The premise of this anime might appear banal at first. A guy named Tomoki Sakurai is your average laid-back pervert, spending his days sitting around and doing nothing in particular in between bouts of looking up girls' skirts. One day an angel comes crashing down on his peaceful village and all hell breaks lose. You'd think this idea wouldn't work and half-way through this series I still couldn't figure out where this anime was trying to go with its plot. It gets a lot better later as the ecchines and general silliness subsides and paves way for a philosophical, mythological and emotionaly disstressing second half of the series. The transition is slow and nearly unnoticable, even if you went on anime watching marathon and decided to see this series in one sitting. It's absolutely amazing how well this has been pulled off and what's even more amazing is that it makes this series unique, in a positive way.
The whole concept of "angeloids" will take you by suprise because you will most likely be thinking about normal folklore-based angels with varying magical powers. Nope. I won't spoil this series for you so I'm only going to say that nearly every idea pertaining to angels here has been invented from scratch. At the same time however the main theme of the plot is that of a 'new world' which is closely based on the European age of discovery and colonisation. Every episode begins with a history lesson and there are tons, and I mean tons of mythological and historical references in here. You'll learn a lot watching this anime.
The characters may appear shallow at the very begining but that won't be the case as the story progresses. The male lead, Tomoki is a pervert like no other. I can't even compare him to other male anime characters because he sets the bar so high in terms of pervertedness that no other character comes anywhere close to it. If there's an opportunity to do something lewd this guy will jump in to take advatage of it, without hesitation. That said, he cares deeply about his friends and is a central figure around which most of the events unravel. He's pivotal to the well-being of his circle of friends.
Ikaros is an angel sent down to assist Tomoki in... well pretty much everything. And Tomoki being a lewd sleaze that he is, takes full advantage of that. Ikaros however plays a much bigger role in this anime helping it to convey the ideas of freedom, discovery and... love. She's also linked to several historical and mythological events. Even her name is based on a mythological person.
Nymph is an another angeloid and her role in the series is to show the viewer that serfdom can be sometimes cruel. An important issue to be sure but this character was not given enough time and the series could have done better in terms of her development. Even though she's a tsundere-type character, she is very similar to Ikaros and at times I had the impression that she was nothing more than her different-looking clone.
Then we have Tomoki's classmates. An eccentric and totally insane genius (a bit cliche but that didn't bother me) Eishirou Sugata. His academic and anecdotal knowledge is impressive and his goal is to discover the 'new world', the one angeloids are coming from. He acts as a mentor/teacher to the rest of the characters often guiding them in their actions. We then have the buxom Mitsuki Sohara, Tomoki's childhood friend who usually karate chops the hell out of him when he's being perverted - a running gag throughout the series. Her presence is somewhat vital to the plot but I couldn't put my finger on it. Perhaps she just fits in with the rest of the cast and without her this series would not be complete. And then we have the spine-chilling Mikako Satsukitane, Tomoki's class president who has the knack of turning peaceful town-folk into vicious killing machines. I don't know what's going on in her head at any given time, but it's not flowers and birds I can tell you that much.
Now then with the story and characters discussed, let's move on to art and sound. I could simply say that they're both jaw-dropping. And they are but let's elaborate a little.
The art is flawless, I couldn't see a single mistake in any of the 13 episodes I've watched. Moreover, the art is precise to the core. Even the smallest features have been drawn with accuracy and precision. I'm talking about movie-grade precision. At times you don't want to believe that you're actually watching a TV series. FUNimation and AIC A.S.T.A have done a great job here.
Now this is where my review might get a little biased. I personally love classical, baroque and late medieval music and this anime features plenty of that type of music. However, I could not see this anime working without any other type of music. Phililosophical and mythological themes call for a classical soundtrack so my personal preferences here don't make that much of a difference. That said, this series' soundtrack also features modern anime style pieces of music so I suppose everyone's going to be pleased.
Enjoyment. Bah, I haven't been this intrugued and thrilled since I watched 'Death Note'. Seriously, the first few episodes might give you the wrong idea but it gets better as the series progresses. You'll not only have fun but you will also be genuinely interested in the story and you'll want to know more at all costs!
'Sora no Otoshimono' is a masterpiece. 10 points.
