Sora no Otoshimono Final: Eternal My Master

"How can we make the most unsatisfying ending possible, while still technically concluding something?"

I am convinced that this is what the directors/writers/whoever asked themselves when making this film.

Sora no Otoshimono Final: Eternal My Master is a film that replaced the would-be third season of Sora no Otoshimono, an anime I find sadly underrated. It's often cast aside as yet another pile of trash fanservice, when in fact it has an incredibly deep storyline, as well as fantastic emotion and drama. SnO Final forgets about all of that-- no, they deliberately ignore it in this mess of a film.

The SnO manga had mountains of story left ... to tell. A third season would have barely managed to fit all of that in, but it was still possible. When it was confirmed that we were getting a second film instead, that dream was crushed. Yet there was still hope. Towards its end the anime deviated from the manga, making it possible that this new movie might provide a unique ending while still borrowing key elements from the source material. We were worried, but we had faith. What we got, however, was nothing of the sort.

The movie begins with Ikaros' dramatic climax from the second-to-last chapter. Immediately this is unsettling; there was no way they could fit the massive final arc and all of its setup into this 50 minute timeblock. The scene progresses, and ends approximately where the chapter does. It then cuts away to several months prior, a typical day at the Sakurai household. From this point to the penultimate scene, the film is nothing but random filler chapters meshed together to create a bastardization of the romantic progression between Ikaros and Tomoki. Chapters are placed where they don't belong for no rhyme or reason, important plot points are tweaked to move along this clusterfuck of a story, and the supporting cast is reduced to comic relief and pointless exposition. But this isn't even the worst offense. Consistently, the film teases all of the major plotlines. ALL of them! And what do we get from it? NOTHING!! Absolutely nothing, as if to say "All this cool stuff happened, but you don't get to see it." I may not speak for everyone, but I for one was offended by this. This movie's lack of care for the audience's appreciation of detail was insulting. In the end, Ikaros' dramatic climax concludes, and the movie ends... bitter, and incomplete.

One may argue that speaking from the point of view of somebody who read the manga is unfair, and that I should take it as a piece of the anime and nothing more. Ok, let's try that.

Right off the bat I have no clue what's going on. What is Zeus? Why are they attacking it? What happened to Nymph and Sugata? Where is everybody else? Why is the world falling apart?
All of these questions come from the first scene alone, and the rest of the movie fails to answer any of them. This movie expects you to have read the manga, and is impossible to review from any perspective otherwise. That said, I feel it does an incredible injustice to the manga and its fans, blatantly disregarding everything that made it so special in the first place, just to say they half-assedly resolved their love story.

I've seen many disappointing anime in my time, but none are as painful as a disappointing ending to a good anime. Sora no Otoshimono Final: Eternal My Master was just that.

When the Sora no Otoshimono manga finally ended about half a year ago, I was honestly amazed. Why? Because the ending was absolutely beautiful! Given that this is an ecchi story, the amount of emotional impact the manga conclusion had is still unmatched to me for its genre. Now as a result I was of course very much so looking forward to seeing this finale closing out the anime series as well.

Now that I've seen it however... let's just say that this "Final" movie doesn't do the manga justice. At all.

Assuming that you've seen all the prior seasons of Sora no Otoshimono before watching this, ... you should already know what to expect. It is the same good old character cast and the same good old perverted yet hilarious sketches. The only thing that really changes for real towards the end is of course the story.

The word "rushed" is not strong enough for this one. The pacing of Eternal My Master is a mess. It basically rushes through the remaining manga chapters like a runaway train, skipping a huge amount of content in-between, and while many of the key scenes are still adapted, the transition between them isn't executed well at all. As a result, the story just ends up needlessly hard to follow and the supposed emotional impact misses its mark.

Above all though, what really let me down was the ending itself. It just wasn't the same. Literally. The super emotional conclusion the manga had just didn't exist. Numerous key scenes from the very last chapters simply aren't there, and the epilogue is straight-up missing. Hell it hardly even properly explains why the ending it *does* have actually happens the way it does. Overall it just doesn't leave you feeling satisfied at all.

As a whole, the production value is still good and the girls are still as likable as ever, and really those are the only reasons I'm kind enough to give it a 4 overall. However the story is just incredibly poorly executed and as a result it will only leave you disappointed in the end.


TL;DR - Read the manga ending instead, pretend this one doesn't exist.

This review will be done in the point of view of someone who hasn't read any of the manga.

Story: 4/10
The story was at best decent. If you were expecting something like the scene where Nymph's master tells her to bring her pet and shit goes down, prepare to be disappointed. The movie has about 5 whole minutes of serious moments, confusing but serious, and then the rest of the movie is filler/fan service. The first few minutes show the world being destroyed and people dying and all this crazy shit happening with no explanation. The beginning and ending was good although it felt confusing. The ... first few minutes showed promise but they never developed on it. I wasn't sure if I was missing some plot because I didn't read the manga but the middle part felt pointless. They do a flash back and show a lot of filler. Characters chilling and talking and making jokes. It didn't have very much to do with the opening and ending and felt like jokes instead of a serious movie. You could remove most of the middle part and the over story will still be intact. The main poster is Ikaros holding Tomoki while her wings are on fire, I was expecting something badass. The trailer showed all the action scenes and left out all the filler scenes. Instead of watching a movie I paid $10 to watch, it felt like I was watching an OVA. If you wanted a light hearted comedy then this movie will make you happy. I expected a lot more than a comedy and wanted something serious.

Art: 8/10
The art is still really good. It carries on over from the show. Tomoki looks a little different but not to the point it becomes a problem. Everyone else looks exactly like I remember. Nothing in the movie happened that really let the art shine so I can't really give it a high score. They used a lot of flash backs within the flash backs, scenes from the show so it was weird seeing Tomoki change back and forth.

Sound 8/10
The sound is still good just like the show. The sound track is still beautiful as well as the ending song done by Blue Drops. Blue drops has done most of the OPs and EDs of the show and movies, so hearing them return was a nice treat. I recommend everyone check out the end song cause it's really good. Not much else to say about the soundtrack besides that it was good.

Character: 7/10
Can't say much about the characters. Only Ikaros changes a lot, and Tomoki a little. Ikaros has the most character development and we get to see her change from being an emotionless girl to something more interesting. All the other characters seem to stay the same. No one I can remember changed that much. Ikaros became a real character at the end and Tomoki's relationship between Ikaros and himself grew stronger which was probably the only good thing to come out of this movie.

Enjoyment: 7/10
I did enjoy it a lot but for different reasons. I wasn't touched because of it's touching story. I was mostly just laughing at the jokes and being aroused by the fan service. I was expecting the dark story but got something completely different. Although I wasn't completely disappointed I wasn't too happy with it. In my mind I thought shit was gonna go down and people die and tears shed but instead we got 45 minutes of characters running around making a few jokes and Tomoki being perverted.

Overall: 6/10
I can't recommend this anime to all Sora no Otoshimono fans. Overall it felt like it could have just been an OVA rather than a movie. I believe the original plan was to make a season 3 but instead made a movie. So instead of having 4 hours of content, they some how managed to shorten it to 49 minutes, and you can guess how that turned out. Maybe I hyped it too much, people were telling me that they were adapting the serious part of the manga and I got a few minutes of that but for the most part it was just jokes which is what I got from the anime. I recommend people just stream it rather than buy it or go watch it in theaters if you are lucky. If you wanted a light hearted story then this is perfect for you. If you wanted more then you don't have to rush out and see it.