Forums

Arimura Yu, a freelance writer, wrote an article about So Ra No Wo To for an online magazine Men's Cyzo. He researched whether the first title of "Anime no Chikara" project was successful or not.

Last summer, TV Tokyo and Aniplex launched a new timeslot "Anime no Chikara", which is dedicated to original anime. The purpose of the project was to promote the creativity of the anime industry and to encourage the production of original works. Sora no Woto was extensively publicized as the first title.

However, the alteration of Kishida Meru's original character designs and the resemblance to K-ON! caused criticism before the airing. When the series began in January, the high quality of the art and the animation had received some praise, but the discrepancy between the dark memory of war and the calm descriptions of the slice of life perplexed the audience. Akai Toshifumi, the animation director of Sora no Woto, reacted to the criticism against the happy ending by saying "People won't be moved nor consented unless someone dies. Why aren't they impressed by the character's survival?", and his post inflamed the anime fans even more.

According to unofficial data, the first week sales of Sora no Woto volume 1 were 3,057 copies of Blu-ray with a few hundreds of DVDs. The number can be regarded as a moderate success as an original anime and proved that there does exist a certain demand for original works.

Source: Men's Cyzo

The main problem wasn't about the character's survival. I thought the 12-episode show felt rushed in the end while they spent too much on the slice of life part. Art was amazing and characters are lovely, but it felt like the dialogs were too cutesy for a show about dark memory of wars. It felt like "peaceful happy days" in the early episodes.

I like the concept of Anime no Chikara. If they make more shows like this, I'd be interested to watch.

The show was meh. I think the slice of life episodes were actually better than the ones related to the main "plot", but overall, it was really inconsistent. The character designs didn't add any points either, I still don't remember all characters names and call them by the names of K-On girls. :D

Honestly the idea of Anime no Chikara project was good, but it seems to me they didn't think the whole thing up. And now Senkou no Night Raid started and it already looks like a pretty half-assed effort.

i think not

If only they stay with Kishida Mel Chara design.... shit will be really different now...

...




just compare with this



what a blunder...

I felt the project was highly successful. They took the appearance of something repetitive and benign then in the end still made it feel mysterious and refreshing. I hope that they continue to do work just as good as Sora No Woto was.

Sora no Woto failed... plot was rushed, not to talk that it was kinda lame. Some chars where a bit annoying. The whole animation and desing was so similar to K-ON, but in the matter of entertainment not close.

I wrote about that on my blog:

"By the end, not only do I find some sense in the first episodes, but they also share a theme in anime that I love: how nice a normal, peaceful life shared with friends is.

Seen in the light of the warmongering general’s appearance disrupting the relatively happy lives of the town, the girls, and bringing Noel, an innocent victim of those people, close to a breakdown, we can see those early episodes as showing what is important in life – they had their little adventures, their excursions, their friendship, the little things like Kanata waiting for the phone call. All of that destroyed because of war. After Rio’s cool appearance stopping the war, the soldiers actually celebrating it is a very clear message."

The animation director called it "survival", but well, I think we are pointing to the same theme. From this point of view, I really can't understand the criticism that "the discrepancy between the dark memory of war and the calm descriptions of the slice of life perplexed the audience." There is no "discrepancy", it was the gist of the whole anime!

I do agree it felt rushed, and some other criticisms could be leveled indeed, but not this one

Imo the theme itself screams out a possible successful and well executed 'war-story' anime but yeah it may be lacking things from becoming one.

I agree about how rushed it is as well, but I guess the makers wanted to create something new and different which shows they're experimenting..

Still, Sora no Woto was a watchable anime, I mean the OST was great!
=3

Wow, how could they bomb on the character design part so badly? Makes me glad I never had time to continue past ep1. I have to look up more of Kishida Mel's works, they're gorgeous.

Sora no Woto was moderate imo.
It was really sad people related it so much with K-On, but well what could you expect with such a resemblance?
Not really lucky it came after K-On :9

The story was great ,but the character designs were K-ON-ish...
I didn't like it when they rush the series into 12 episodes.

You know this series would've been better if they distributed more of the last few episode's moments into the wholee series.

I mean the first 8-9 were more about military life, and the soldiers' struggles then they compress an 8 episode story into the remaining 4-3 episodes.

But all in all, it was a pretty good series, with very good art and score. Please only people who haven't watched tthe whole series would think it as mere "K-on ripoffs" because as moe as K-on is, it won't top Sora no Woto's peaceful atmostphere amongst the war and destruction in it all.

Those are just my opinions! :3

depends on how you looked at the show and what you expected...

Sora no Woto was a lot of wasted potential.

I mean, you had a FANTASTIC WORLD SETTING. But you had to make it slice of life. For the most part. Disappointment.

eeeeerrrrrrr

Aria anyone ?

but i agree they should stay with plot-packed stories from the start, BUT once again if they keep Kishida Mel design, thats enough for me.

Spoilers in post.

I felt the show would have been more enjoyable if they had decided to either cut back on the slice of life episodes in the early to middle part of the series, or leave them and stretch everything else out similarly, bringing the episode count to 24-26. It felt like they tried to do both at once, and it suffered for it; the plot exploded in episode 10, and much more story could have been told before the conclusion.

I personally have no problem with characters surviving; I actually like it. Killing characters just to create drama is ridiculous.

I was in love with the atmosphere and music of the show, but I would have liked to learned even more about the characters. What were the specifics of what Rio was doing while she was away? What did the Roman emperor look like? etc.

In any case, I look forward to more Anime no Chikara titles. I have problems with many manga to anime adaptations, so seeing anime with no original work to compare it to is refreshing.

This.
What made this anime nothing more than mediocre to me was the pace of it. It had an interesting background, good art and music as positive points. I didn't really mind the moe character designs, any of the characters aside from Rio or the slow slice of life parts.
What did annoy me, though, was how the creators suddenly remembered this show actually had a plot, rushed that part and ended it on a deus ex rio because they didn't have enough time to give it a better ending. And that after plenty of unimportant feel building episodes that didn't really explain anything about the world to me.

I do like the concept and plan to watch Senkou no Night Raid once the first three episodes are subbed, though.

The original character designs are indeed lovely. If they had kept them like that, I would have actually watched the show, slice of life or not.

I think the original characters look much better than final art, but I did really like the show. I hope to see more from A-1 and the "Anime no Chikara" movement!