Wow. Just…wow. I don’t even know where to begin.
After watching the preview for Sola I had no idea what it was going to be about, much like the rest of the anime watching and blogging community. So, after watching the first episode, allow me to enlighten you, Sola is a story about the odd relationship between a angsting vampire and a guy with a sky fetish…
…I’m dead serious. But as ridiculous as that sounds, it actually works.
Episode Rating: 8/10
Bear in mind that I watched this episode raw and have Japanese language proficiency equivalent to a 4 year old living in Russia, so if (more likely “when”) I misunderstand something, don’t hesitate to correct me.
The episode starts off with the male lead, Yorito, setting up his camera on the shore of a bay, seemingly waiting for the sunrise. All of a sudden he hears some commotion behind him, it turns out to be a girl beating the hell out of a vending machine that ate her money. (I know this pain all too well) He decides to help her out and eventually beats the machine and gets her drink, only to turn around and find that the girl has disappeared.
Flash forward to lunch break the next day where Yorito tells Mana (osananajimi?) about the weird girl and her odd taste in juice. He then goes back to fantasizing about the sky, telling Mana and distracting panties to get out of the way.
After school, Yorito and Mana go to the hospital to visit Nagato Yuki his sister Aono. Apparently it’s her birthday today, Mana gives her a cake and Yorito gives her an ugly plushie, which is tossed into a box full of similar ones. They turn out the lights and light the candles when all of a sudden Yorito catches a glimpse of something far more interesting and less common than his sister’s birthday, a sunset! He runs off to the rooftop so he can take a picture.
That night, after Mana scolds Yorito for running out on his sister, she realizes she forgot to get *insert food item* and sends Yorito off to the convenience store. Afterwards he decides to stop by the park where he meets vending machine girl doing her thing. After freeing her drink the two talk for a bit, Yorito is slightly more interested this time around because she has a sky pattern umbrella. After talking about rain and the sky for a while, the two formally introduce themselves (Yorito & Matsuri) and part ways.
The following night Yorito realizes that a picture of a sunset that Matsuri showed him is the same as one he took on his sister’s birthday, noting the church in the background. He heads to the church to find Matsuri and some random guy in the midst of a fight. Aaand, cue cliffhanger.
The preview made little sense to me, I believe it was a game of shiritori if I’m not mistaken.
Thoughts
First impressions have failed me before, but I liked this episode. It started off as a normal high school romance/harem type show but added some supernatural elements at the end. Mixing genres has proven disastrous in the past, but as long as no one starts summoning mecha limbs, I think we’ll be alright.
Being the first episode, we’re not given much to work with in terms of figuring out the plot. But so far it doesn’t look like we’re going to get anything too deep, plot isn’t important anyways XD
However, I think it’s pretty clear that Matsuri is a vampire, the flashback to her hiding from the sun in a cave, only showing up at night, having UV light used as a weapon against her…etc etc. She’s pretty hot for the walking dead though.
That’s strangely arousing
Character wise, there’s plenty of potential.
-Yorito is your typical male lead, minus the obsession with the sky (explains the series title at least).
- Mana probably has latent magical powers
- Koyori wins for being loli
- Aono has Yuki channeling
- Matsuri satisfies my inner hate for vending machines and is automatically awesome for being voiced by Coppola
- Random swordsman loses for leaving me in constant fear he’s going to throw out the “Ikou, ishouni”
- Goth loli in a box needs to find her way back to the set of Rozen Maiden *insert German noun*
On the technical side, the animation was absolutely stunning. KyoAni better watch out, other studios are beginning to catch up. Even being indifferent to the Da Capo inspired character designs, I was really taken aback at how good the quality was. By contrast, the promo was somewhat lackluster in this regard, though it may have been due to the low resolution. But I’ll be wary about this aspect, animation budgets are anything but infinite, and if Sola hits the wall before the end, we may have another YoakeNa on our hands.
Music has always been a “meh” point for me, but I liked the rather subtle OP sequence. Although, a quick trip over to ANN suggests that it wasn’t the real OP. ED was decent, but not exactly worthy of being listened to more than once.
This season is turning out to be quite awesome, holding up the long standing tradition that spring reigns superior over the other anime seasons. With the potential for great character development backed by a decent plot and stunning animation, Sola is looking anything but mediocre (contrary to my predictions). But one thing I’ve learned through my years as an anime fan is that script writers are great at starting series, but relatively crap at bringing them to a close. Whether Sola can avoid this fate while maintaining the animation standard it just set for itself will be interesting to see.
EDIT* Oh, look at that, lolikit-kun seems to have finished his entry as well, over to notdotq for his impressions.
And now for: Things that Sola stole from other anime
Nanami’s hairpin
Nagato Yuki
DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU
OBJECTION!
Gao~
USO DA!
*cries for humanity*
~ Shirukii ~
23 Responses to “Sola 01”
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>>And now for: Things that Sola stole from other anime
Come on, you can do better than only 4 items!
