So Ra No Wo To

On the outskirts of the country of Helvetia rests the tranquil town of Seize. Upon its cobbled streets, citizens go about their daily lives, undisturbed by the increasingly tense military relations between Helvetia and the neighboring Roman Empire.

It is under these circumstances that the 1121st platoon of the Helvetian army, stationed at the Clocktower Fortress in Seize, receives a new recruit in the young and spirited Kanata Sorami. Having joined the military to fulfill her dream of learning to play the bugle, she excitedly accepts the tutelage of the Sergeant Major, Rio Kazumiya, who happens to be a skilled trumpeter. Working alongside them are the aloof mechanic, Noël Kannagi, the feisty gunner, Kureha Suminoya, and the compassionate Captain Felicia Heideman; together, they experience the beauty of life in Seize and the lasting joy of a community that has persevered in spite of the crumbling world around them.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kannagi, Noël Main

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Sorami, Kanata Main

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Kazumiya, Rio Main

Kobayashi, Yuu Japanese

Heideman, Filicia Main

Endou, Aya Japanese

Suminoya, Kureha Main

Kitamura, Eri Japanese

Yumina Supporting

Fukuen, Misato Japanese

Carl Supporting

Sugino, Tanuki Japanese

Krauss Supporting

Ishizuka, Unshou Japanese

Aldola, Aisha Supporting

Miyahara, Nami Japanese

Hopkins Supporting

Uchida, Naoya Japanese

Shimizu, Akira Producer

Yokoyama, Shuko Producer

Matsumoto, Miho Assistant Producer

Kanbe, Mamoru Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Apr 17, 2010

Archaeon

Recommended

"Amazing Grace! (how sweet the sound),
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see..."

John Newton and William Cowper (Olney Hymns - 1779).

The problem with first impressions is that all too often they are wrong, and this is one of the main reasons why a number of great shows don't get the recognition they deserve. Unfortunately, every season more anime are added to that list.

Sora no Woto (Sounds of the Skies), is one example of this mindset at work.
...
The series is the first production of a new initiative known as Anime no Chikara (The Power of Anime), which is essentially a collaboration between TV Tokyo's anime department and Aniplex that was established in 2009 . Part of the mandate for this project is to create and produce original anime which are not based on any previously published material (so manga, novel and game adaptations are out of the window). One of the advantages of this is that the writers have far fewer restrictions placed on them from the outset, and it seems as though this freedom has been put to good use here.

The story is about a young girl, Sorami Kanata, who, having heard a trumpet rendition of "Amazing Grace" played by a mysterious female soldier, has resolved to become a bugler. She is assigned to the 1121st Platoon, who are stationed at the Time Keeping Bastion in the town of Seize, and is taken under the wing of Master Sergeant Rio Kazumiya.

Now, one would be forgiven for initially thinking that this series is nothing more than K-On! in the army, especially given that the character design is very similar between the two anime (I thought like that too, at first). However, the differences between the two shows are palpable from the very first moments of Sora no Woto. The plot, which is more on the episodic side for the most part, is far more reminiscent of Haibane Renmei, and although there are a few points that deserved more focus, the story is actually very well crafted. The pacing is extremely good throughout the series, and the seemingly slow progression promotes a feeling of relaxation rather than boredom in a manner very similar to Aria.

The one thing that really captures the viewer though, is the bittersweet yet hopeful undertone running through the series, and nowhere is this more prominent than in the characters. While each of them are somewhat stereotypical, the show develops in such a way that the story becomes inclusive of them, rather than having one true lead while the other "leads" are nothing more than glorified support. The upshot of this is that, come the end of the series, the viewer is left with a sense of catharsis that very few shows manage to achieve, especially ones that, at first glance, fit the "moe" archetype.

One of the supposed problems with Sora no Woto is the fact that the characters are designed with moe in mind, however the show is surprising in that, while the characters are reminiscent of certain other shows, this is where much of the similarity ends. In all honesty I found the character design somewhat off-putting at first, however this perception was dispelled very quickly as, although the characters are very clearly "moe" in their design, the fact is that this allows for a great deal of expression as well - something that is put to good use throughout the series. What is most surprising though, is the distinct lack of visual hooks associated with this sort of character design, in particular things like fan service. Instead, the series uses the characters in a manner that is far removed from the norm, and the effect of this is that, come the end of the series, one really begins to wonder why everyone made such a fuss over K-On!

