When the official artworks and trailer for Sora no Woto first appeared, a lot of people were comparing it to the moeblob K-On, and I believe that many anime fans suspected more of the same i.e. cute, moe-pandering girls playing soldier with trumpets and heavy backpacks. Even after seeing the trailer and noticing a hint of drama, I remained skeptical and became one of those who had very low expectations for it.
Oh, how pleasantly wrong I was.
If you have skipped the show in an attempt to escape another moeblob plague, I’ll run you through a synopsis. Sorami Kanata is a young recruit in the Helvetian army. She enlisted because she wanted to learn music and play the trumpet. Apparently, at the time, trumpets are still an effective means of communication between military units. The story begins with her transfer to Unit 1121 at The Time-telling Fortress, located in the quiet town of Seize. The plot progresses as Kanata learns music from her senior officers and lives her life as a dutiful soldier.
If the name sounds familiar, Helvetia is the Latin name of Switzerland (where the font Helvetica was born). Oddly enough, for a country with a European namesake, its currency is Yen. The era seems to be similar to the pre-WW2 era, with cobblestone roads, homes lit by oil lamps and motor vehicles at its early stages. That is, until we see a multi-legged tank sporting LCD screens in the cockpit displaying some kind of a Gundam-esque operating system – written in Engrish.
It seems that the story is set in a somewhat post-apocalyptic time (reminds me of Scrapped Princess) where the land is scarred and the seas are without fish. As the show unfolds, we get to see ‘ruins’ and remnants of what seems to be a ‘lost era’. One of these ruins happen to resemble a Japanese school building. The multi-legged tank I mentioned uses precision instruments (such as a focusing lens) made using ‘lost era technology’, and apparently impossible to duplicate using ‘present day’ techniques.
Sora no Woto casually drops in pieces of its back story in a seemingly innocent slice-of-life fashion, cleverly revealing a small part of its history every time. The first episode begins with a festival to celebrate Fire Maidens who perished fighting a great winged Demon.
Legend has it that this Demon breathed fire and kidnapped all the Maidens of the fortress into its underground lair. With the help of a giant Spider, the Maidens managed to defeat the demon and decapitate it. However, intense fire kept pouring out from its severed head, threatening to burn the entire town.
The Maidens, each in turn held the severed head to contain the fire, burning themselves in the process. Every day, the villagers poured water over the Maidens, and after a year passed, the fire finally ran out. Ever since then, the villagers remember the Maidens and splash each other with water in gratitude.
Near the end of the episode, Kanata falls into a lake and discovers the gigantic skeleton of a winged creature – with its head missing.
Another hint of the Lost Era is the recollection of a dead Japanese soldier (he scribbled his last words on a pillar in Japanese), where the multi-legged tanks climbed modern-day buildings fighting against an unknown enemy. The ‘enemy’ fired a huge beam that wiped out an entire city. Just so happens that at the edge of Kanata’s fort, there is a desert with the roof of buildings poking out of the sand, a region called No Man’s Land.
The story goes deeper and deeper into each character’s past, and before I realised it, 10 episodes flew past me. That’s what I really liked about Sora no Woto. The characters don’t just appear out of nowhere. Each one arrived at the fortress with a lot of baggage, and the story-telling was so moving, it simply left me thirsty for more. It doesn’t try to exploit the moe-aspects too much – the character design has already done enough of that.
In a way, Sora no Woto manages to get the best of both worlds. With its moeblob character designs, I’m confident that it can generate a good amount of merchandise sales. Well, not as much as K-ON would, but I think it would suffice. Its plot and story-telling makes it an excellent watch and it kept me glued to the seat with each episode.
For a show that features music as a major plot element, the soundtrack is composed by the ever-talented Michiru Oshima, the genius behind the epic music of Fullmetal Alchemist and Bounen no Xamdou. The melodious OP is performed by Kalafina, Yuki Kajiura’s latest talent project that debuted with the theme songs for Kara no Kyoukai.
The show is about to end at episode 12, but I dearly hope for a second season to see more story progression and learn more about what really happened during the Lost Era. I’m honestly surprised to say this myself, but I think Sora no Woto is really good. If you have doubts that it’s another moeblob fanservice show, you can be rest assured that it’s got more than meets the eye.
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