Aug 16, 2011
I must say, I had higher expectations for this series because of my love for the slice of life/romance genre. I was also interested because of the supernatural tag, and although it did make the story more interesting, this series still lacked an important element; pacing. One of the biggest problems with anime adaptions of manga and visual novels are the pacing. Managing the pacing of a series is tough work, especially when you’re working under a 13-26 episode restriction. Most animes deal with this in a cool and brilliant fashion, and others, not so much. Sadly, in that respect, Sola falls under the
...
“not so much” category.
Sola is a story about a high school boy named Yorito, who loves to take pictures of the sky. His older sister Aono has been in the hospital for several months, and is visited frequently by his friend Mana and her sister. Yorito doesn’t devote much time to seeing Aono in the hospital, and Mana gets annoyed by this. Instead of caring for his sister, he prefers to spend his time taking pictures of the sky (.... I know, right?). On top of that, he has been becoming close to a mysterious girl named Matsuri whom he met by chance one early morning. What he doesn’t know is that Matsuri has her secrets, and there may be more to her than meets the eye. The story is actually pretty good. It’s fairly original, and as I vaguely mentioned before, the addition of supernatural elements makes it much more interesting.
Another thing that bothered me was how bland the characters were. For example, we have Aono who is your generic “silent girl” role which has become pretty overused these days. I have nothing against Silent types! They rock my socks. But, Aono in this case did nothing for me. Mana, plays the typical “childhood friend” ( Even though they had just met recently ) so there’s nothing very interesting about her either. Overall, Matsuri was the most interesting as well as Tsujido Takeshi ( A side character who you can think ofas the bad guy or the good guy, it’s up to you. )
The visuals are pretty standard, and aren’t very impressive, to say the least. They aren’t terrible, but I think that the viewer’s enjoyment of the series would have been greatly amplified if this series had better animation. The music however, is very good in some parts, and is one of the aspects I enjoyed most about the show.
Ultimately, Sola is a good anime to watch if you have a great deal of patience. It’s sad that such a good story is essentially ruined by poor pacing. Perhaps, reading the manga would satisfy my dissatisfaction of this series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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