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Feb 28, 2025
Great Pretender is a manga based on the original anime of the same name. The anime ran for 23 episodes, successfully telling a smashing story of action, mystery, drama, and crime. The manga hit the ground running getting the same thing started, setting out to be a fresh take on this action-packed tale of worldwide spectacle.
And then it...wasn't.
After such a promising start, it was cancelled after three chapters due to the author's health issues.
Well.
I can't say there's much incentive to read this now is there?
The three chapters we did get were great, of course. It's Great Pretender, after all. What a great
...
start to an awesome story of exciting large-scale white collar crime. But considering it never goes anywhere...there's nothing you can get out of this that the anime doesn't already give you, and you absolutely want to watch that; it's the only way to see the entire story.
It looked like this manga was going to feature some changes from the anime that could have been interesting (for example, Abby having long hair), but ultimately it amounted to nothing.
I did still really enjoy the three chapters I read, but since it doesn't amount to anything at all, there's no reason for anyone but the most diehard of Great Pretender fans to read this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 26, 2025
Man, remember how in the 2000s companies would just pay fanfiction authors to officially publish their doujinshi? Good times. Bring that back. And if you're in the mood for some officially licensed 2000s fanfiction, oh boy does this have you covered.
This doujin anthology has Capcom's official seal of approval on it, so you can expect that the authors know what they're doing. They have a very good grasp of the characters, and do well mixing the comedic with the dramatic. I found a lot of the stories in this anthology to be very poignant and introspective, and I could tell the authors really loved and
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understood the characters. Some of the art was kind of rough, but again, for literal fanfiction it's all very nice to look at, and I appreciated the variety of styles.
This anthology was actually published not long after the DS ports of the original trilogy came out, so it actually heavily features Lana and young Ema Skye. This is actually a treat, because this is the most attention Lana has *ever* been given by Capcom, and it's interesting seeing people work with young Ema when that was literally the only Ema that they had. It kind of makes me yearn for this era of the fandom, even though I was two years old and American.
Anyways, as far as fanficton goes, this stuff is pretty good! Of course, I didn't love every story (there were a few I didn't seem to agree with the author on), but that's just how doujin anthologies are going to be.
Man, I wish they'd reprint this, because it's very enjoyable both as fan content for a good series as well as a time capsule of a certain type of fandom culture from the 2000s in Japan. It's very easy to appreciate, and I recommend looking back at this one if you can get your hands on it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 26, 2025
It's absolutely bizarre to me that this manga has gotten little to no attention since its publication in English, because it is an absolute treat.
Sexuality and gender are more fluid than most people would like to admit. Of course, for the vast majority of people—gay or straight, trans or cis, or anywhere in between—those things will not be fluid. Once people realize who they are, it generally stays that way. However, that absolutely does not apply to everybody, and in fact, the opposite is much more common than people often think.
Deborah is my Rival is the story of a fussy okama falling for a sweet
...
shoujo heroine, calling into question societal expectations and their own emotions. For those unaware, "okama" is traditionally a derogatory word aimed towards feminine gay men and transgender women, although it is also often used in a reclaimed way.
Deborah is an okama in every sense of the word. Flamboyant, extravagant, and hopelessly chasing after cute boys. As far as he is aware (and yes, I will be using he/him pronouns, because that is what the translation I read used, and he shows much more attachment to his male identity than another okama in the series, who is gendered exclusively with she/her), he is exclusively attracted to men, much like a woman is—a "woman on the inside," one could say. And then Asayo enters the picture and turns everything upside-down.
He likes her, but he's never liked a woman before (then again, he *is* quite young. Do most people have themselves figured out at age 19?). He feels as though he likes her the way a man does a woman, but he still feels partially like a woman himself due to his remaining attraction to men. So what does this all mean?
