Series Review: Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo (3/10)


Finally, I finished Sora Kake Girl after an agonizing 10 hours. Now that I look back at when I started, I can't believe that I gave this show so much priority in my anime backlog.

Let's start with the good, which is, obviously, the characters designs (minus the personalities) and the animation quality. I figured that's the reason why I gave the series so much priority in the first place; character design and animation quality has always been a huge factor in my enjoyment of the show, and Sora Kake Girl has done very well on both. Protagonist Akiha has the perfect blend of cute and sexy, two traits which hardly coexist with one another. Perhaps this is a good example of how easy it is to make a character sexy by simply putting them inside a body suit (lol). In fact, most of the female cast are designed to be eye candy this way. I knew very little about the story before I began watching it, and yet I liked the character designs so much that I've ignored the criticism of bloggers and reviewers alike; I had thought that the designs itself would tide me through the series, no matter how bad it would be.

And boy, I was wrong. And let's start with the bad; firstly, the story is absolute shit. The numerous glaring plot holes aside, the story's ridiculous because many of the actions taken by the Akiha gang occurred without reason. Like, she spent half the series helping Leopard, but why is she doing that? No one gave a convincing reason, but she just goes along with it. Many of the story elements are simply touch-and-go, and some of the really important ones, like the Shishidou family history, have surprisingly little depth. The random and messy plot does make a good "nonsense anime", but unfortunately it's obvious that the writers does intent to take the story seriously after all.

The golden question for which everything that has happened up till now. This is the second last episode.
Secondly, the characters are also shit. Like I've mentioned above, everyone's incredibly passive and only reacts and responds according to the plot; no one ever seems to have a personal decision or objective in mind. And it's exasperating how everyone is so goddamn useless, other than bashing up the cannon fodders. Every other character except the main 3 are devoid of personalities. They have a very specific purpose in the plot, and will only be used as that plot device in the series. This is especially true for all of Akiha's sisters. Even in Nami's case, despite giving her a lot of screentime and role in the plot, what's the point of her being a nemesis? They're not even taking the sisterly love thing seriously, and the story won't have make the slightest bit difference if you remove her character altogether.

Lastly, the series is CONSTANTLY PLAYING GAME BGM. No matter the atmosphere of the scene.

I really wanted to like this show. Fukuyama Jun's laugh is pure win, Akiha's design is as lovely as hell and Mako's voice fits her exceedingly well. But the plot is insufferably lame, and that makes it was waste of time.

Plot/Concept: Fair
Story Style: Fail
Audio/Visual: Excellent!
Value: 3