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.
