So Ra No Wo To

Five different girls in military and their lives. Interesting? Unfortunately, it doesn’t. This anime is a true example of what happens, if you try to do too much at once on the weak and uninspiring basis.

Sora no woto, aka ‘Sound of the Sky’ is a mixed culture setting war zone folktale involving a young girl who only came to military to play nice trumpet. If you just read the synopsis, it seems like a very unique and refreshing idea for slice of life genre anime. Sadly, it is not, because the major problem that this anime falls down is from the concept from the ... start. When you think of slice of life genre, the most important thing is always consistency on everything. Theme, settings, plot, relevance, comedy, all these thing has to be in balanced and united by one main flow of atmosphere. Sora no woto ultimately fails to do that.

Think about the setting of this anime first. There is a war and a town. Only soldiers there in that huge fat town are 5 females, three of them is not even capable of using the guns right. Trumpet is being used for the military communication, and yet they have extremely advanced tank we’ve never seen in any animes. Mixed culture of Europe and Japan looks just awkward as it is. There are all sorts of mysteries arising, yet none of them is properly solved or introduced. Yes, this anime doesn’t make sense of anything. My understanding of 'making sense' is completely different from Gurren Lagann pierce through the time adventure with galaxy sized robot, it's more about the relationship between its circumstance. Sora no woto always involves the paradoxical elements at the same times, and tries to tell two completely irrelevant lines of the story. I’m just utterly surprised that this anime actually ended with this horribly introduced setting and backgrounds.

There is no real plot we can call; it just portrays the life of 5 girls in military. It’s basically a war zone, so it partially success on telling this story of blood and massacre that those disasters create (*Or not, perhaps. I'm just making this up). Some episode actually does make us to become a bit emotional. It was pretty nice. The problem is, it still doesn’t make ‘sense’. The whole this creation of story looks like giant piece of junk art, chucked in random elements together in one; even Homer Simpson can make that kind of stinkers. I’m seriously concerning about the ability of script writers for this anime. Conversations are very unintelligent and none of them is memorable. I mean, what the hack is all of those flat, cheap, overused and retarded jokes? I mean, they just don’t work for me. From my theory, this happened due to indecisive nature of the staffs who’s trying to make anime deep and emotional but funny and cheap at the same time. Anime clichés with fanservices and terror of war just don’t match; they are basically trying to something that is facing the complete opposite directions. It will never work. Those writers tried to do two things at once; they wanted war drama which will make some of emotional scenes that will cry people in a river, but at the same time, they wanted moe appeals, for financial issues. Well, if they had ability, they really could've used those services in 'appropriate' moment, then I will at least say 'oh well, they wrapped up war and moe nicely'. It doesn't. Some episodes were totally tainted by irrelevant use of moe fanservices, and these taints ruins the whole flow of the mood.

Not just that; maybe the idea of war itself is actually the reason that Sora no Woto breaks apart. I’m not saying war is such a bad theme or whatever. It is just overused way too much. *War is bad thing! I’ll protect this village from that bad thing!*… seriously, everyone knows that. War is bad, and should be prevented whatsoever; and this anime tries to tell us about ‘THAT’. For 12 episodes long series, only thing it said is this one philosophical and complex phrase; ‘WAR IS BAD’, but nothing else excluding the pee joke. Shallow… way too much shallow…

Episode is very, very inconsistent. Some episodes are alright, trying to raise our hopes a bit more. Later, it crushes by terribly executed episodes that are absolutely pointless to put. When some scenes are well concerned, other parts are just utterly boring. It is sad that there are only a few ‘truly’ good scenes, but almost about 15 minutes per episode is just futile. With this shallow plot and setting, it can only do stretching itself out to fill the bottle of 25 minutes. Those filled materials are the main cause of this boredom, and occurred due to simplistic storyline. If they’ve made some solid basis at the start, this never happened.

Thing I can praise on this anime is BG art. It was one of the most gorgeous looking scenes I’ve seen in a while. It is breath-taking, and all those buildings, trees, lakes, cliffs, bridges form a perfect harmony, contrast what I’ve seen in its story. I was utterly surprised about all the animation quality from this anime. CG tank (although it doesn’t make sense) looks great and very well animated. OP animation had some beautiful and abstract art works. On the other hand, it might be just me, but I hate that character design so much. That’s one of the major reasons why I hated K-On. This part of me is pretty much biased, so I will not count this part on the rating; amazing BG art covers all.

Sound is another astonishing thing; I just love classics and violins. A lot of them sounds greatly, although most of time, they are used in inappropriate time. OP is not bad; serious and calming although it was not that candy for me, but ED was seriously mismatching the theme of war. It was funny seeing this difference between opening, ending songs, since that’s what they exactly did for the plot of the anime. OP = War drama!! ED = MOE MOE!!

