Some things you watch because you REALLY like ‘em, and some you watch for all the wrong reasons. I’m not a big fan of shows that are OBVIOUSLY dedicated to fanservice, but some weird cosmic power willed me into watching Sky Girls.

Still can't beat the appeal of Evangelion's Plug-Suits

Sky Girls follows the story of 3 pre-puberscent loli girls who got rickroll’d into fighting aliens by piloting transformable combat mecha while wearing protective [read: provocative] skintight costumes.

Maybe. Just maybe, I got suckered by the odd-looking transformable Sonic Divers. However, it turns out I enjoyed it for reasons I never expected. I can pretty much sum it all up in one word: Predictable.

It only took me a little over 15 minutes before figuring out the basic structure of the main characters: one outgoing athletic girl, one timid moe-moe prodigy, and a stoic tsundere as their calm, capable leader. Of course, I didn’t cheat and checked Wikipedia or ANN or whatever.

I discovered that I developed a certain pattern when watching each episode.

“Ah, these two are going to meet.”

15 minutes later….

“Oh, they stopped a thief together.”

And then there’s,…

“Otoha’s going to screw up her first simulated flight, and Eika will show off her skills airborne - before getting herself rescued.”

15 minutes later….

“Oh, Otoha launched to save Eika,… against the Captain’s orders. Hunh”

There’s also,…

“Ah, a flimsy bamboo screen separating male/female section of an open air hot spring. I bet it’s gonna come down before the episode is over.”

10 seconds before the ED…

“Ah, Otoha just conveniently and clumsily knocked down the screen.”

The predictability of this show, I think, is part of its unintentional charm. You might say something like, ‘Hey, Silencers, if you think it’s such a crap show, why do you even bother watching it?’ That’s a very good question. Well, let’s compare this to automobile appreciation, just to give you some common ground.

You know there are good cars, and there are crap cars. Most of the time, you look at all the sweet European and Japanese cars and admire them, drooling over the high-end specs and sleek videos. But once in a while, you take a look at, say, a certain locally-produced Kei-car.

You KNOW it’s a crap car, but you still drive it around and scrutinise it, just to remind yourself what a terrible piece of crap it is. Some of us get kicks out of doing stuff like that. [I know Jeremy Clarkson does].

No amount of tight asses will change my opinion about this show. Well okay, maybe one more would do the trick...

I derive the same kind of pleasure watching shows like Sky Girls. It’s like watching the ant burn under in that bright spot you focused with a magnifying glass. I’m not saying that Sky Girls is crap, I just think that it’s crap-py.

It’s extraordinarily ordinary and predictably predictable, and that, I believe, is what makes it such an excruciatingly fun show to watch.

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