Well, first of all, it stands to be said that obviously gender does not equate to sexuality. Liking men does not automatically make you a woman and vice versa. The manga knows this, however, as it also clearly shows gay men who are simply just men. Just because sexuality and gender do not equate, however, that does not mean that they can't influence how one experiences them. If someone's personal experience is that their sexuality informs their gender identity, that is perfectly reasonable as their own personal experience.
Some people might find this manga homophobic, as a blatantly gay man turns out to actually like a woman, thus making him feel more like "a man," but I don't think that at all. Because despite his love for Asayo, he remains attracted to men and attached to the womanly side of his identity. He does not change, even if he discovers new things about himself. And, as I've said so many times, sexuality can be fluid for a lot of people. One may discover their preferences have changed, including developing a previously absent attraction to the opposite sex.
And no matter what, even if you think it didn't age well, the manga's representation of queer characters aged remarkably for a manga published 30 years ago as of when I write this. Something I actually appreciate is that, even in 1996, Asayo was actually accepting of the prospect Deborah is really a woman who could never like her back, and she would have been content with that if it had been true. The thing about the queer community is that only in the last 15 years has it become so streamlined into neat little boxes, when before that it was always messy and complicated, and I don't see why we should expect it to be neat and particular. I think this manga does a great job showcasing the messy fluidity of the queer experience in a very empathetic and kind way, considering it's a heterosexual romance manga from the 90s.
As for the actual plot, it's just a quirky, funny, cute queer romp featuring compelling drama and charming characters. Deborah is wildly entertaining with his pretentious and dickish attitude developing into a softer side for the sweet-as-pie Asayo, with them having a bit of a back-and-forth dynamic that's very funny in between their moments of genuine romance. Unfortunately there isn't nearly as much to say there as there is about the queer themes.
Fantastic 90s shoujo that isn't long at all. It may have taken years to get licensed in English, but now that it finally has, I highly recommend you pick it up.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 6, 2025
On one hand, it's a less complex version of House where the problematic doctor is a cute anime girl instead of a gross 40 year old man.
On the other hand, it's just an ordinary detective story that uses the medical environment as set dressing and in reality has very little reason to be about a doctor.
Neither hand is particularly appealing.
I mean, if you're a huge fan of detective stories, it's not bad. Detective is one of my favorite genres, and I enjoy watching Ameku MD solve the mysteries. However, the sell of the series is the "doctor" gimmick, and it relies on its gimmick for
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the sell far too much for something that hardly even utilizes it, as these are moreso just regular mysteries (usually relating to death) that have a little medical flavoring. If you're going to do a gimmick, you really need to use it. The detective doesn't really need to be a doctor, just someone with investigative skills and basic medical knowledge. It just leaves me feeling disappointed that the gimmick isn't utilized.
In fact, sometimes medical knowledge is hardly even required. I'm all for a fairplay whodunnit, but some of these mysteries are pretty predictable, so it's really funny how no one in the show can seem to solve it. Come on now.
And I don't find our eponymous character to be all that compelling either. She's your standard eccentric detective character, although they act like she's much more eccentric than she really is. As I stated before, this show was obviously inspired by House (they drop an "it's not Lupus" two minutes in) but she lacks the psychological complexity of the bad doctor. Her "eccentricity" is summed up by just being a little meaner and unprofessional than most people, but if I wanted to see that I would go back to working my customer service job. Just being kind of a jerk does not a compelling detective make.
Her Watson is also not compelling in the slightest. Detectives have assistants because they need someone to ask all of the characters the audience is asking, but those assistants should not be used only for that. A good Watson is a character in his own right. This guy (I can't even remember his name he's so nothing) is just a piece of anime white bread.
Also, the animation is a little off model. That doesn't bother me, but it might bother you.
It's not bad. It is entertaining to see the mysteries be solved. But it's nothing special.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 27, 2025
Most anime from the 1970s is not worth your time. Being 50 years ago, the animation is usually stiff, the voice acting poor quality, and the writing trite and pointless. The Rose of Versailles, however, is not that.
