3 Episode Taste Test: Sora no Otoshimono (Heaven’s Lost Property)

Around the end­ing cred­its of the second epis­ode one real­ises that they’ve just watched a flock of women’s under­wear take flight, some with mock jet-streams behind them. That the key ele­ment of Sora no Otoshimono’s story — a busty, docile angel that fell from a hole in the sky — is the most tame concept of the series demon­strates how abjectly bizarre it is. The open­ing epis­ode starts out tritely enough but then plunges into bizarre areas as a mostly naked teen runs rampant around his school which is frozen in time, until the pen­ul­tim­ate clos­ing scene where every­one in the world apart from the prot­ag­on­ist and fallen angel have evap­or­ated. Were it not bor­der­line miso­gyn­istic towards the female cast, this would be a sur­real but enjoy­able show.

“they can alter real­ity on a whim but not man­u­fac­ture some more dis­creet clothing”

The sparsely dressed angel that is ground-zero for the ensu­ing bed­lam is com­pletely obed­i­ent and accom­mod­at­ing towards the rep­re­hens­ibly crude lead, Sak­urai; the master-slave situ­ation is instantly repuls­ive, more so that the mas­ter of the pair pays little to no atten­tion to her bey­ond bark­ing orders. The obscen­ity con­tin­ues when an order goes awry and causes the other lead female, Mit­suki, to be sans under­wear and hand­cuffed for a large por­tion of the epis­ode. The first three epis­odes are inter­mit­tently funny but an under­cur­rent of repug­nance sours the oth­er­wise com­pet­ent show.

The cast, ignor­ing the emo­tion­less angel, is refresh­ing and while most begin as ste­reo­types, quirks and non­sense keep them from being as inter­min­able as the premise threatens. In between the con­stantly dead-pan doll fan­atic who lives in a tent by the river­side and the per­verse, well-to-do stu­dent coun­cil pres­id­ent is the fero­ciously stu­pid male lead. His only redeem­ing fea­tures are that his rampant idiocy keep him from doing any­thing that would cata­pult the show from smutty to por­no­graphic and, cru­cially, he quick­ens the pace of the show. Only the rapid switches between mad scen­arios keep the show going and glosses over the more dis­turb­ing demon­stra­tions of female objectification.

The open­ing anim­a­tion threatens to intro­duce a fur­ther heav­enly creature, this time with more mod­est attire but slots neatly into the young, annoy­ing girl aes­thetic. With much to be explained such as the ori­gin of the oth­er­worldly females and just how they can alter real­ity on a whim but not man­u­fac­ture some more dis­creet cloth­ing, the series could well sur­prise with some pathos for the obvi­ous love tri — soon to be quadr — angle. More likely is that the simple humour will be eroded by more and more off-the-wall antics, cul­min­at­ing in a thor­oughly unsat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion with the mis­guided oppor­tun­ity for a sequel.

Over­look­ing the dis­con­cert­ing treat­ment of women, the first three epis­odes of the series are enjoy­able by not being entirely for­mu­laic and des­pite being scat­ter­shot, sporad­ic­ally amus­ing. This is not the first series to cross taste­less moral bound­ar­ies when it comes to females nor will it be the last, it is simply unfor­tu­nate that the rest of the show is strong enough to stand alone. ¶