This is not a review for Sound of the Sky, (Sora no wo to). As with Madoka, I have a few first impressions I want to put down before I forget them and before the anime changes my opinion. More importantly, though, we have a contest! If you only care about the contest, skip past the review piece to the word Contest!

My very first impression of Sound of the Sky was…not very good. This can be attributed to one thing, quite specifically. Moe checklisting. There are no characters in Sound of the Sky, only character “types.” There is no story here, only a set-up. The slice of life activities could very well have been set in any time or any place, and the trappings of the story in which they are set are just that, trappings.  K-ON! shows slice-of-life daily nothings among a group of high school girls,  where they belong. Hidamari Sketch, likewise. Even in Aria, with which this series has a tremendous amount in common, the slow days passing and appreciation of…things…makes sense. Not so much for the military set-up chosen for Sound of the Sky.

The second hurdle I had to face was why the character types fail so badly to compel me. Kanata, the main character, is given one task for the first episode. A simple task. Get from Point A to Point B. She fails to complete this task because she is presented as the cute, energetic, hopeless character-type. In episode 2, we encounter the tsundere character type, Kureha. I posted on Twitter, and I quote, “Oh, god, Kureha, shut the fuck up.” Kureha never even has a chance to develop into having a reason to whine and complain, before she starts whining and complaining. In a world where I produced anime, Rio (the cool, competent character type) would be the protagonist and getting from Point A to Point B would not take a whole episode.

Third – and most critical for me – the story is about playing a brass instrument. I’m sorry folks, I’m a woodwind. It’s an ancient rivalry and I can’t move past it easily. If you played a woodwind instrument, you understand. ^_^

Now, all that having been said, setting aside my personal issue with the brass section, and the irrelevant story setup and the list of character types, I can see that it’s going to be a reasonably enjoyable slice-of-life story. It’s just that in order to get there, I need to ignore some things, shed some things, pay attention to secondary things and pretend that the combination makes sense as a whole.

Ratings to follow when I’ve watched the whole thing.

In the meantime….Contest!

The generous folks at Nozomi/RightStuf have provided a Sound of the Sky Box Set for us and this time, the question is a relatively simple one:

What DVD Extras do you want to see?

These can be anything. If you like Openings and Endings without credits – say so! Or how about interviews with voice actors and actresses (American or Japanese.) Email us at yuriconcontest at gmail dot com and tell us up to 3 extras you want from your DVDs and you’ll be entered to win. Super easy! I’m asking you to use the email so I have email addresses to contact you with, trying to do a contest with anonymous comments here is awkward.

The contest will remain open as long as I’m watching the anime and will close when I do my final review for it. Get your Extra suggestions in today!

Just to start, the extra I really want to see on English DVDs is:

Interviews with the Japanese voice cast.

I’m sure that comes as a surprise to everyone. ^_^

I look forward to receiving your suggestions!

In the meantime, the first of several thanks to Okazu Superhero Eric P for sponsoring this and all future posts about this series!

First of all, thanks to all of you who wrote in last week with well-wishes. Last week was pretty bad, but I’m down to fighting one last little case of bronchitis now and I can think straight again. I have no doubt at all that your kind thoughts helped me through the worst. I say it all the time, but it’s worth repeating – Okazu readers are the best!

Since this is my first post in a while, I’m going to go for something simple and light-hearted. Nothing fits the bills quite like Morita-san ha Mukuchi, which is showing on Crunchyroll, for those as can get it.

I’ve reviewed the first two volumes of the manga – Volume 1 and Volume 2. The anime is not substantially different – Morita Mayu is a perfectly normal girl who just doesn’t talk so much. It’s not like it’s an affectation, or she’s bad at it, she just gets lost in her own thoughts and misses the openings. And, as her friends are other teen girls, they so rarely leave openings at all. Mayu is a good friend and an excellent listener.

The anime is a super-short short; each episode is only 3 minutes long. This is, in my opinion, is the perfect size for a anime based on a 4-koma comic strip. The short size allows you to run through a few gags and not get tired of the one-gag-per-character issue that makes 4-koma manga difficult to read in general. Remember, when these run in the magazines, they only run a few pages at a time, so there’s just a few gags at once and you’re left smiling. When 4-koma get collected into volumes, there’s a tendency to read through more at once and it can become very exhausting as nothing changes page after page. It’s just a bunch of gags – it’s not *supposed* to change. ^_^

Mayu is still quite likable, with a suitably congested inner dialogue. Her friends are likewise likable, which is all they need to be. And it’s cute and refreshing to see anime girls just being friends.

The anime does lay on the boys a little thick, though. Especially in the first few episodes, we see two boys (who, in the manga, both have a crush on Mayu) playing Greek chorus for all the boys watching out there in anime-land. “It must so nice, being a girl” they say, while while watching Mayu playing with a friend’s hair, completely ignoring a aircraft carrier’s worth of baggage in that sentence. Oh well, they seem nice enough boys, I can deal.

Even in the manga, there is very little Yuri (although slightly more in Volume 3!) and in the anime, it’s mostly confined to the boys’ confused interpolation of events like two girls touching one another in a totally non-sexual way. I gather some boys have a problem with this. For you guys that have some confusion around this. here’s the rule: Girls actually do sometimes touch one another and it rarely means “I want to sexxor you up.” I hope that helps. ^_^

Although even on my most brain-foggy days I can’t really see Morita-san ha Mukuchi as a Yuri anime, I do think it’s good for a quick smile or two. If you can watch Crunchyroll, give it a try.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 1
LoserFanBoy – 3

Overall – 7