Sora no Woto is set in a post world war-esque world. A long war that we know nothing about has recently ended and the world is at peace... Or so we think. I'll get into characters a little later, but first I want to say something. I like this series. It's a little slow, and the protagonist is the same naive type girl that will sooner or later get on my nerves, but what they've shown so far isn't bad. But while I wish I could say that there's nothing wrong with this series, that would be a lie. Because whoever did the anime character designs really has only one design, so PEOPLE LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THEY ARE FROM K-ON!. They all have round faces and pudgy fingers and IT'S JUST NOT AN ATTRACTIVE DESIGN. IT REALLY ISN'T. WHY COULDN'T YOU USE THE MANGA DESIGNS, HUH? THOSE AT LEAST LOOK COOL. GRARGH!!! In fact, here, have a sample of the similarities:
In other news, this is a completely true picture. You take the military idea from Strike Witches and add them to the character designs from K-On! and you have yourselves Sora no Woto. The only thing that's making it better than the other two series is that the plot is marginally better. And it's about music, which is always a nice thing to see in anime. But I digress. Let's move on to the characters.
Characters
That first picture of her is from the manga. Cool, right? Much better than stupid pudgy body parts. But anyway. Sorami Kanata is the naive type protagonist. In the beginning of the series, you find out that she got lost when she was younger and found inspiration to become a bugler because of a trumpeter who comforted her about being lost. Unfortunately, she sucks at bugling. In fact, the only cool thing about her is that she has perfect pitch, and even that is not enough to put her in my good books, because Hirasawa Yui of K-On! fame also has perfect pitch and I HATED HER SO MUCH. SO. FREAKING. MUCH. Actually, I'm pretty sure she's the reason I'm not doing a K-On! post. Moving on...
Voiced by my favorite, favorite Kobayashi Yuu, Rio might end up being my favorite character. But this might just be because I like her character design: Long hair, cool type, good at what she does and voiced by Kobayashi Yuu!!!!!!!. If only she wasn't drawn like that... Then again, I don't really like her manga design either. And of course her biggest failing is that she doesn't wear a uniform like it should be worn. I really hate sloppy types with uniforms. With any other type of clothing, I wouldn't care, but wearing a uniform sloppily is a real turn off for me.
The token tsundere, there's really not much I can say about her. There's nothing that distinguishes her from other tsundere. At all. Well, I guess you could say that she gets over her jealousy of Kanata pretty quickly...
The mother hen type. Pretty much Miyuki from Lucky Star (they even have the same VA!) and Tsumugi from K-On!. She'd be like Minna from Strike Witches, except that Minna was pretty cool, whereas I'm not quite sure Filicia will be.
Ayanami Rei with a personality. Probably.
This guy's funny just because of this.
There's not much you can say about pairings so far. Really, the only thing I have is this:
Those of you unfortunates who watched Strike Witches will notice this is pretty much Major Sakamoto + Yoshika + Perrine. Any other pairings will have to wait until more episodes come out.
That's about it. I'll end this post with a couple of group shots. See you next time!
For me, I didn't connect with the old lady's story so much personally as I did with it as one of what must have been tens of thousands of similar stories following a war - People waiting for a loved one, with no idea whether that wait is in vain.
ReplyDeleteAs for the ending, I think it was more of a good-bye to Rio above all else, although it was left pretty wide open to interpretation.
regards,
misterhex
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