Sadly, characters in this anime are the most stereotypical, and uninteresting ones I’ve ever seen. I felt like being tortured watching all those crappy cliché treatments. Starting with Katana, she joined military only to learn how to play trumpet. She is really bad at it, but in certain episode, she just miraculously learns how to play it perfectly, for some superficial reason. ‘LOL SHII IZU SUCH A GENIUUSSU!!’. Hell no, that’s brainless on the side of production staffs. She is enthusiastic, cute and naïve; so typical. There is nothing special or interesting thing about this character at all.

Next, we have Kureha, tsundere. Actually, one of those annoying ones. She acts all over the place spreading her faggotry like ‘Katana we are fuckin soldiers, it’s a SERIOUS BUSINESS, don’t play like weabooooz.’ Yet, she can’t even hold her gun tight. This is just another clichéd character, and we can expect nothing new from her. Same goes to silent moe Noel-chan and typical mother type glassed girl whose existence makes no sense. Only character I can say ‘not that bad’ is Rio; the only person there who in fact make sense being a soldier. She is cool and gets annoyed a lot for the ‘proper’ reason, such as Katana being empty-headed. She still has major bullshit things that make everything senseless, but better than all the other lowly characters. Ultimately, the character lacks some large amount of depth overall. Their reaction is so predictable due to the oversimplified personality. They are all clichéd and uninteresting.

Did I enjoy watching this? Try to throw yourself into the trash-bin and swim; you will find it more enjoyable than this shit. It was more of pain; everything absolutely makes no sense, and is more of quasi-experiment without a single noticeable moments. I’m just terribly disappointed how this gorgeous art and my favourite classical music background OST got wasted for this terrible series.

Sora no woto had a potential. So, I just blame production staffs and industrial crisis. Hurr durr.

The inclusion of natural elements to an otherwise stale gimmick of “cute girls in serious circumstances” in an anime met with a mixed reception among casual and hardcore anime fans. These are circumstances that involve a setting, or lore to be specific, that would not have needed to have any “moe” components to make it even more or less meaningful. But we all know why: they want to appeal to what is popular and cash in on it. Unfortunately, that cash grab is more diminutive than fruitful from how seemingly transparent these elements give off in these shows and nowhere near is this evident than ... in Sora No Woto.

To get the gist of what Sora no Woto wants to show us with its extravagant array of colorful characters and artistic merit is how the setting is put into perspective. When you read the back story of the show’s lore, you sense that the writer had a unique vision when constructing it to facilitate the story. However, making the setting and the story compelling are separate issues; you have to have a story to tell while also making the world an imaginative wonderland. In Sora no Woto, it manages to set a friendly tone to the setting with an elaborate background story. Still, there is absolutely nothing to make that setting meaningful in regards to its story.

This is a slice-of-life anime, first and foremost. No story can be found in one, for the most part. Because of this, there is a perplexing motive to be understood from a writer’s perspective. Why tell interesting lore if your “story” doesn’t take advantage of that “lore”? This counter-intuitive realization makes Sora no Woto seem like a lifeless barren landscape with no meaningful qualities. These lack of qualities show how so much is out in the vast openness of the show’s world, but the enclosed space where the main characters occupy is nonexistent.

Why is the space nonexistent? The characters that inhabit it are what make it that way. The only exception that doesn’t make this cast of characters completely terrible is Kanata Sorami because of her charming presence. Other than her, there was hardly any reason to take these girls’ struggles with any firm conviction of sincerity. This problem can be surfaced by how so little the writers give any of these girls authentic, or unique, identities that made me think of them more than just Girl #1, #2, or #3. Not to mention that the tropes that we see in countless cute girl ensemble anime aren’t at the slightest bit engaging by how little they try to make it entertaining.

On the subject of entertainment value, it would help to find the value of Sora no Woto more revealing if you, say, have insomnia to help guide you through this. Monotony is prevalent in most scenes that would otherwise feel as if they were not needed to be there, to begin with. I can appreciate atmospheric inclusions in some locations. Still, there is almost no substance to any pointless scenes where the girls go off to some abandoned area at random. This comes out as negative due to how dull the writing comes off, not to mention how I previously said how the characters are mostly devoid of any life to their generic tropes.

Judging from the poster and screenshots, you would think that this is made by Kyoto Animation, considering how it looks very similar to K-ON. But it is drawn by the original character designer of K-ON, along with Kokoro Connect and Lucky Star, Yukiko Horiguchi. The style of artistry in all of her characters always looks very expressive. However, there is a slight aesthetic disconnect between her character designs and the public art of the environments. Everything in the world is this slight gritty wasteland, while you see these cute girls doing the typical cute girl schtick that severely distracts the main pull of the ambiance. Despite this big crux, both are independently done very well in giving some bit of ingenuity to the art.