I will start by saying that The Rose of Versailles is not historically accurate. I don't know a whole lot about the French revolution, but even I can tell it's dramatized and fictionalized. That being said, I do not think any of its representations of historical figures are particularly offensive, so I'll let it slide. I would appreciate historical accuracy more, but I don't think anyone should ever
...
go into a biopic or work of historical fiction expecting accuracy.
That being said, I did appreciate its take on the French revolution for being more nuanced than some others. Marie Antoinette is a polarizing historical figure who is seen either as a symbol of the corrupt, cruel bourgeoise or an innocent victim who was only guillotined because of sexism. Neither of these are exactly true, as Marie Antoinette was a human being. The Rose of Versailles is rather sympathetic to her (a little much for my tastes, in all honesty, but not enough for me to knock it), so I was afraid it was going to go the second route, however I was pleasantly surprised to see that it did not shy away from the truth that the people starved because of Antoinette's flagrant spending habits. It does present Antoinette as good natured and well meaning, which some probably will not agree with, but just because it sees her intentions as pure, that does not mean it agrees with her actions. It may present her failings as a result of naivety, but that does not mean it shies away from those failings. It's rather realistic in that sense; many people on this Earth do not mean to do harm and want to do good things for the people they love but are unable to see how their actions affect other people. Letting your people starve is still an immoral action regardless of whether you ignored them on purpose or because you were so privileged you didn't realize you were. Was Antoinette actually like this in real life? Who knows. But it works here.
Their ultimate condemnation of Antoinette's actions comes down to Lady Oscar: the real protagonist. Going into this, I was wary of Oscar, because I already knew she was hyped up as incredibly strong, capable, righteous, and talented at many things. I worried she would be an incredibly shallow character who exists just for the author to brag about. Thankfully, I was proven very wrong.
I would say 'righteous' is probably Oscar's main character trait. She is defined by her want to do good. However, she is also a French noblewoman. She was born loyal to the crown, and in fact serves directly under Antoinette herself and becomes a personal friend to her. She loves the crown and she loves Antoinette. But she also lives in revolutionary France and wants to do the right thing. Those two facts cannot coexist. Her nobility (having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals) is at odds with her nobility (belonging to a hereditary class with high social or political status; aristocratic).
Much like Antoinette, Oscar is only well meaning and good natured, however the privilege she was born into is blinding her to the truth of the people. However, unlike Antoinette, she is proactive in going out and trying to solve problems, which opens her eyes to the truth. Oscar's main character arc is about learning how the people of France are suffering, and sometimes the issue is much more complicated than "take your kid to the doctor when he is sick" even though that SHOULD be the right thing to do. In the end, she has to choose between the people of France and her beloved queen, and although it goes against everything she has followed her whole life, she cares more about doing what is right than her personal attachments.
It's particularly interesting because her close friend and love interest, Andre, is not of noble blood like she is. He is a servant to her family. He began to side with the people much sooner than her because he is one of them, and it was partially his influence that opened her eyes to the people's plight and influenced her to choose them over her queen. He raises the idea that perhaps theft isn't a bad thing when you're starving, which Oscar as the lawful good naturally disagrees with, because when you've never wanted for anything it is easy to believe all theft is inherently wrong. However, Andre's views on the subject stick with her, causing her to spare the thief and getting the ball rolling on Oscar's character arc culminating in her siding with the proletariat. Who would have thought that knowing a member of an oppressed minority will open your eyes to the plight of their people and change how you think?