Animation-wise, the series is very good, especially with character and vehicle movements. There is a fluid, almost naturalistic, flow to the animation which is present even during the scenes in which very little happens. The biggest pluses though, are the backgrounds and settings. Unlike most "moe" anime, the attention to detail in this area is truly good, with much of the scenery being evocative of old European towns, villages and countryside. As well as the visual style of the settings, the show also includes a number of European references (Helvetia is Switzerland for example, the Romans speak German, etc), all of which add to the series, and allow the viewer to become more absorbed in the show.

The acting is pretty good throughout the anime, and many of seiyuu really show their talent with their respective characters. Granted there are a few moments where Sora no Woto slips into "moe speaking mode", however these become fewer as the series progresses. The real star of the show though, is the music, in particular the lone trumpet playing "Amazing Grace".

Now, one thing that should be clarified here is just how important that one hymn is to this show. Hearing it is what spurs Kanata into becoming a bugler, but it's also something that links a number of disparate threads throughout the series. The hymn is about salvation and redemption, and ultimately that's what this series is all about. To be honest though, whenever I heard it, all of that didn't matter. The image of the lone bugler playing that song is one of the most evocative to appear in anime for a long, long time, and is made more powerful because this show is effectively about the effects of war, not just on the common people or the military support staff, but also on those who fight.

In effect, this is what makes the characters in Sora no Woto so very different to what one would expect. While there is a degree of stereotype to them, the show is careful not to let these personality traits take over, and as the series progresses the characters are allowed to not simply grow, but to evolve, something which although limited at times, is laudable as this type of development is rare in anime.

Sora no Woto is, by any measure, as much a character piece as Haibane Renmei, Kino no Tabi, or any other show of that ilk. While those other shows may have far more character development, this series is no slouch, indeed some of the characterisations are extremely powerful, especially Illya Arkadia, a character who doesn't appear too often and has very few lines, but whose presence is almost tangible throughout the show.

It should be clear by now that I enjoyed this series immensely, something which I still find somewhat surprising given that I initially avoided it because I expected something extremely "light and fluffy" like K-On! To say that Sora no Woto has far more substance than the series it looks like is an understatement, and while the difference may not sit well with die hard K-On! fans, it should be noted that the aim of this show isn't simply to entertain, but to tell a story. The subject matter is open to interpretation, but the inclusion of possibly the most recognisable hymn in the world speaks volumes about how the series should be perceived.

That said, Sora no Woto does have some "light and fluffy" elements to it, but ultimately it's a tale of salvation, redemption and hope, and it's because of this that the series stands apart from many of it's visual counterparts.

Sometimes the resemblance is only skin deep.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 15, 2012

milkman57

Mixed Feelings

Sora no Woto strongly adheres to a personal saying of mine: "You never know what you're going to get with short animes". I've watched some truly brilliant shows that were only 11-12 episodes long...and I've also watched some that weren't so good. Sora no Woto was one of those that I wasn't sure about, partially because it could almost be considered an OVA, a collaborative effort of several different studios that had never before been produced in manga, graphic novel, nor any other medium that I was familiar with. However, I found in the end that this show requires some patience before it's true colors ... really begin to show. And they were truly some beautiful colors.

Breakdown:

Story (4/10): I should begin by explaining that the story isn't the strong point of this show. The reason for this is how long it takes for the story to develop into anything with real plot substance.

The beginning of the show is done well enough. We see the main character, and are quickly charmed by her kindness and innocence, and see that she has become a soldier, and is headed to her first deployment. The problem is, we aren't given very much exposition to explain the world she lives in, why her country is at war, or what her family or her home are like.

As other characters are introduced, we begin to understand the dynamic that they share. As I learned more about the characters, I thought that perhaps this show would be more "character-driven" rather than "plot-driven". However, this wasn't really the case either, as the characters don't seem to go through much change early on. They simply have small "adventure" each episode, that doesn't require much prior knowledge of the show, and leaves the characters more or less the same as when the episode started.

