Okay, so apparently an extra DVD episode was released for Sora no Oto. It’s numbered as 7,5, so I assume it takes place between episode 7 and 8. So, what did the creators decide to focus on? Was this episode meant to flesh out the setting a bit? Did a specific character get taken under the loop? Did it add some subtle details to the series as a whole? Ehm, no. It was just pointless.
I get the idea behind it, however. I really like that, because anime tends to be incredibly scared with alcohol. Especially when it comes to teenagers, while plenty of teenagers at the age of the lead characters are already drinking. I would really stand behind an episode that was dedicated to a drinking party between these characters. But the execution of this episode, and the context it took place in… they didn’t work at all for me.
So basically Kanata and Yumina find out about the distillery, so Felicia turns them drunk in order to make them forget what happened. It’s logical when it just remains to that, but the medieval paintball… what was the point of that? It could have been fun if the creators actually executed it well, but the way in which everyone started horribly overacting in a way that I don’t even think would be possible. Not to mention that it was incredibly annoying.
I actually don’t drink myself, so I can’t say this for sure, but is this really how teenagers behave after only a few glasses of liquor? To me, it feels like the creators were just looking for a cheap excuse to make the characters act really moe.
This episode wasn’t entertaining; it dragged on horribly at times, but I think that my biggest gripe would be that it didn’t really add anything aside from two lines of backstory from Yumina that didn’t really lead to anything. Everything that happened in this episode is just forgotten afterwards with alcohol as an excuse. And later, we found out that Kanata figured out about the distillery anyway, so there essentially was no point to this episode. I guess that you could say that this was the episode in which Kanata found out about the distillery because she simply did not forget what happened, but even then: out of all the things that the creators could have chosen, they choose to elaborate on something that didn’t really need any extra attention? There are a ton of stuff that the creators could have done here, to explain a bit more of that incredibly rushed ending, and in the end the creators pretty much waste it.
Overall, this pretty much reflects on my general opinion of Sora no Oto: it really has a number of terrific and excellent ideas that made me love how well they were making use of Anime no Chikara’s framework of coming with original premises. But some of the other decisions it made… were completely pointless.
Rating: – (Disappointing)
There will be another extra episode on the final BD/DVD that comes out in a few months, so there is a chance they may use that episode to flesh out the ending. Or not. But in either case, it’s rather difficult to insert a whole bunch of important information in the middle of series and not make it feel to the TV viewers like something is missing. So this is why mid-series bonus episodes especially tend to be unsubstantial.
but is this really how teenagers behave after only a few glasses of liquor?
depends on your alcohol tolerance.
Teenagers act anything but moe when drunk lol. Promiscuous yes, moe… no.
So this is another useless episode. You would think that the creators at the very least expanded the world a bit, but no, can’t do that when we have tedious moe antics.
Well, there were other episodes that were as pointless as this one. At least this one was full of moe… =P