There's also the matter of gender, which is probably the most talked-about aspect of the series. I was actually expecting much more gender discussion within the show based on how much people talk about, but that doesn't mean there is nothing to chew on. Oscar was born female and raised as a man, but she seems to identify and live as a woman. This is particularly interesting to me because everyone simultaneously sees her as a woman and respects her authority (until she joins the French Guard, anyways, but even then she wins them over). That hardly seems historically accurate to me, but again, I wasn't expecting historical accuracy. Anyway, the presentation of Oscar's gender is interesting because she seems to be seen as either a woman or a man by most, but what she wants is for people to simultaneously respect her masculinity and femininity. She didn't want to join the royal guard because she wanted to live as a woman, but then she desires to return to living as a man when she has her heart broken by the only man she felt (at the time) she could love the way a woman does, bringing into question what gender means for romance. This upsets Andre, who loves her the way a man does a woman. This causes a lot of distress for both of them, and causes Andre to...well, do something bad. I don't have time to get into it here, but I will say that I think it's a little more complicated than it may seem at first and perhaps possible to come back from when you factor in nuance and personal forgiveness, though I don't excuse it. Anyways, the point is that gender stuff is all rather progressive in how complex it presents its issues of gender, especially for the 1970s, and definitely adds an extra layer of complexity to the story.
Although, in spite of being rather nuanced and complex in some areas, it's also rather shallow in others. Most of the characters tend to be very black-and-white with their morality, being innocent victims or devilishly evil. While I appreciate Oscar's arc of choosing the people over the queen, she generally spends most of the series exclusively doing nothing wrong. The story is VERY sympathetic to Antoinette, whereas the people in Antoinette's life who are out to get her haven't a shred of sympathy. There's this one character named Rosalie who could have been rather complex as she was very driven by revenge almost to the point of violence, but it doesn't amount to much in the end and she spends most of her screentime being a poor little victim (apparently she was written out of the manga for being unpopular. I see why). Andre is probably the most complex given the aforementioned bad thing he did, but all that did was make him a character you either love or hate. Anyhow, I wasn't expecting extraordinarily deep characters from a 70s anime and do generally like the characters, but it definitely does not work in the series's favor.
All in all though, I enjoyed all 40 episodes of this show that I watched. It's great at appealing to your pathos with its characters and drama as well as presenting effective commentary on class struggle. It is absolutely worth the watch, both for the historical significance (it changed the entire anime and manga industries, after all) and because it's just damn good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 27, 2025
Sound of the Sky is a manga based on an anime of the same name, and it runs into every problem that anime-to-manga adaptations do.
In a vacuum, this manga is fine. It tells a good story about love and war and music that I think is extremely valuable. However, being only 16 chapters (yes, 16; I do not know why it says 19) it tends to breeze through parts of the story it would have been better to slow down and focus on. This is particularly egregious when you compare it to the much better pacing of the original anime that actually does lend time
...
to these important moments.
The artwork is fine, but it can feel somewhat stiff at times—not to mention the out-of-place fanservice (which the original didn't have). And while it is a story about music, it does not have any music you can hear, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves out the key piece of information that the story's leitmotif is supposed to be Amazing Grace—as no one ever names it—and I would say that's rather important for a story about the trauma, guilt, and redemption of soldiers.
It's still Sound of the Sky, so it's still an extremely beautiful and important story, so I'll give it a 7/10. If you don't like watching anime, I would recommend this manga. But if you do, then you really have no reason to read this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 6, 2025
One of the biggest inspirations for Hellsing, cited by the mangaka, is Trigun—which can be seen clearly in how Alucard's design reflects that of Vash the Stampede. This puzzles me, because Trigun is about how we should always strive for peace in spite of how difficult it is, and Hellsing is about how cool it is to rip people in half and watch them bleed.
Seriously, that's what the characters in Hellsing spend 80% of the show doing. There is no downtime. You never get a break from the relentless blood and gore. Now, to be fair, I'm not the biggest fan of action scenes, but
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I also really like gore in anime, so it's saying something that I got bored by how much of it there was. In simple terms, it felt excessive and gratuitous. Gore is most effective if you take the time to build up to it, getting to know the characters it happens to in great detail first. With Hellsing it just feels pointlessly edgy for the sake of it, and I can hardly care about the gore because I didn't get enough time to know the characters it was happening to.
This is a shame, because I think the characters could be very interesting. Alucard is badass and mysterious (if overpowered), Seras is cute and endearing (although I...hate the way her chest is drawn), and Integra is the coolest woman to ever exist (though I may be blinded by my massive crush on her). Unfortunately we barely get any time with them because most of the series is just gory action scenes.