Also, seeing as the main cast is composed of soldiers, I thought that they would do more...well, soldier things. All the soldiers where the protagonist ends up are women like her, but they don't really have a whole lot of militaristic duties. They rarely go on patrols or even fire their weapons, for that matter. Ultimately, not much is done with the soldier aspect until the very end, and the rest of the time, these women could be an ordinary group of people who just happen to live in the same outpost. This is why I had a problem with the episodic nature of the show, because it rarely felt like anything of consequence was happening, despite the fact that I was watching a group of soldiers.

I suppose there's nothing technically "wrong" with having an "episodic" feel to a show, where there isn't much overall plot to connect the episodes. However, it's certainly not what I prefer. I personally like to see a strong plot that connects the episodes together, or even having the way the characters interact with one another to create drama and tension. I just didn't feel either of these things with Sora no Woto, which is why I rated the plot so low.

Now, the show doesn't stay this way the entire time. Toward the end of the show, there is a very nice span of two or three episodes where some very big events occur, and I was genuinely excited by what happened. I only wish that more of the show had been so plot driven, and had shown the storytelling prowess that the final episodes did.

Art (9/10) - This show was really quite beautiful to watch. No details were skimmed over, even in the background details. Mile after mile of gorgeous countryside was carefully painted into each frame, making it worthwhile to watch the background nearly as much as the characters. There were some pieces that were animated by CGI, which I didn't find as pleasant as the hand-drawn details, but I suppose machines an be very hard to do by hand. This is probably the show's strongest point, which makes me sad in some ways, since art has noticeably less to do with what makes a show good than many of its other aspects.

Sound (9/10)- Music is a large part of what drives this show, as the tune from "Amazing Grace" often fills the sky. I really enjoyed hearing this piece as it was played on the trumpet, and even in a full orchestration later on. The soundtrack overall was quite good, and I found it interesting that Amazing Grace was so integral to the story. Sora no Woto does mean "Sound of the Sky", which very well may refer to that familiar tune that so many people love.

Character (5/10)- As I mentioned before, there isn't much background given of the protagonist early on. And frankly, we never really learn much about her at all. The main problem I had with the characters was that we learn more about a "supporting" character than the main character. All we know about the protagonist is that she wants to learn to play the trumpet, and that's why she joined the army. We learn more about the background of basically every character than the protagonist, who remains a charming and very lovable, but ultimately very shallow character.

Perhaps what really made her seem shallow was her apparent lack of any sort of character flaw. She is completely selfless, thinking of others before herself, works hard, is completely loyal to her fellow soldiers, and never says anything unkind to anyone. This is all wonderful, but we never see what lies inside her heart. Is she only nice to cover up something tragic that happened to her? Is her loyalty due to the fact that she felt she betrayed someone in the past? The show never really attempts to answer these questions.

The show gives plenty of development to a supporting character that I mentioned previously, which makes it seems as though she should have been the protagonist instead. The cast is ultimately very likable, but their development is rather unbalanced, and we will ultimately learn things about them at the last second so that we can understand something. The creators caught themselves a few times, and had to have a character suddenly say "Oh, by the way, there's this really important thing about this other character's past that we forgot to mention until now, so here it is."

Not a bad cast, just one that was mishandled.

Enjoyment (6/10)- I had to force my way through one or two episodes where nothing really happened in the overall plot. Charming and fun only works for so long before someone like me will get curious about the plot, and this show seemed to forget about the plot until nearly the end. If it weren't for the mismanaged characters and lack of plot, this show could have been a lot better.

Remember how I said that it shows some truly beautiful colors at the end? Well, it does, but not until I had to sit through ten episodes of basically nothing. The end of the show was wonderful, emotionally moving, and brought a very satisfying conclusion to everything. It just wasn't enough to make up for early problems that hurt the overall enjoyment value.

Overall (6/10)- Ultimately, this show is worth watching, but only with realistic expectations. It's a lot of fun to watch at first, gets boring in the middle, but does end on a high note. Just don't go into this one expecting anything mind-blowing.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 23, 2010

ringoo4

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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