>>Random swordsman loses for leaving me in constant fear he’s going to throw out the “Ikou, ishouni”
Seems we’re on the same page, here…
I was gonna try this anime later. Looks like i spoiled the first episode for me by reading your post. (T___T) Haha. I just posted bout densha otoko at my group blog. Hope you’ll read it & give a comment. (^__^)
@ lolikit: +3 =P
@ Brian: There’s really not that much to spoil. On the plus side, now you can go watch it raw, who knows when subs will be out.
>>who knows when subs will be out.
Judging by their release of the promo, Doremi looks to be subbing it, and they’re generally pretty quick, aren’t they? I’d expect subs to be out within the week.
>>And now for: Things that Sola stole from other anime
that bunny with the goth-loli in the box looks like a rip-off of vita’s doll…
Kind of looks like a doll from Rozen Maiden!!?! (^__^) LOL
@ lolikit: True enough, shall we keep raw blogging? Or start waiting for subs once they become consistent.
@ kaz3phyrous: XD that’s true, I’ll add that in if I have some time, or maybe in a future post
@ Brian: Indeed, thus the DESU spam =P
Man….. I just watched the raw for this one and it looks really good….
Unfortunately since I don’t speak Japanese, I could only pick up bits and pieces of the dialouge :(
Speaking of raws and such……..fan-subs seem to be few and far between at this early stage of the season…….
Granted, it IS Easter weekend…..and I know I’ll have to wait a week or two ’till the main subbing groups swing into full action…..but still, it kinda sucks :P
**Forgot to put this in the other post, sorry**
I know fan-subs usually take a while…..what I meant is that even that I can’t even find out which group is subbing what…..
which means I have to rely on fansub.tv rather than the groups themselves……boo urns :P
>>And now for: Things that Sola stole from other anime
maybe you should have a whole post just for this topic… after watching the raw i found other stuff that they could have ripped off from other anime… one example was the rain scene where matsuri asked if that sky fetishist liked the rain… i couldn’t help but think about tokimeki momorial ep 1 where mina asked aoba if he liked the rain.. there was even a bike and everything and they were in a shed… or i could just be me… =p
@ Kanon_fan82: I’ve found that fansubbing has begun to lag in speed lately, not just this weekend in particular, but meh, as long as it comes out eventually.
As for which subgroups sub what series, in the sidebar under “Links” there’s one labeled “Who subs what” there’s a list of upcoming titles and the groups that plan on subbing them for each season there.
@ kaz3phyrous: That’s a good idea XD But I’d hate to have to do more than one, so if you still remember 12 weeks down the road, remind me when the series finishes and I’ll do a huge compilation.
OpenSourceSubbing FTW…jk ~_~
I’ll be watching this once finished downloading. I’m glad it looks pretty good; I was definitely in the crew of “wth is this going to be about?” But from the read, it seems notable for now.
cheeeers~
>>@ lolikit: True enough, shall we keep raw blogging? Or start waiting for subs once they become consistent.
So long as I can keep up with the Japanese, I’ll be doing whatever’s fastest… you can do whatever you want, of course, and if you’re slower than me that just means faster trackbacks to my blog :3
On the other hand, if I make my post after you, I usually find some way to quote you. PICK YOUR POISON
sounds like the series Air that finish a while ago about a girl who is from the sky and is always fantazing about the sky
Finally got to watch this and I must say, I am deeply impressed by the very first episode. It was everything I hoped it to be from good character design, to the slow paced start, the beautiful background and the soothing music. I really do hope that it gets better as the series progresses and not turn into a KyoSora. Although that is because I am purely a Key and Circus fan, lol.
Yay! The sub came out today from Lunar :)……
Btw, I was thinking about this earlier……
the animation (especially backgrounds, and the way in which this episode is shot) totally reminded me of Five Centimeters Per Second :)……is it the same studio or something???
P.S. If you guys haven’t seen the 1st part of 5cm/second, you really should!…..It just sucks that the rest of the movie won’t be fansubbed until the R2 DVDs come out :(
@Kanon_fan82: It’s not by Makoto Shinkai (ComixWave), who did 5cm/s, but rather by NOMAD (which seems kinda unknown to me – according to ANN, the only other anime they spearheaded was the Rosen Madien series).
Interestingly, last year Makoto Shinkai did the OP animation work for “ef – a fairy tale of the two”, which has a very similar backdrop (church) and characters (girl with barret hat?).
You can get a subbed version of the OP from Froth-Bite.
For fun, you can compare and contrast between sola and this to see the differences in animation style ;) There was some talk of the similarities on the AnimeSuki thread.
Oops, forgot to add this earlier…
Here’s a link to thread with screenshots & youtube vid : http://forums.visualnews.net/showthread.php?t=7377&highlight=tale+of+two
And link to OP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1GA1gYq4Gk
*EDIT Apparently it’s common practice for anibloggers to avoid direct torrent links, so I’ll keep that courtesy alive. I replaced with a youtube link instead ^^
“doesn’t look like the ending will be anything too deep”
LMAO
:D
I love Sola, the amazing twists and the in depth ending is the perfect recipe for greatness XD
Haha man I loved your references in the pictures at the end.
I wouldn’t say that that chick is a Nagato ripoff, mostly because Nagato is a COMPLETE Rei ripoff.
patetico¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
AAH!
They stole Yuki!
The hell?!