As far as anime music shows go, there aren’t as much in the way of musical endeavors in Sora no Woto besides girls playing bugle horns every once in a while. But what music there is quite soothing and fits the atmosphere well; it gives a satisfactory experience through all the dreary, monotonous scenes.

A fair bit of wasted potential can be made into a case regarding Sora no Woto. It is one thing if you try to put forth strong lore within a show, but with a genre like Slice-of-life, you need to give at least an effort to show more of it than plainly explain it through monologue after monologue. There is never a sense of accomplishment without monologues because of how dry the pacing comes across. While not a “bad” anime by any means, there are at least a few elements, such as the art/animation and musical arrangements. The best advice is not to watch this while lying down in bed; otherwise, your eyes will flutter until you start collapsing out of sheer apathy.

Grade: C-

A poor man's 86 and girl's last tour. Great designs as expected from A1 but bog standard tropes and mishmash of ideas. There's only so many times hearing amazing grace can save a show. The show can't decide whether it wants to be slice of life or drama and ends up being nothing in particular. While some people might be able to give this anime a pass simply for cute girls doing cute things, your time will likely be better spent on any other anime. Where 86 had intense action and shock value and girl's last tour had emotional and poignant moments, So Ra No ... Wo To will just end up leaving you with a jumbled mess of ideas wondering why you bothered watching it and should make everyone more weary of "original" anime series.

Style - I didn't like the character design at all. Too much moeblob for me. The animation was pretty good though, so 2 out of 3.

Character - The characters are childish. Kanata is your given naive pacifist moeblob. Actually all of the main characters in the story are pacifists. Why do I hate pacifists again? Oh yeah, appeasement led to Hitler taking over Europe and WW2. Despite all the time they spend together, very little information is revealed about the characters' pasts. We only find out right at the end that Noel was once a killing machine and one of the characters is a ... princess or something like that. So not a whole lot of character development goes on, in comparison to world building. Also, everyone treats Kanata like a child, and there was sudden angst from the more mature characters nearer the end. Also, they committed treason by hiding an enemy soldier and not reporting it. So 0 out of 4.

Story - The world building in this anime is pretty good. However, the girls barely do any military training at all. You would expect them to have some practice down at the range once a week at least. Nope. They never have target practice or physical training. That's fine when you're just going around and playing music to cheer up the troops, but they're supposed to be guarding an outpost for god's sake. The only things they seem to do were search and rescue missions and planting crops. Then it suddenly got serious nearer the end with the threat of actual war but no worries! Kanata playing her trumpet stopped the enemy army of thousands of tanks right in their tracks (or legs)! Oh and, Rio suddenly appears at the exact moment that the armies were going to re-attack and announces a peace treaty. Frankly speaking, the anime was boring and random for pretty much all the episodes up till the last few episodes, where it suddenly got serious - seriously preachy, that is. 0 out of 3.

Overall 2 out of 10 for moeblobs, treasonous appeasement pacifists and initially random and boring then suddenly serious and preachy story.

SPOILERS BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

So. Ra. No. Wo. To. The sound of the sky that pierces the heavens. Yet another anime set in a post-apocalyptic world, but this time with some moe appeal to brighten up your day.

Sound of the Sky is an interesting anime. Rather than being adapted months or years later from a successful manga or light novel, it actually aired along with its manga serialization. Consequently, it features the blessing and curse of being an original, one that forges its own path without the pressure of living up to its source material’s reception.

With no better words to describe it, I ... found the Sound of the Sky to be a disappointing anime. The opening, performed by Kalafina, is truly killer, and actually does an excellent job of prefacing the post-apocalyptic world in which the cast finds themselves. The ending, while certainly playing more off the moe aspect of the show, holds its own as well. The animation, furthermore, while nothing special, is never poor enough to be distracting, and even includes some very nice scenes. The real issue comes with everything else – the story, the characterization, the pacing, and the ending.

Without betraying too much of the plot, it is important to realize that all of the show’s cast is characterized explicitly, rather than implicitly. Very rarely are the viewers given something to chew on. Even simple devices like foreshadowing and allusion are missed in the straightforward character-builds that frequently follow an episodic path. As you watch this anime, the characters are shoved directly at you. They’ll tell you what they want you to know to be true about them, and nothing more. I can’t think of a single example in this show where subtlety is used as a mechanism for developing character traits, or where a lane for fantheory (laugh if you want) is given a space to grow.