Anyways, it's not just the gore that's gratuitous. Hellsing also features a fair bit of sexual violence that adds nothing to the story. Thankfully there's nowhere near as much rape as there is gore, but it could legitimately be removed without consequence. Even moreso than the gore it feels like it is only present just to be vulgar and explicit. And I'm not here with a torch and pitchfork claiming it's immoral to indulge in blood and rape in media just because you like to be fucked up and edgy, but I am saying it's boring. Not only is it tactless, but it just isn't interesting.
Furthermore, the villains of this show are the Nazis, and the funny thing about that is it's very hard to do wrong. Everyone knows Nazis are evil so they make for a very cut and dry villain that is hard to mess up. Yet, somehow, Hellsing managed to screw it up at every single possible opportunity.
Nazis were real. They killed twelve million people in a eugenic attempt to wipe out minorities. All of those people were brutalized and had their lives cut short. And in Hellsing, one of the main antagonists is a Nazi catboy who does silly catboy things and is leered at by the camera. Of course.
Mixing the supernatural with the Nazis is, in my opinion, not really the way to go. Nazis are real and vampires are not. However Hellsing is almost impressive with how it flagrantly disregards how real of a threat the Nazis were with how it presents them here like cartoon supervillains consisting of eccentric supernatural creatures. Like sexy catboys. Whatever man.
All in all, it's just ten hours of sexed up gore, rape, and silly Nazis that doesn't use any of those factors to say anything interesting and feels as though it were written by a middle schooler in an attempt to write a edgier story than their friend. I guess what I mean is I just don't see the point to any of it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 2, 2025
Blood-C is a dumb garbage series that thinks blood and gore and guts and stuff automatically equals good horror.
Okay, that's mean. But I really cannot drive home enough that this series's top priority is grossing the viewer out with gore first because it assumes that blood and guts is enough to make for effective horror. Blood-C is not scary. In fact, for most of the show, the episodes spend the majority of their time as slice of life school shenanigans before abruptly ending in a bloody action scene that wasn't built up to with suspense or mystery or anything that can make gory scenes scary.
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You need tension to be scared. The gore in Blood-C has no suspense or tension, so it's just gross at best. Scary is not the same thing as disgusting.
Not that it's impossible to balance slice of life and horror—Higurashi is famous for it, after all. Except Higurashi weaves suspense and tension into its SOL segments, and it takes time to make it clear something dark and mysterious is lurking in the background of peaceful summer days in the small town, with eyes watching you and secrets being kept, so that way when it eventually culminates into a bloody scene, it feels earned—payoff for the setup it spends episodes establishing. Blood-C tries to do something similar, but any hints of sinister mystery only happen during the bloody action scenes at the end of the episode, which each episode does not take time any time building to. The SOL segments and the gory segments feel like they're from two different shows entirely.
This means the slice of life segments are painfully boring, and pretty much nothing happens for the first half of the show besides a few lore drops. Perhaps it would be more effective if the characters were charming and likeable, but alas! They all suck total ass.
Well, the main character—Saya—is rather endearing with her ditzy yet deeply compassionate nature, and her father has some good moments too. All of her school friends and other trusted adults though? They're boring as sin and do nothing to make me emotionally invested in them. They're all extremely basic character archetypes and we never get to learn who they are outside of those basic archetypes. Then there's a big twist at the end which kills any possible investment in them for...reasons that will make total sense if you watch it.
I don't want to spoil it, but I will say this: because it is a horror series, characters will die. And I feel nothing when these characters die except perhaps mild schadenfreude because the show never endeared them to me by having me learn who they really were. I know nothing of their hopes and dreams and hobbies. They spend all of their time on screen acting like one-dimsensional tropes and not real people who I should care about. And, as I said before, the big twist just kills anything they had going for them.
