*cues Eye of the Tiger* Training arc, go!

Ok, so maybe I harbor a slight hatred for training arcs because of the whole StrikerS fiasco, but I found this episode to be pretty boring. But I suppose it’s a hurdle that we have to get over so the girls can start fighting for real, which hopefully isn’t too far off.

Episode Rating: 7.5/10

The episode starts off with a short lesson on physical chemistry from Togo. He explains that the nanoskin’s various properties, including physical protection, and the ability to sustain the pilot’s vitals even under heavy g-forces and rapidly changing atmospheric pressure. There’s also a time limit to the nanoskin’s effectiveness, exactly 21 minutes and 32 seconds. But most importantly, the stuff is expensive as hell to make and only usable once so he urges them to use it carefully.

Next up is the flight simulator. The girls get into their plug suits and try out the basics of take-off, landing and basic flight maneuvers through a basic simulation. Otoha gets off to a bit of a shaky start when faced with the complex controls, but nothing compared to Karen, who ends up flailing around in an attempt to avoid a simulated crash. As expected from the ‘veteran’ pilot, Ichijo has no problems with the introductory lesson and cruises along with ease.

When the girls are taken to what looks like an amusement park next, Otoha and Karen are slightly confused. But it turns out to be another training exercise as they’re put on a high speed roller coaster with electronic billboards displaying 7-digit numbers at various points, at which point they have to relay the number back to Togo. The level-headed Ichijo makes no mistakes and scores perfect. Karen, despite screaming her head off throughout most of the ride, does surprisingly well with a 98%. However, Otoha, who seemed more concerned with enjoying the ride, doesn’t have much of an affinity for numbers and scores an embarrassing 15%.

The day ends with some physical training, where Ichijo once again outdoes Otoha and Karen. We’re also given a glimpse at Ichijo’s motivation for trying so hard. Still brooding over the incident where she was defeated by the temporary sonic diver pilot, she pushes herself so that one day she may have her chance at revenge.

While watching Ichijo train, Karen runs into Nanae, who explains that unlike Otoha and Karen, Ichijo wasn’t recruited by the military but rather volunteered for the position herself. Also, despite being a great pilot, Ichijo’s compatibility test with the sonic diver system barely made it over the passable range.

The next day, the girls suit up for a sync test and familiarization with the sonic divers. There are no problems with the test and everyone is within acceptable readings, Otoha in particular having nearly a 100% sync ratio from the very start.

The mechanics for each sonic diver are also revealed. Ranko, in charge of Ichijo’s sonic diver Raijin. Haruko, in charge Karen’s sonic diver, Fuujin, also Ranko’s twin sister. And finally, Ryohei, in charge of Reijin, a loud mouthed pervert who seems to be pedo for Otoha, much to her dismay.

With introductions and tests aside, they move on to the main event of the day, the first test flight of the girls’ sonic divers. With the most experience and best training record, Ichijo is the only one permitted to fly so far.

The launch and initial stages of flight go off without a problem, but just as Ichijo starts to think that her first step to catching up to that mystery pilot is going well, her sync ratio suddenly becomes unstable and eventually she loses complete control of Raijin.

To make things worse, when the situation shows no sign of getting better, Lieutenant Hizuki orders everyone to ignore the safety of the pilot and make recovery of Raijin the top priority, which earns him a punch in the face from Togo.

Not one to sit back idly and watch her friend die in vain, Otoha drags Ryohei into the hangar and begs him to let her fly Reijin and rescue Ichijo. With such a high sync ratio, Ryohei thinks it might be possible and allows Otoha to launch, even though no such orders were given.

But things turn out for the best as Otoha manages to catch up, dock with Raijin and escort it back to the hangar. The emergency landing isn’t what you would call graceful, with Otoha almost overshooting the target, but with Ichijo managing to regain control at the last minute and slam on the air brakes, they manage to survive, for which Ichijo earnestly thanks Otoha for.

Thoughts

So my intuition was right in picking out Otoha as the one with the highest sync ratio, but from the amount of screentime she gets, it’s almost as if she’s being built as the main character, so it wasn’t that hard to guess.

You have to feel sorry for Ichijo though. Despite being the most experienced and most skilled pilot among the three, she lacks the latent potential in terms of compatibility with the sonic diver system, something that isn’t a simple task to improve. Another one of those cases where you wonder if hard work and effort can ever pass raw potential and latent genius. However, on the up side, it doesn’t look like Ichijo took it too hard, judging from her personality thus far, her failure will only serve to boost her determination.

On the topic of Ichijo’s personality, the test flight ordeal looks like it helped her relationship with Otoha. Ichijo started off all military, even in the second episode it was clear that she didn’t want to recognize Otoha and Karen as her partners, especially since they were civilians. And throughout the third episode she continually asked that Otoha remain formal and address her by her surname. But having been rescued and seeing that Otoha and Karen care about her, Ichijo drops the tsuntsun act and more or less accepts them as not only partners, but friends, even giving up reminding Otoha not to call her Eika.

I was expecting Ichijo to keep up the tough girl and say something like “Don’t do unnecessary things in the future”. But I guess she not only recognized that Otoha did what she did out of concern, but that she would have been as good as dead had things been left to Lt. Hizuki.

As far as training goes, Sky Girls kept things pretty standard, but I thought the concept of using rollercoasters for high speed pattern recognition was really interesting. Although having them recognize and memorize numbers isn’t really that useful for anyone except Karen, who has a cluster of data to read on the fly when piloting. I’m pretty sure the US military does something similar with their pilots, placing them under high speed conditions and giving them split seconds for image recognition. But instead of numbers they flash various models of aircrafts to judge whether the pilot can discern between friend or foe in the air.

The scene also reminded me of this comic, which I swear I’m going to imitate one day for the lulz.

The next episode looks like the girls have a day off and go into the city to have some fun, only to have Karen lose a pen that was given to her by her brother. No doubt this will lead to a coincidental encounter with a new character.

It feels like Sky Girls is taking forever to build up to real action, but realistically, things are progressing quite well. I think it’s just because the pacing of the OVA was so fast in throwing viewers directly into the line of fire. With a taste of what’s to come, the wait is killing me ;_;. But alas, I guess proper character build up and background profiling is important too…

~ Shirukii ~