B-b-b-baka Otoha. I’m just a little cold, that’s all.

Just as I was thinking that I would never get to do another Sky Girls post again, three episodes are released in the span of a couple days and my faith in Sky Girls has been renewed. The “LOL, training” episodes are beginning to die out and there was an actual WORM battle and not just simulations, and things only look to get better when the girls relocate to the Kouryu and sail the seas looking for stuff to explode, or rather, implode.

Episode Ratings: 7.5/10 || 8.5/10 || 7/10

Episode 8 was mostly filler, but as I’ve come to expect from Sky Girls, some very important plot elements were hidden among the uselessness.

In the aftermath of the landslide disaster from last episode, one of the families invite the Sky Girls to their onsen as a way of saying thanks. Otoha is quick to jump at the offer, but Karen and Ichijo know that they won’t be granted leave that easily. But surprisingly, Togo agrees to the trip in an instant. However, what Otoha originally pictured as a trip for just the three Sky Girls ends up a base wide vacation with the whole Sonic Diver squad except Hizuki and Nanae.

Amidst the fun of the onsen trip, Togo reveals some very important information to Otoha, Karen and Ichijo. The Sonic Diver squad has been enlisted into the 18th special air force unit and the true purpose of the Sky Girls is as a military unit to fight WORMs, which although diminished in numbers, survived the last war and are beginning to take action against humans once again.

Karen and Ichijo take the news quite calmly, but Otoha lashes out, saying that fighting WORMs is not what she signed up for, and it was cruel of Togo to hide it. However, after she hears that the rest of the Sonic Diver squad has heard the news and deciding to continue with their work because even though it’s not what they signed up for, it will end up protecting the lives of many people, Otoha realizes that she was being selfish by running away from the news and vows to do her best.

With the news out, the girls begin their WORM combat training exercises. Seemingly the only tactic they have against the WORMs is known as the delta lock. The girls use light weaponry to bait the WORM into a position where they can surround it in a triangle formation. Then, using Otoha, who has an incredibly high sync ratio, as a mediator, the girls forcefully merge nanomachines into the WORM, inducing rapid cellular breakdown, when combined with close range weapons bombardment, this destroys the WORM before it can regenerate itself.

Soon after their training exercises, the Sky Girls receive their first launch orders against a real life worm which has shown movement towards a coastal oil refinery plant. The WORM is a lot larger than its training simulator equivalent, but the plan of attack remains the same. However, a problem arises when it becomes clear that Karen is much too scared to engage in combat with a real life WORM, something that she managed to suppress in training, but the real thing is too much for her to handle. When the WORM counter attacks with a projectile barrage, Karen is unable to pull herself together, and is hit with one of the projectiles, luckily it only slightly damaged her arm and the WORM retreated afterwards, allowing the girls to regroup.

After Karen wanders the base for a while and realizes that she isn’t the only one that is scared and that it is in fact completely normal, she overcomes her fears and concentrates on devising a plan to beat the WORM. And not a moment too soon, as it resurfaces again, and when a force of eight battle cruisers is unable to put a scratch on it, the Sky Girls receive launch orders once again. And this time, no mistakes are made, using the data from the last battle, Karen constructs a projectile analysis of the WORM’s attack and a flight path to avoid it. With that taken care of, the girls easily lure it into the air and destroy it with a delta lock, to the cheer of the workers on the oil plant.

As they await their transfer to the Kouryu and any emergency launch orders, the girls continue to train and perfect their skills. But Otoha notices something odd in one of the training exercises, Zero is responding quickly, almost too quickly, it’s so perfect that it seems like something is wrong. Afterwards, she confronts Ryohei, accusing his laziness with Zero’s maintenance being the cause of the off feeling she felt.

Later that night, Nanae is making the rounds after some late night overtime, checking all the rooms and locking the base down. When she comes to the hangar, she notices a glowing light floating around Zero and runs away screaming, thinking its a ghost.

When the girls hear Nanae’s story, they take it upon themselves to get to the bottom of the mystery for the sake of the entire base. That night, they stake out the hangar and wait for the light to appear, much to their surprise, it does, but when Otoha uses a net to catch it, it’s Ryohei that ends up being caught. Suddenly, Oya-san emerges from the shadows and tells the girls that Ryohei has been stealing gas from the divers for his motorcycle, but that story ends up being a cover story to fool the girls. In reality, Ryohei has been working late into the night, trying to diagnose and fix the problem with Zero, but he hates showing his hard working side to others, so he does most of his work at night. Oya-san suggests the problem may be that Otoha’s sync ratio is lining up too perfectly with Zero, causing her to have blind faith in her skills and in essence acting before she even thinks, resulting in the feeling that Zero is reacting too quickly. He suggests lowering the synchronization by 0.0001% to offset the feeling.

Apparently that does the trick, as Otoha has nothing but praise for Zero’s flawless operation after the next training session.

Thoughts

Sky Girls still has that annoying habit of having filler episodes that I can’t call completely useless because of those tiny plot advancements, but things are getting a lot better now that they have actually started training against and fighting WORMs instead of practicing flight formations and destroying inanimate targets.

I’m still frustrated that we’re almost half way through and the Sonic Diver squad hasn’t been transferred to the Kouryu yet, but the occasional emergency launch combined with plenty of Ichijo screentime is holding me over quite well.

On that note, one of the few advantages of these training and filler episodes is that they’re great for developing the characters. For example, Ichijo’s strong on the outside, softie on the inside personality is reinforced through the ghost story. Despite holding a strong outer front to Karen and Otoha, it’s obvious that she’s the most scared out of all of them. Tiny habits like carrying the protection charm and resorting to food to defer her fears is what distinguish characters like Ichijo from other stereotypical tsundere.

We also learn more about Otoha and Karen. Episode 8 made it clear that despite being a cheerful person in general, Otoha can sometimes be quite selfish, or at the very least, naive. When she first hears that the Sky Girls will be put into military combat against the WORMs, all she can think about is herself and how betrayed she felt at the news. But once she calms down and realizes that she’s not the only one who has to deal with the news, she starts to understand that more important than her own selfish needs, her involvement in the Sonic Diver squad is important to the lives of many other innocent people, and at that gather the resolution to give it her best for the sake of everyone.

Karen goes through a similar problem, but rather than being concerned about her personal morals, hers is an issue of fear. Much like Otoha, it takes Karen realizing that everyone else is going through the exact same emotions that she is to get over her fears and cast away her hesitation.

Admittedly, these character developments are as cliche as you can get, but stereotypical courage building is better than none at all. When characters are just thrown into a cockpit and proceed to own the skies without a problem, it’s harder to identify with them as they progress throughout the series. It’s difficult to sympathize with someone who you know nothing about, rather it’s much easier to be drawn in a tense battle when you feel like you know the character and feel that their injury or death would be a great loss.

It’s the methodology behind cannon fodder, for example…Show ▼

I know that it seems like I’m stating the obvious, but it’s a point that a lot of people tend to overlook.

As for where we go from now, the preview suggests we have another briefing/training episode ahead of us as a new Sky Girl joins the team, the loli that was briefly introduced in episode 6, Elise von Dietrich. From what was shown in the preview, she seems like she’s already a competent Sonic Diver pilot, which is sure to piss off Ichijo.

And we finish off with some obligatory Ichijo fanservice.

~ Shirukii ~