sola

Information of Anime

Yorito Morimiya has a passion for the sky.  His hobby is to take pictures of the sky which creates a lot of problems for him.  One morning, he wakes up at 4am to take a picture of the sun rising.  He meets a girl nearby that is beating an old vending machine when it took her money & not giving her a drink she wanted.  When he helps her & gets the drink out, she mysteriously disappears.  The girl, named Matsuri Shihou, would later put Yorito into an interesting situation.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

When Yorito meets Matsuri again in a church where she is hunted down by a man (Takeshi Tsujidou) with a sword, Yorito saves her regardless of the man's warning to him.  Yorito decides to take Matsuri to his place & have her stay with him.  He later discovers that she's a yaka, a being that can't be expose to sunlight or else she'll die.  Because of this problem & her interest for the sky, Yorito promises her t that he'll take her to see the sky.

Despite his interest for the sky & the promise to Matsuri, Yorito's life is messed up.  He seldom visits his sick sister, Aono Morimiya, in the hospital & his friend Mana Ishizuki thinks he's hiding something.  However, his secret of keeping Matsuri at his place is exposed later on.  Also, Matsuri & Aono know each other & Aono has magical powers.  In fact. she's a yaka as well.  The show would show us that the two girls have know each other for a very long time.  At the same time, Takeshi continues to hunt down Matsuri only to be stopped by his friend Mayuko Kamikawa who is also a yaka.  The reason for the hunt is to cure Mayuko from being a yaka.  During this process, Aono tries to keep Yorito to herself to the lengths of lying to him & having him kill Matsuri with his own hands.  When Yorito learns the truth behind all this, he goes to Matsuri for the full story of how he managed to meet them before & who he was.  To fulfill his request, Matsuri tells him as he discovers that he's a phantom created by Aono to carry Yorito's soul who died many years ago.  Upon learning the truth, Matsuri & Yorito decides to leave town together.  However, it would turn out to be different.

Yorito tells Aono that they should leave town.  As they do that, memories of the two starts to fade away from people that they know.  As they prepare to leave, Yorito goes to Matsuri & angers Aono.  Thus, Aono chases Matsuri to lead her to Yorito.  Turns out that Yorito wants everything back the way it was with him gone.  Since Yorito is created from Aono's yaka powers, Matsuri tries to kill Aono with the katana that she got from Takeshi.  However, the katana doesn't kill people.  It reverts yakas back to humans.  As the two battle it out, the viewers gets some flashback scenes of the trio in the past & how Aono was saved & turned into a yaka by Matsuri.  Plus, it shows how the three got together.  When Aono is caught by Yorito, Matsuri stabs herself with the katana to change back to human & targets Aono next after a couple of fail attempts to revert her back.  However, it would cost Yorito his life to get Aono.  With Yorito gone, Matsuri gives her life to Aono to continue living on.

After the incident & the story wrapping up, Aono lives her life happily as she is no longer a yaka.  She revisits & befriends again Koyori & Mana Ishizuki, who still do not remember her.  Now, Mana follows the same path as Yorito took by showing strong interest to the sky.

My Personal Review

sola is pretty much average.  It's not exciting nor is it very boring.  However, as the story progressed, it got a bit more interesting from one episode after another.  I chose to watch this mainly because it came from a popular ero-game of the same name that came out not too long ago.  The anime is based on that game.

Animation

The characters have interesting chins.  They are either very sharp or flat.  Either way, they are very long.  Eyes are very big too, regardless if the character is male or female.  As for the fashion, it's not too bad for the girls.  Pretty creative.

The backgrounds don't have that much detail to them.  The designs of the skies are pretty good though.  Very detail & beautiful.  Truly lives up to the anime's title.  As for the other stuff like the buildings, it's so-so.  The details are simple & a bit blurry at times.

For the colours, it's bright.  They do have its dull side with the sky mostly.  Overall, the colour balance is okay.

In terms of the animation movement, it's quite flowing.  However, there are some silly unreal movements for those comedy moments.  Overall, hardly any choppy frames.

Sound       

The sound effects are on the realistic side.  They are timed on cue & are crisp.

The seiyuus here are not bad.  Not annoying or off-key.  The seiyuus played their parts well as they gave their characters life & emotions.  Not the best, but they get the job done.

The music is ok & isn't anything exciting.  Mainly string music & soft ballads.

Story

The story focuses on Aono, Matsuri, & Yorito.  All three of them have met in the past & known each other for a long time.  However, Yorito doesn't seem to have any memories about it.  Although the show looks like it focuses on Matsuri due to the hunting & her being, it was actually focused on Aono to my surprise.  I thought it was going to be on Yorito, despite what happens to him at the end.  The story is quite deep & does have some twist & turns here & there.

As for the ending, it was okay.  For some reason, there were some incomplete bits.  It's not major ones, but it felt kind of empty in some areas.  The character development that reached to this point is very balance, such as the change in Aono & Yorito.  It was kind of slow getting there, but it managed to make an impact in the end.  Also, the show actually gets darker when Aono & Matsuri start fighting against each other.

Overall Conclusion

sola isn't a bad anime show to watch.  It's light drama with some action on the side.  Although I don't highly recommend watching it, it's not something you should automatically pass up on.  People that like some fantasy love story that is light would probably enjoy this.  Keep in mind though it does get a bit dark near the end.

sola gets a seven out of ten.  The show has good potential & is quite interesting enough to grab you in.  However, the presentation is quite dry & can be boring as it feels a bit slow.  However, the pacing seems fine for a 13 episode show.  Plus, the story gets darker & the characters get more interesting.  Although the ending was fitting for the show, it does have some minor bits that have you wondering a bit at the very end.

Last updated on February 26, 2008