in a way that protects the reader from its raw pain".

[67] She cites Kaze to Ki no Uta as the primary work that gave rise to this trope in shōnen-ai manga, noting how the narrative suggests that individuals who are "honest to themselves" and love only one other person monogamously are regarded as "innocent".

That is, so long as the protagonists of shōnen-ai "continue to pursue their supreme love within an ideal human relationship, they can forever retain their virginity at the symbolic level, despite having repeated sex in the fictional world".

[69] Takemiya has stated that interest in Europe was a "characteristic of the times", noting that gravure fashion magazines for girls such as An An and Non-no often included European topics in their editorial coverage.

[70] She sees the fascination as stemming in part from sensitivities around depicting non-Japanese settings in manga in the aftermath of the Second World War, stating that "you could draw anything about America and Europe, but not so, about 'Asia' as seen in Japan".

[71] Manga scholar Rebecca Suter asserts that the recurrence of Christian themes and imagery throughout the series – crucifixes, Bibles, churches, Madonnas and angels appear both in the diegesis and as symbolic representations in non-narrative artwork – can be seen as a sort of Occidentalism.

[72] Per Suter, Christianity's disapproval of homosexuality is represented primarily in Kaze to Ki no Uta as a narrative obstacle to be overcome by Gilbert and Serge as they pursue their relationship, a means to "complicate the plot and prolong the titillation for the reader".

She argues that the series' appropriation of western religious symbols and attitudes for creative purposes "parallels and subverts" the Orientalist tendency to view Asia as more spiritual, "superstitious, and backwards".

[73] Midori Matsui considers Kaze to Ki no Uta as "ostensibly a Bildungsroman" that is "surreptitious pornography for girls" through its depiction of male characters who openly express and act upon their sexual desires, contrasting the largely non-sexual Heart of Thomas.

[43] The series has also been adapted for the stage several times: by the theater company April House in May 1979, with Efu Wakagi [ja] as Gilbert and Shu Nakagawa as Serge;[43] and in the early 1980s by an all-female troupe modeled on the Takarazuka Revue.

[86] In 1985, Shogakukan published Le Poème du Vent et des Arbres, an artist's book featuring original illustrations by Takemiya of characters from Kaze to Ki no Uta.

Fukkan.com [ja] reprinted the book in 2018, with eight new illustrations and new scans of the original artwork produced by Genga' (Dash), an art preservation project Takemiya developed at Kyoto Seika University.

[90] Kami no Kohitsuji follows Henri (アンリ, Anri), a descendant of the Battour family, and Fran (フラン, Furan), a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, as they investigate what happened to Serge after the death of Gilbert.

Kōfuku no Hato was written and illustrated by Takemiya, and was published in her artist's book Umi no Tenshi (海の天使, "Angel of the Sea", alternatively titled Chérubin de la Mer), released by Kadokawa Shoten in November 1991.

[100] In an overview of the filmography of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko for Anime News Network, critic Michael Toole praised Kaze to Ki no Uta Sanctus: Sei Naru Kana as a "subtle piece" that is "vibrant and beautiful", favorably comparing it to the 1981 film adaptation of Takemiya's Natsu e no Tobira.

He nonetheless offers praise for its visual direction, particularly its "gorgeous hand-painted background art" and character designs, and the central relationship between Gilbert and Serge, which he assesses as "solid enough, if rather melodramatic".

[40][97] Yukari Fujimoto writes that Kaze to Ki no Uta (along with The Heart of Thomas and Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi) made male homosexuality part of "the everyday landscape of shōjo manga" and "one of its essential elements",[57] and manga scholar Kazuko Suzuki cites Kaze to Ki no Uta as "one of the first attempts to depict true bonding or ideal relationships through pure male homosexual love".

[40] James Welker concurs that Kaze to Ki no Uta and The Heart of Thomas "almost certainly helped foster increasingly diverse male–male romance narratives within the broader shōjo manga genre from the mid-1970s onward".

In 2010, a revision to the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths was introduced that would have restricted published media containing sexual depictions of characters who appeared to be minors, a proposal that was criticized by multiple anime and manga professionals for disproportionately targeting their industry.

[104] Takemiya wrote an editorial critical of the proposal in the May 2010 issue of Tsukuru [ja], arguing that it was "ironic" that Kaze to Ki no Uta, a series that "many of today's mothers had grown up reading, was now in danger of being banned as 'harmful' to their children".

[105] In a 2016 interview with the BBC, Takemiya responded to the charge that depictions of rape in Kaze to Ki no Uta condone the sexualization of minors by stating that "such things do happen in real life.