Sola

Let's check off the things that annoy me, shall we?

~ A world where kids conveniently don't have parents. Because that would mean the writers would actually have to be skilful enough to write stories including them. The only featured adult in the whole story is obviously a hindrance to everyone, except midway when he suddenly becomes every male pervert's role model.

~ Girls that fawn over one witless guy who doesn't deserve any of them. They fight to the death over him, but why should we care? Why should we be invested in any of this if we cant understand ... why anyone would want him in the first place? He is completely and utterly undeserving of it all, and it renders everyone's actions perplexing. Well, not so much perplexing as it is tiresome to watch this anime go through every cliché in the book to appease undemanding 'fans' of the genre.

~ Main protagonist boy who is an empty cipher throughout the entire story. A complete plank of wood with no personality and no discerning features other than his hobby of taking photos of clouds. This is not 'characterization', its an excuse to make him look interesting. He is in actual fact no different than a million other one-note protagonists of this genre. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that the main characters of these stories are usually ciphers, rather than fully fleshed out and interesting people. Because it makes it easier for male viewers to project themselves onto the character. How sad.

~ Girl character who is treated like a wayward sexual pet by guy. At least Elfen Lied had the decency to make the female character a bloodthirsty psychopath.

~ Boring characters. Every single one of them. Except for maybe the little girl in the green dress, she had a nice attitude.

This anime panders to all the moe-loving adult perverts and too-young-to-have-developed-decent-taste youth. Sola's great animation and brief flashes of what could have been an interesting tale are let down by all of the above. There was potential here; to explore people that can never live in the sun, the affects of immortality in a child's body, but the producers were more interested in filling a quota than in story and character. Some of these characters are supposed to be more than a hundred years old yet they still act like brats. Thats because logic is thrown out of the window in sola, because the characters are designed for viewers tastes.

Japan's most popular anime of 2007? Depressing.

Don't dismiss this review because it's negative. Dismiss it because you've yet to grow out of this genre and realise that this anime is the equivalent of a McDonalds happy meal: planned by a committee, packaged prettily but ultimately tacky, cynically driven and bad for you.

I tried to power through this anime, but I just got tired of wasting my time.

With the problems presented, it could have been really good, but ended up just being bland a bit confusing.

Magical characters are presented, but they're used more to cause angst and drama than anything else.

The chemistry between the main character and his love interests is lacking and uninteresting. There doesn't seem to be any at all.

The art and sound are fine, but nothing new or spectacular.

... The only thing that really interested me was the relationship between Takeshi and Mayuko, and they are side characters.

This anime wasn't really worth my time, in my opinion.

This anime was not done the it shoud have look if you watch this, stop after ep11 trust me okay if you'll be sorry and wished you never watched 12 & 13 these eps took my score from an 8 to a 5 you do the math

I did enjoy the series for the most part but there were a few things that did bother me. Some stuff we just were not given answers for in the end. It's unfortunate because I did feel it had some decent potential overall. I was caught by surprise when we found out that Yorito was simply just a mere illusion. That was really when the show definitely piqued my interest. The character that I enjoyed the most ended up dying for the sake of giving Aono another chance to live as a normal human. I felt that the one truly deserving of being given another ... chance to live was definitely Mayuko. At the same time I do understand why Aono was given one, a chance to grieve over Yorito death I suppose. But it didn't help at all how over-possessive and bitchy she tended to behave. Definitely a character who deserves to be well disliked. It was more difficult to sympathize with her when you have Mayuko who's pushed aside. However to be somewhat positive on the ending, I did like how it emphasized on the sky connecting them all together. Perhaps for now I'd give this a solid 6. This is my first review but I just felt compelled to do one on this.