3 Episode Taste Test: Sora no Woto (Sounds of the Sky)

The easi­est way to describe Sora no Woto is to identify its most obvi­ous influ­ences. Already well estab­lished is the K-On! style gelat­in­ous char­ac­ter designs how­ever the set up and pacing has more in com­mon with Haibane and its European influ­enced loc­ale. Most prom­in­ent how­ever is the tonal sim­il­ar­it­ies to the Valkyria Chron­icles series which is unsur­pris­ing given Stu­dio A1 Pic­tures’ lead­ing role in its pro­duc­tion, like­wise for the anim­a­tion which shares a great deal with Kan­nagi. The entire pack­age is dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent to all of its pro­gen­it­ors but the open­ing epis­odes can’t fully escape the grav­ity of its derivations.

“this is a cyn­ic­ally con­struc­ted series tar­geted for max­imum mar­ket­ab­il­ity and min­imum friction”

Kanata, who in her infancy wit­nessed a beau­ti­ful woman play­ing a trum­pet to the sky, joined the army in the hope of learn­ing to play her bugle for free. Upon arriv­ing in the town of Seize she is caught up in a local fest­ival and, after dirty­ing her mil­it­ary uni­form, is taken in by the curt Rio. Kanata inad­vert­ently loses Rio’s pendant and for­goes her induc­tion into the local bar­racks to search for it only to be lost her­self and needs to be res­cued by those she was due to meet earlier. What fol­lows is an intro­duc­tion to the slow life of an isol­ated border-town’s army base and the numer­ous incon­sequen­tial adven­tures that res­ult from it.

The open­ing minutes of Sora no Woto suc­cinctly pose the most puzz­ling aspect of the series: what are flimsy chil­dren doing in the army? Kanata wakes up on a train with sev­eral burly gen­tle­men play­ing cards nearby who pro­ceed to have tea served to them by the ditsy adoles­cent; put­ting aside the gender issue, the army must either be woe­fully under­staffed or the recruit­ing officer entirely too lax to allow such an obvi­ously unpre­pared group of recruits to con­greg­ate. Explor­ing the fal­lib­il­ity of the plot how­ever is point­less when the only reason for their most priv­ileged situ­ation is to gently meander around their per­son­al­it­ies and inter­ac­tions. In only three epis­odes there are fright­ful jour­neys into an aban­doned school where a ghost sup­posedly lurks and the sud­den fever of one the troupe which dredges up pain­ful memor­ies for Rio. Of course there are hints at deeper intrigue such as the his­tory of the Fire Maid­ens, given flesh through the open­ing, and the leg­less mul­ti­pedal tank sit­ting in their hangar, but the focus is almost wholly on their daily tribu­la­tions and bur­geon­ing relationships.

In and of itself this approach is not a prob­lem, how­ever the series’ deriv­at­ive nature hampers enjoy­ment by ensur­ing every char­ac­ter is a fac­sim­ile or amal­gam­a­tion of exist­ing arche­types. Kanata has a fop­pish, exag­ger­ated inno­cence to her, Rio throws her­self head long into the big sis­ter role, Feli­cia plays the softly-spoken mat­ri­arch, Noel — des­pite her awe­some name — is quickly branded as the personality-deficient silent type, and lastly Kur­eha who is depress­ingly obnox­ious and insec­ure. The entire group could have been lif­ted whole or piece­meal from any num­ber of other sim­il­arly posi­tioned shows, and once the aes­thetic sim­il­ar­it­ies are taken into account, the con­clu­sion can only be that this is a cyn­ic­ally con­struc­ted series tar­geted for max­imum mar­ket­ab­il­ity and min­imum friction.

In short, Sora no Woto attempts to ride on the suc­cess of other series but fails to con­trib­ute any­thing to the for­mula. The first three epis­ode present a story absurd enough to be mildly inter­est­ing and a cast famil­iar enough to be vaguely obnox­ious; its sav­ing graces are the superbly pro­duced back­grounds which breath tan­gib­il­ity into every scene and the rich open­ing by Yuki Kajiura’s Kalafina, a group who will no doubt go on to do fur­ther sim­ilar works after Kara no Kyoukai’s suc­cess. Easy to digest but sits uncom­fort­ably in the stom­ach, this is with any luck the last of its kind and although later epis­odes may gift the char­ac­ters with worthy devel­op­ment, in all like­li­hood it will stag­nate and maun­der. As it is, Sora no Woto hov­ers just over the divid­ing line of enter­tain­ment and tepid mediocrity. ¶