Yeah, with this episode I’m sure: the thing that’s keeping me interested in Sora no Oto is the setting. This episode did a great job of fleshing out the abandoned school building that the lead characters live in. I’m interested in the customs that these girls have, the history behind the people who once were in the school, and the overall culture in the country of Helvetica. It’s imaginative, detailed and inspired. I love how this episode took its time to introduce the various rooms in the building. That’s why I think that this show rocks.
As for the characters… yeah. They could be better, they could be worse. Rio is about the only one with a bit of an interesting personality. The other four are just archetypes. In this episode, they behaved too one-sided and according to their role (the big boobed mother-figure, the optimistic girl, the tsundere and the sleepyhead). If someone has an optimistic character, it doesn’t mean that she’s happy 24 hours of the day!
I’ve seen much worse, though. They’ve got the potential to grow, and as long as the drama isn’t going to get either too heavy or rely too much on these stereotypes, they shouldn’t get in the way of the rest of the series, and they’re fairly enjoyable so far.
The director himself is promising, but not flawless. He’s done Elfen Lied and Denpa-Teki na Kanojo, so he’s great at building up tension, but usually doesn’t seem to care about believability, which is pretty much shown in the character stereotypes here. Still, I can see how he can make this story work. I’m not that sure about the series composition, though. Hiroyuki Yoshino doesn’t really have a good track record, having been involved in quite a few unbalanced series with an original plot. Still, A-1 has struck me as a company who doesn’t like to interfere as much with its content as Sunrise or Satelight like to do, so perhaps this will allow him to finally show what he can do without being marred by production executives.
Because yeah, the big advantage of this series is that it’s an original story for as far as I can tell. No manga, no light novels. There’s not going to be an issue of chapters that don’t translate well or manga fans that go berserk because a certain part was left out or done wrong, and the potential for this series cutting off in the middle of its story is also very low. It’s great to see that amidst the crisis, there are still anime that dare to go with original stories that haven’t been tried and tested before.
Rating: * (Good)
I am enjoying this show immensely so far. It’s been a long time since I anticipated the next episode of an anime like this.
Otherwise, I must take issue with your comment about Kanata’s optimism. Kanata certainly wasn’t happy 24 hours of the day in previous episode, when she was filled with self-doubt as she searched for the bell. Also, her childhood flashback showed that hers is an optimism hatched in adversity. It’s a defense mechanism that she’s developed to cope with her life. Granted, Noeru (especially) seems to be an archetype, but even great writers like Austen and Dickens mixed believable characters with caricatures in the same story.
Please, please don’t compare Sora no Oto to Dickens and Austen. There’s a huge difference between using archtypes to reveal something about the story that furthers the overall theme, and shoddy characterlization.
Yeah, this is one of those very few anime of this new season that I intend to follow, the setting is out of ordinary ( the village reminded me of Portugal’s landscapes), the music is sometimes breath-taking ( in the previous episode, we actually had a beautiful song in french!) and the characters are funny and enjoyable!
To Ebod:
I think comparisons across genres, cultures, languages, eras, and even (to humour your assumption) differing levels of quality is an interesting excercise that often results in illuminating insight.
talking about setting:
call me crazy but when i watched the first episode and saw the village, castle and the background drawings it remembered me much on “Haibabe Renmei”
To Drill:
Yes, I noticed that too. I have a fear that this show, instead of being “K-ON in the Army”, will turn into “Haibane Renmei Light”. “Haibane Renmei” was a special show, one of my all-time favourites. There’s a danger that “Sora no Woto” could turn into just a pale imitation. The similarities don’t end with the setting and the art. I see echoes of Rakka and Reki in Kanata and Rio. In place of crows, there’s an owl.
