Sora to Umi no Aida

Let me get this out in no uncertain words - Sora to Umi no Aida is a good series. Not “ironically good”, not “eh, it’s fine, I guess” and not even “good for a CGDCT” - a genuinely engaging, thought-provoking story with decent production values. It just happens to be an unfortunate example of how the perception of a work of fiction can be dramatically affected by some unrelated events in a totally different place that just happen to happen at the same time.

You see, 2018 was a year when the Japanese Air Force allowed women to become fighter pilots for the first time ever. ... This was an event high-profile enough that in the anime medium alone there instantly appeared multiple series exploring the topic in some capacity. Sora to Umi no Aida is one of them: it took the premise of women entering a male-dominated industry for the first time ever to justify an all-girls cast and give some gravitas to what they’re doing - which otherwise boils down to a 9-to-5 job. And that’s the extent of it. Sounds innocent enough? Well, in the meantime, the western anime fandom was busy with outrage over High Guardian Spice, so when Sora to Umi no Aida dared to usher the words “equal opportunity hire” everyone just lost their shit and branded it SJW-propaganda. Despite, you know, it being an anime, made in Japan, having nothing to do with western politics, or any kind of politics for that matter. The fact that I even need to talk about it is, frankly, a waste. Now, let me just tell what about this particular series makes it worthwhile to watch:

Story. All the fish in the oceans had vanished, so people had built orbital fish tanks to breed giant fish monsters that they catch/battle with the power of mobile app-based gods which are basically Stands-for-hire. Got it? Good, now you may forget it, because this is not what the show is about. Space Fishing here plays very much the same role as Giant Robots in Evangelion: it’s a workplace and the reason these characters are gathered together, but the focus is entirely on the characters - who are they, what drives them, what they want from this life. The early episodes might appear as a CGDCT fluff, but the story eventually picks up and develops a single cohesive narrative. The final parts are, in fact, way more gritty and serious than one would expect, which might look like a case of Cerebus Syndrome, but the tonal shift is properly foreshadowed from the beginning, and even incorporated into the story itself. “Wasn’t space fishing supposed to be about hopes and dreams?!”, asks the exasperated MC, while standing under a rocket nozzle, body-blocking it from ignition.

Characters. While the early part of the show is about training routine/slice-of-life, and the last is the story culmination, the middle one is dedicated entirely to the development of the cast. It’s an ensemble of six girls and each one of them gets a focus episode and a legit story arc. What’s more - they have actual relationships between each other. Many ensemble shows suffer from a problem of the cast only existing as a single entity - this is not one of them. For example, the MC is your typical hyperactive idiot, yet another girl is an even bigger hyperactive idiot. What happens when they interact? A positive feedback loop of hyperactive idiocy that threatens to tear the space-time continuum and demands the intervention of the other cast members. Meanwhile, the group leader is a straight-laced no-nonsense type, and the MC seriously rustles her jimmies. Yet they quickly find a common ground - competitive spirit and desire to succeed, leading to a healthy rivalry that drives them both to improve.

Production values. This series has a very distinct “independent movie” feel to it. Meaning, it’s unconventional/refreshing/bad because the creators are either incapable of following medium conventions or choose not to. The most obvious area is voice acting: many VAs has this as their first job ever (which you can hear) and are deliberately doing regional accents that are equivalent to irish/scottish accents of English, i .e. unintelligible eldritch chanting. To me it sounds refreshing and unique, not being “generic anime girl voices”; to others it may be grating. Same with the writing/storyboarding - often the only appropriate reaction to a twist is “lolwut?”, which can be seen as either entertaining or aggravating. Use your own judgment.

Humor. More precisely, comedic timing. Deserves a special mention for being really good. Many sudden cuts made me burst into laughter.

8/10 because this series is fun and compelling with forgivable issues that don’t detract from the enjoyment.

This is in no doubt, one of the most controversial trash of the season, but it really is by no means bad, so either you love or you hate it (just like FranXX)!

So...the premise of Sora to Umi no Aida: Sexism's the name of the game (get it, game adaptation?)...initially. And this archetype has been present for decades (e.g. Man on the Moon etc.), so much so that when it was first presented in the opening episode, it was jaw-dropping to see the gender politics play out, that it warranted drops from people who were speculating what this series was all about. BUT...there's more to ... it than just the ire story plot that transfigures into the overall premise of just "CDGCT" of space fishing...

