Ranked #1074

The Cockpit: Sonic Boom Squadron

Set in August 1945, this opens with a sobering intro to kamikaze fighter jets and their methodology. You think you’re going to be thrown into a dark dramatic tale of epic proportions, unflinching and compelling, engrossing and powerful.

No. Most of the characters look like they belong in a Peanuts or Gary Larson cartoon they're so jarring and misplaced it’s not even funny, and especially in such a tale as this. What the character designer was thinking, I have no idea.

The story revolves around kamikaze pilot Nogami who is all too eager to die in a blaze of glory for his country but has to be punched out to stop him throwing his life away. He recuperates at a raggedy airfield with more US-comic rejects who lament about war and what the era’s youth could achieve if they were allowed to live for 30 more years.

Then, as if this is a comedy sketch but it isn’t because it’s all played very straight-faced, we cut to a bunch of US airmen lamenting the exact same thing, "he wanted to be the world's best comic artist, maybe if he'd lived another 30 years!"

It’s so hackneyed and stupid but you can’t laugh, it’s just a wasted premise with lousy art and writing. The climax did give me goosebumps but only because of the idea of what was occurring on screen, the potential, not the shoddy execution.

The climax is of course utterly ruined with a ludicrous coincidence followed by a convenient announcement that wraps up this failed attempt at exploring WW2 through the Japanese air force via anime. read more