So Ra no Wo To builds on the simple, idea that all of the show’s cast are different representations of the MC’s character. Kanata is a seemly optimistic, determined girl who wants nothing more than to learn the sound of the sky that brought her hope during her war-torn upbringing. The other four main characters – her peers and superiors in the 5-woman platoon – serve as the symbols of the conflicting emotions that hide deeper in her mind. An oversimplification, though not an inaccurate one, reveals that Kanata is not able to escape the dystopian, depressing reality that is her continued existence. The happy, positive mind is a facade covering the depression that characterizes almost the entire cast. But rather than being instructive, So Ra no Wo To seems to embrace the “that sucks!” mentality. Life is nasty, poor, brutish, and short, as soon as one steps beyond the borders of cozy Seize or the walls of Kanata’s positive outlook. And this isn’t even subtle or thoughtfully done throughout the course of the show, nor is it instructive. Each of the remaining platoon members exhibit little character beyond their usefulness for unwrapping Kanata’s optimistic front.

All this could be forgiven, though, if only the show possessed some message in its storytelling. What about the Sound of the Sky drives one past the depressive reality and into a new day? Obviously, it’s love, friendship, and playing Amazing Grace on a trumpet so well that two warring armies throw down their weapons and celebrate the end of a war. For a show that so badly wants to be a slice of life inspired by a certain after-school tea time (seriously, there’s even a scene where Kanata envisions the whole platoon playing music in high school together), it offers a conclusion that’s laughably unrealistic even by slice-of-life standards. It’s not instructive, it’s not redemptive, and it leaves the viewer with no better sense of what to do when the darkness of the world seems overpowering.

And with such there’s several other places where this show struggles. For some reason the writers, having spent most of the season on small sub-arcs that went nowhere ranging from water fights to illegal alcohol distillery – feel that it is a good idea to introduce a brand new character, and to start a war that conveniently concludes in the platoon captain becoming a princess and saving the day in Disney-esque fashion. It’s almost as if the writers, believing for so long they were writing a normal SoL, are found out that they aren’t following the show’s military-esque premise and told to draw some mecha tanks and some massive explosions, along with the stereotypical “evil military dude who has a bizarre backstory with one of the cast” all in the final two episodes. It’s so forced it is almost funny, but there’s not suggestion the pacing is supposed to be comedic by intent. Combine this with the entirely overly-characterized cast, and you have something that’s only memorable because of how forced and unnecessary it all is. To make matters worse, some other themes, such as the legends and lore that surround the city and the almost spiritual nature of the land’s history, give viewers a sense of hope in the first few episodes that we might see some actually interesting development, just to have all hopes quenched in the poorly-paced, directionless story. It’s disappointing. There’s also some really bizarre impure yuri that seems to be placed in there mainly as a form of fanservice but does absolutely nothing to assist the already-struggling story.

So my final rating is mediocre. It would be a full point worse, but the absolutely excellent opening singlehandedly saves its rating. If you are the spoiler-reading type who read this review in an attempt to find out if this show is worth you while: I don’t recommend it. If you’re looking for the SoL that this show really wants to be, go watch K-On! If you want the military story that this show may appear to be, there’s an absolute wealth of excellent anime to choose from that do it so much better. But feel free to listen to the opening on YouTube whenever the desire comes.

This is basically another manufactured anime made to fill a time slot for the season and to pay the bills, following the same industry rulebook. Much like how most K-pop or J-pop groups are created by companies following a business model and don't actually happen organically between a bunch of creative people expressing themselves through their music, Sound of the Sky is yet another generic anime meeting another deadline. Don't be fooled by the claims that it is an original anime with no source material to adapt. This actually makes it worse since it's obviously just a bunch of thrown together tropes with an added ... gimmick and not something developed over time or through any meticulous, prolonged thought process.

We have five girls in a military platoon guarding a remote border in a World War I era fantasy world. The setting, the uniforms, even the color palette, is basically just Valkyria Chronicles or the many other similar anime. There are also tanks, of course. All this is just windowdressing so the five girls can play house. If a bunch of grade school girls had a slumber party and decided to role-play as soldiers, protecting their stuffed animals and making blanket forts, then it would be exactly this anime. If all you want to do is watch moe little girls acting "cute", squealing at everything, acting exceptionally weak, finding ways to waste time and amuse themselves, smiling and enjoying exquisite Japanese cuisine (because it's treason to present it otherwise), then this anime is right up your alley. If you expected any remotely serious plot or even realism relative to it's own world, stay far far away.

The "gimmick" of the anime is the use of bugles and trumpets to express emotion or some sentiment through music and sound. It's completely diminished by it's constant use, from morning wakeup calls to afternoon band practice to nightly serenades to distant calls for help to shrill warnings of danger. None of it is codified and it's a general meaningless nuisance that everyone in the town can hear. They somehow have futuristic tanks but can't afford basic loudspeaker systems. The worst part is some smart cookie in the writing staff was probably watching an American news story, stumbled upon "Amazing Grace" at the vigil of a dead black man shot by police, and decided to procure the lovely melody to play during each night of this all-girls slumber party, as a trumpet solo of course.