And that's the characters themselves (or much to my disdain) their individual personalities. For a start, Haru is obnoxiously loud, too playful and hasn't had conscience for the people around her, but that's due to her grandmother's teachings of life, and it's with that same figure that she chooses to see things positively, which is something the next girl cannot. Namino, the high-expectational and exceptional role model for others, she takes everything seriously and will attempt to throw others off just to see her dream realized. If you've been watching the relationship of both Haru and Namino, it is not just polar opposites, but one of where they have to see the perspective from each other's shoes, otherwise, the time for bickering always never fails.

Ruby the blonde-haired American native, coming to experience space fishing for herself; she is quite the disruptive character and tries to be the noisy one, and in a similar fashion to Haru, likes everything at 1st sight, jumps onto it without thinking twice about it (and that applies to her 1st time trying out space fishing as well). For Makoto, her fear of water just ensures that her chances of going space fishing will be kept at the bare minimum from the start, but her eventual overcomerture helps her to be relieved of the phobia. (See, you could try!)

Last 2 girls, Maiko and Makiko, it's easy to misspell the recognition of both girls, and this is where their own personalities make and/or break them in the process of their growing years. (Spoilers) Maiko's intention of becoming a space fisher is to find out the cause of her brother's death, and get the truth out of the bag. Unfortunately, that single project was helmed by Makiko's (or Makimaki as Haru calls her) father, the president of the fishing emissary-cum-director of the all-men expedition towards dangerous waters, where Maiko rages over past happenings in an attempt for revenge. But, as all things have to end on a good note, forgiveness bears past circumstances that has to be bitten hard in order to be forgiving.

Add to that the predominant male characters of sexist views (especially Atsushi with his arrogance) and the mild female supportists that attempt to strike his words down (Rika etc.) and it's basically a toss up for the worst character line-up or something more perplexing, I don't know.

The underlying tell-tale signs of the series' goodness is found in the art and animation. This is decent enough for a good watch, seriously. TMS Entertainment (and that Leaf-logo studio) must have been collabs for the more recent times (from the better-than-average Baki (2018) to the awful Senjuushi), and I have to give a little props to them for making everything of watchable quality. Some say the art is stunning, while others say meh. Either way, if not for the purely sexist terms this show initally offers, this section would be heavily undermined for both the story and characters alone.

The music is purely fine for what it is. The OST isn't quite shabby, as per the character VAs for Haru, Ruby and Maiko for the OP and Konomi Suzuki's ED, which I find it plenty-fine but something that is below her substance of her works past. Either way, it is still OK, nothing really stands out, and is forgettable for many reasons.

The elephant in the room is still THAT one gender-divisive issue that will turn potential people from watching this, and I can see why. Regardless, if this is a given pass, it's entirely understandable as well. Either way, it's the reinforced "you love it or hate it" archetype that defines this series overall, and it's your call to watch or pass this up.

well yet another anime about cute girl doing things that pretends to have a plot instead of making it a slice of life comedy that it is

story 3
this is basically cute girl doing things everything else either feels badly used or the creators did not care about it the part about the characters being the first females to be this new age fisher is a bit hard to believe and is only used in the most cheapest way possible having the male fishers make a occasional sexist remark telling them to quit but really it just feels like it was used poorly ... and could of been very easily cut and the show would of been made better for it the world is the anime build is interesting but focused on far to little the anime have these things called deitys that help the girls that very rarely show up and it rarely spends anytime on the struggle of fishing really the rare time spend on it was ten times more interesting then most of what the show focused on and if it was given serious focus the show would of been so so much better but no they wanted t to focus on cute girls doing things like there isn't enough anime doing that

art 6
the art was colorful and nice enough to look at and the color of the fishing areas on the rare occasions they are shown look good and if shown more might of really got this section a higher rating but sadly it was not meant to be and everything else has the quality you expect from a anime about cute girls doing things

sound 5
there really nothing worth noting about the sound

characters 3
there basically the same characters seen in most anime about cute girls doing things except i did find the main characters hyper active personality to be more annoying then normal and ill fitting when this anime would of definitely improved with a more serious main character with a back story that had a reason they were doing this in the first place and actually there is another girl in the group that is just that but i feel the studio was mostly only interesting in cute girls do things the main character must always be the hyper active girl even when it hurts the anime

overall 4
the reason i am going so hard on this anime is it has elements in the anime that if the main character was change to one that gave a more serious tone to the anime and focus more on the much more interesting world it set i could see this anime being a 7 or even a 8 but no it had things that were actually interesting and decided to waste it on making another anime about cute girl doing things which there is already a very long list of anime that do this and really the problem is to many like this one try and lie make it seem like it cares about plot it makes me mad when they could of just made a slice of life comedy anime and skip this pretending and it is specially infuriating when they had something they could really build on but they focused on something you can get from hundreds of other anime