The worst offenders are the twins, who are a terrible case of identical twins acting like the same person (I have known a lot of identical twins and none of them have ever acted like this) and are also generally just terrible, unsympathetic people. Absolutely worthless, garbage characters I could not care less about.
When characters die, I'm supposed to care. When blood and gore takes up the screen, I'm supposed to be frightened. But the only emotion Blood-C invokes in me is boredom.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 17, 2024
"When I said take me to the moon,
I never meant take me alone
I thought if mankind toured the stars
it meant that all of us could go."
- Penelope Scott, Rät
The premise of Promare is simple. 30 years ago, some people randomly developed fire powers and are now an oppressed minority group (called the "burnish" here). It's a plot I'm sure you've seen before, especially if you've ever engaged with a single piece of X-Men media. However the way it approaches its plot surprised me with how much depth and nuance they were able to pack into a two hour action flick.
The main character of the
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story is a young man named Galo. He is a very proud, passionate young man who carries nothing but love and kindness in his heart, so he dedicates his time to protecting the city as part of a special force meant to apprehend burnish terrorists. He's very charming with how passionate he is about doing the right thing. However, he's also a perfect character for this story because of one thing: unconscious bias.
Most people would not consider themselves bigoted. In fact, most people would be offended at the idea they could be. And this is the problem. People who are granted privilege by society are often blind to what that privilege grants them as well as the reality of life for many minority groups, because they have never had to see that reality. Unlike minorities, they are capable of living in an echochamber that shields them from the truth of this world, and that's exactly what they do. This makes them susceptible to holding biases against these groups that even they are unaware of. They aren't aware of the fact that being kind and loving other people does not make you exempt from saying and doing discriminatory things.
Galo gets offended when other people say all burnish are terrorists, yet when he knowingly talks to a burnish for the first time ever, he asks them if they need to eat as if they aren't human. He very clearly thinks of himself as Not Bigoted in regards to the burnish, yet he works for a police-esque group meant to suppress the burnish. As far as he is concerned, he's just catching terrorists because some burnish are terrorists even if it's not all of them, but he is completely ignoring the reality that this "terrorist" group is really just fighting for burnish rights and they have to resort to violence because it is the only way to make a difference. He thinks that if the burnish simply stopped being violent people would stop discriminating against them, because he lives in a happy, privileged world where everything is black and white.
It is only through going out and meeting the burnish personally that he has his eyes opened, and it is because of that kindness and love he carries with him that his eyes are able to open. Empathy is an important skill to have, however it requires you to go out and actively try to use it. It cannot radicalize you if you never apply it.
And thus from then on is a "broken pedestal" plot where he has to reckon with the fact that everything he held dear is actually a corrupt system meant to exploit and kill the burnish, and the man he idolized is very specifically exploiting the burnish for the benefit of only the "elite" of society.
When the world ends, the rich are never around for it. They flee to space, to a private island, to anywhere other than here. Just how many spots are available on that ship? And just how many can afford them?
I will say that the allegory isn't perfect (largely for a spoiler reason, but you could argue that anytime an allegorical minority actually does have something different about them that makes them dangerous it doesn't work), but I still felt like it worked well enough.
Anyways, social commentary aside, the rest of the movie is good too.
As expected of Trigger, the animation is absolutely delectable. I wasn't even that bored watching the action scenes because of how pretty they were!
As for the other characters, the second most important character is Lio, the leader of the radical group. He serves as a good foil for Galo. Aina and her sister do well to add to the commentary (prioritizing your personal desires over doing what's right). The rest of the characters were also nice, if a bit underdeveloped, although that's to be expected with only a two hour runtime. It prioritizes action over character development, but it still managed to pack in enough character development to work.
And of course, I can't complete this review without mentioning Gurrenn Lagann. The movie obviously bears a lot of similarities to Gurrenn Lagann because it was clearly made to be TTGL's spiritual successor, but that's certainly not a bad thing. They took exactly what made TTGL work and did something brand new with it in a way that does all of the same things right but still manages to feel fresh and interesting. It also seems to have paved the way for Trigger's later show BNA, which would have many of the same elements of social commentary, and that's definitely a good thing as well.