It’s an ineresting setting. The currency is the old Yen and Sen system. The girls use chopsticks. The book they found was in Japanese, yet Kureha called it ancient, and they are unable to read the writing. The documents seem to be in French, yet the girls’ names are Japanese, except for Felicia. Kanata uses a hanko stamp. The map labels the provinces with numbers in French. (Seize means sixteen.) Helvetia itself is one of the names of Switzerland. (Interestingly, after World War II, the writer Naoya Shiga proposed the adoption of French as Japan’s national language.) Oh, and some of the blue and white tiles on the walls look like they have Japanese iconography on them.
Then there’s No Man’s Land beyond Seize, and ancient advanced technology like the walking tank. Of course, the giant skeleton as well. All very mysterious.
I doubt that this is actually a future Japan. Such stone architecture and villages don’t exist in current Japan. Their construction would take place over decades or centuries. But the book that Kanata found would have become dust by then. Same with the piano. So the change in language must have happened in a recent, catastrophic event. Maybe it was a government-sponsored “cultural revolution” coupled with a great war…
It’s all idle speculation at the moment, and I love it!
…im pretty sure there is a manga..
@harumia:
There is a manga. But the manga is based on the anime, not the other way around.
The mystery is intriguing. Since the old building used to be a Japanese school but they can’t read the words. I’m thinking alternate dimensions right now but I could be wrong. I’m hoping for a good explanation out of this show.
The resurgence of the empire simply expanded Glorious Nippon’s borders, but after a series of defeats stemming from their weakness to insurgent units composed entirely from female members of light music clubs, the empire collapsed. The resulting chaos set the world back centuries, but various traditions remained. The desert is probably a result of deforestation from the empire’s production of disposable chopsticks–the whole reason for their expansionary efforts.
Sorry to double post but check out 18:51 in the timeline of this episode. Disturbing image near the piano.
oh wow, nice find. you’re right panaghoy88, there’s more to this series than meets the eye. i’m getting more and more interested in this series now.
I really want to like this because of it’s setting and plot, but the characters are just so annoying and uninteresting.
Setting is nicely original, and I love the background information – however just can not stay interested in this due to the characters and scripting. They’re just too boring and the pace is dull – really wanted to like this, but can not sit through another episode with these generic characters.
The village and mountains really exist. There are not in Switzerland, buy in Spain. Its name is Cuenca and it is exactaly as it appears in the serie.
This series has a really good setting prepared for it. I just wonder where they’re going to take it. Since they’re on guard duty on what is essentially a border town, will there ever be an invasion? Or will the entire series be various events happening in the fortress/town?
“Check out 18:51… near the piano.”
Nice find. Creepy. I know the character designs aren’t great compared to the depth of the setting, but I think it’ll get better (or at least I really hope). The story has so many clues that hint to something much bigger; we just have to be patient.
These characters are neither bland nor generic. They aren’t Dostoyevsky deep, but they are characters with real motivations, quirks in their personalities, and potential to grow and change, for example, we’ve already seen some char. development in at least three of the chars. in the two eps that are out. Some people seem to think characters are “generic” if they aren’t all dark and depressing, tormented by inner “demons.” I like dark characters sometimes too, but I that doesn’t mean more light-hearted, or even just ordinary characters are boring to watch. Yeah, these characters fill certain archetypes which show up fairly often in anime, but that doesnt mean that they are cardboard stereotypes. Joseph Campbell made a career showing the mythological roots of these archetypes and explaining why we find them showing up again and again in all stories. What matters is what the creators do with these archetypes, and the producers of such a creative setting will certainly do something interesting with them. If you want generic characters, you can find them, shows like kimi ni todoke, for instance, which has been shown so much love by western watchers, or tears to tiara, from last spring, which had beautiful art, cool plot, and characters so bland and cliche that i couldnt make it past episode two. The difference between cliche cardboard characters and interesting, alive ones is not where they start but where they go.
man you have some high tolerance psgels, I am just sick of the played to death archetypes in animes these days, I couldnt even stomach the first episode of this nonsense, and yet you still blog it. . .amazing.
oh and at 18:51. . .I just saw a rock with a smiley face in thh window…is that whatevery one is talking about?
@theone:
no,
check the piano left to the girls when the lightning strikes.
in my release it was around 18:53