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This is a music video, remember that. So we're judging this as we do with music, and not as anime.

Please completely disregard the story and character ratings since there isn't much of these qualities in this video.

The music is created by Ryo of Supercell fame. If you don't know who Ryo is and you consider yourself a fan of Vocaloid, then you should probably reevaluate everything in your lives. Make sure your not a tomato by looking into a mirror. Anyway, since this is Supercell the song is already going to be of quality work and is very reminiscent of HeartBreaker and When The First ... Love Ends. For those who haven't listened to those songs, the song would be categorized to the light rock genre, something Ryo has been known for.

The art is beautiful, in the sense that the bubbly artwork really tells the a very bubbly and small story. If you've seen Usagi Drop or Aoi Hana, then you'll be oddly reminded of a recent anime that you've seen when watching this.

It's a great music video that's actually inspiring on the side, for some reason. Anyway, this is about four minutes long, so it won't kill you to watch this. There's plenty of worse things you could do to eat your precious time.

(This is just a re-post of my thoughts in the episode discussion forum.) Thank goodness I wasn't swept by the hype ... otherwise... From what I've been told, it was supposed to be an anime series, then turned into a six episode OVA, then turned into one 50-minute OVA. So pretty much like what happened to The Last Airbender movie. It felt rushed, lacked in good development of characters and story, and felt really trippy... I don't even know what that means. Wait ... I meant unbalanced.

Anyway, this OVA is quite disappointing even if I wasn't at that point.

Let's start with the good.

The animation was ... actually pretty cool. I like grittiness of it, reminds me of Escaflowne in a way. The mesh of action and a somewhat sad daily life kind of defined the grittiness of the animation.

Now we go with the ugly.

The parallel plots with one in-media-res and the other ab-initio really messes up the story. Too many things are left unanswered and the way the story was told made the pacing feel off and too quick for me to actually care. Also, the way the ending was told made me feel that this really isn't THE Story of Black Rock Shooter. It's just a prequel of it. (Think Star Wars prequel trilogy bad.)

Characters don't really feel unique but it'd be surprising to see unique characters in a single OVA. So I'll be forgiving. Also, is everyone in parallel world (that they don't explain about, by the way) mutes or something?

And now with the bad. (Just felt like referencing things.)

There were barely any songs in there. The ones that do exist, though, were average and nothing worthy of being memorable. What's good is that at least the score wasn't suicide-inducing annoying like Akikan's. Funny thing is, they didn't even have the song, oddly enough "Black Rock Shooter", that they based the anime off of. I kept saying to myself that they would put the theme song in the climax or end credits. But after a while, I lost hope... Stay focused me!

Lastly, I want yuri. Damn it! Give me some yuri! (This does not weigh into my decision. I just really like to whine about this particular genre.)

Therefore, I give this an "Average" rating because there wasn't any given reason to hate this other than time constraints and I feel like being nice. After all, I just saw Inception.

P.S. Go watch Inception. It's much better than Avatar and it's pretty awesome.

P.D. Because I said Avatar, I got reminded of the cartoon about controlling elements and what not. Go watch that series too and while I'm at it, the Legend of Korra also... Well, once the Legend of Korra comes out.

This is going to be a short review.

As of now, the fanbase for Haruhiism has downsized a lot lately because of the executive decision to make the Endless Eight arc. That is based off of a thirty page story that focuses upon a "Groundhog Day" loop. The original story itself only focused upon the final loop, which meant that the problem was in the end and the audience only experienced the loop once. Kyoto Animation decided that they should expand this story into eight "different" loops called the infamous "Endless Eight". The only difference between the episodes were the clothes that the characters decided ... to wear. The unexpected, only to the company, reaction was the backlash of many fans and the probable loss of a lot of money.

After the dismal reaction towards the second series of Haruhi Suzumiya, the studio decided that if they wanted to be one of the best studios again, then they would have to adapt the most popular book of the entire series. So, what was The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya supposed to mean for the fans of the series? It was Kyoto Animation's apology that they would never try something like Endless Eight again.

Alright, so that's enough backstory for the movie's creation. Now let's actually talk about the movie.

Like I said before, this movie is adapted from the most popular book in the Haruhi Suzumiya series. Since apparently I'm not supposed to include summaries, then I'll just skip straight to my reaction of the movie.

It. Was. Great. The story, already being quite solid, was adapted extraordinarily well from its source material. The art was also outstanding since the movie is made from a company that has quite a large budget. Sounds from both the voices and the music was very good, but it did seem as if a single song was constantly played throughout the movie. It's not bad, but wasn't exactly expected either. Well, the music does make you feel whatever the characters were feeling at that particular point. Character development was terrific and it actually made me care about most of the characters. I enjoyed this movie a lot, because this was a just-about-perfect movie. I guess there are some problems like time constraints that had to condense some parts of the original story, but that's to be expected of any movie-book adaption. I mean I can nitpick, but the problems wouldn't decrease the fun in watching this.

In the end, it was great movie, so I'm going to give this the rating of Kick-Ass.

Well let's just clear some things up now. THIS IS NOT FREAKIN' K-ON IN THE FREAKIN MILITARY. All right, now that that's over with let's start with the review of The Sound of the Skies, aka So Ra No Wo To. (This will be a quick one since I wrote one before but it got deleted when my computer got the blue screen.)

Okay so the story and the characters, even if they're pretty cliche, are actually quite good in their own right. The pacing is pretty good, characters are well developed and believable enough to not be Mary Sues. The voices also fit each and ... every character very well.

Art and Sound is amazing in their own right. The artstyle of the characters are very similar to K-ON's, but the backgrounds and backdrops are radically different. It's jaw-dropping. (Okay, not for me, but it's still very different.) It even gives 5 Centimeters per Second a rival.

The soundtrack is different than K-ON's, too. Rather the songs are moreso comparible to the Team ICO video game series. (There's ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian.) Basically, it has very well composed songs for the orchestra to play and it sometimes focuses on a single particular instrument throughout the anime. (It would be the trumpet in this show). So really, it's always a crowning music of awesome.

Overall, I enjoyed this anime a lot. It was well rounded and gave enough awesome moments to make up for the less than creative story and characters. Therefore, I give this rating a "Kick-Ass" for it's awesomeness.

So, you might still think that this relates to K-ON, (you know just like Skip Beat or White Album), and you are completely wrong. Only the artstyle and sharing of the music genre are the only things that are similar about it. The character animations are basically the same, but there's enough contrasts in The Sound of the Skies that make it immensly better anyways.

I'll concede that both of the animes use music as a part of their themes. But K-ON's is more like "Using music to save our club" than The Sound of the Skies "Using music to understand more about ourselves and the world". So if anybody still tells you that the both of the animes are the same, then please don't believe them and let them know that they're jerkasses that only watch the first ten minutes of a show and make judgement upon them.

Also if you're wondering what the soundtrack's going to sound like then here (By the way, it's not from The Sound of the Skies but from ICO. This is just to get you prepared for what it's going to be similar to.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DipbshLI8PA

P.S. I hate my life