Trigger definitely knows what it likes in its projects, and all of Trigger's signatures shine through in Promare in the best way possible.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 12, 2024
"The war ended. You're just the last remnant. Humanity...the world can never regain the glory it once had. So end it. It must be far too painful, living a miserable life in a world filled with despair. Is there some meaning to survival in a world like this?"
It's easy to write Sound of the Sky off as a military flavored K-On clone, and I certainly see where that assertion might come from, but I am here to tell you how very wrong that is. Sound of the Sky is not just a military themed show about moe and music, but a story of recovery, companionship,
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finding purpose in life, the universal healing power of music, and the horrors of war.
The thing about Sound of the Sky is that, as a slice of life, it is very slow moving. It takes time to savor its setting and characters while it slowly eases you into the meat of what it's about. It works perfectly for the genre and is highly effective. If you are a fan of slice of life stories, you should have no problem taking it slow and taking time for the story's themes to resonate with you.
The story is about a young girl named Kanata who joins the military of her country, Helvetia, because when she was young she saw a solider playing Amazing Grace on the bugle, and it changed her life. She became a solider because she too wanted to learn how to play such a beautiful song of hope and healing, and in this society, no one else will teach her how to play.
That's right, she joins the army not as a solider but as an artist. She didn't go into this wanting to fight for her country or bring violence onto other human beings. Remember that. It is an important fact for later.
She is stationed in a lovely town called Seize with a platoon of other young woman around her age. Seize is a small, peaceful community that did not face the brunt of the war Helvetia has recently come out of. As you can expect, being stationed in a place like this means that not much happens, leading to the perfect setup for a bunch of cute anime girls to hang out together and do cute things.
Except here's the thing: Sound of the Sky does not forget that its characters are soldiers.
The show spends its first six episodes slowly introducing you to the characters and world. It ruminates on its setting and war-laden times of its world. Amidst showing off what the characters care about and examining the little things that make life worth living, it gives small glimpses into the horrors of the world these characters are accustomed to. Due to war in the past, most of the world is now uninhabitable. There is no longer life in the sea. Society was so irreparably screwed over that, while the languages are still the same, countries and cultures are entirely different.
There is something inherently beautiful about a slice of life set in a post apocalyptic world—about finding meaning in a world already destroyed and making it your home again anyways. The world ended but we're still here. Things might look grim but we will find a reason to keep living, even if its only little things like glass animal figurines or lighting fireworks with your friends.
And then episode seven happens, and the show gives all that it has to challenge that idea. Kanata did not join the army as a solider, but the other members of her platoon did. So the show displays the truth of being a solider and the pain and the death, and amidst all of that it begs the question of why? Why keep going on in a world like this?
And Sound of the Sky answers that question. If there is no reason to go on, make one yourself, and you'll probably find it in the people who love you.
It doesn't stop at episode seven, however. The end of the show leans hard into the military aspect, and it isn't shy about showing what being in the military means. Kanata did not join the military as a solider, but she is one and she will have to be one when duty calls. It sets up a kind, empathetic premise about connecting with someone from an opposing culture and opinion and then tears that to shreds with the truth of being in the military.
"As a solider, I have killed people too. So even if no one else forgives you, I will."
But, in the end, things settle. This too shall pass—even war. And when the dust has settled, you look at the damage that has been done, and you rebuild. You mourn what has been lost forever and then you rebuild anyways. It started as a slice of life and it will end as one, even after asking us why we continue to live and laying bare for us the reality of war.
And what do the soldiers hear in their direst of times that gives them the motivation they need to keep going and bring an end to the fighting—the motivation to reach a point where things have settled? None other than the Christian hymn that started it all.
The world ended, but humans are still here. The world ended, but we still speak the same languages. The world ended, but people still play Amazing Grace around the world.
And there's nothing more I can say that these parting words will not:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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