Why Sora Kake Girl is the show I’ve been waiting 4 years for
By Moogy | March 20, 2009
I’ll cut this post immediately so it doesn’t interfere with people looking for ef.
This post is fairly subjective, but maybe you’ll enjoy checking out my thought process a bit.
Okay, so. Those of you who obsessively read my blog (???) or know me well know that my favorite anime of all time is Mai HiME – a show which finished airing around 4 years ago. (Okay, it’s been 3 years and 355 days, sue me.) Anyway, since then, I’ve encountered works in other mediums that I would place above even HiME. However, after having watched hundreds more anime, I haven’t found something to replace it as my favorite production in its own medium.
Until now. Today I watched episodes nine and ten of Sora Kake Girl and had my suspicions about the series confirmed.
You may ask what exactly my suspicions were. Well, to put it simply: One, that Sora Kake Girl is indeed the true successor to HiME; and two, that Sora Kake may very well end up being better than HiME.
Oh, for sure, the two series are fairly dissimilar in both mood and composition. You don’t need to be particularly observant to figure out that Sora Kake takes itself a lot less seriously than HiME ever did, for instance. In spite of this, however, the feeling I get when I watch Sora Kake is the same feeling that I got when I watched HiME for the very first time, all those years ago – it’s a feeling that can be described as a combination of fun, anticipation, and awe, I suppose.
Anyway, this feeling has been conspicuously absent from pretty much everything I’ve watched these past four years – the original Code Geass is probably that which came closest to evoking it in me once more. Of course, I’m not saying that all anime sucks compared to HiME or anything silly like that; I’m just saying that HiME hit me (and continues to hit me, with each rewatch) on a very deep level. It was something with an absolutely visceral, raw impact.
And, yeah, Sora Kake Girl hits me like that too. I think every character is awesome. Every scene makes me want to see more. It’s as if the waits between episodes are interminable. And so on. (I’ll spare you some more of my classic rambling.)
In the end, I suppose it’s not terribly surprising that I like this show so much. It is, after all, by pretty much the same team as HiME – a team which has, unfortunately, until now, not managed to turn out anything near the level of HiME since making that show! Let’s review their subsequent works, shall we?
- Otome – Falls apart completely in the latter half. Suffers from trying too hard to please fans of the original while simultaneously trying to do new shit. I generally dislike Otome.
- Otome Zwei – A fanfic-y mess. Seriously, what were they thinking? I don’t even want to bother trying to analyze this one.
- Xenoglossia – Actually a rather decent show once you get past the, shall we say, placidity of the first six episodes or so. Unfortunately, the characters are all more or less uninteresting and the plot devolves into arbitrary nonsense at the end due to bizarre pacing problems (it’s like the show was planned for 30 episodes or so). The ending itself is fine, at least, and there are some very epic bits. Great ED too. I found Xenoglossia rather enjoyable, but it’s simply not on the same level as HiME.
- Otome S.ifr – Fuck this shit. This is total fucking garbage and is nothing more than a blatant ploy to milk the HiME/Otome franchise even more.
Yeah. As you can see, nothing to appease my fanboy demands. As I said, Code Geass came pretty close, but then R2 came along and that was the end of that. (I consider the original Code Geass to be fairly relatable to HiME because Taniguchi was the overall creative producer for it.) And, of course, there are many other shows which I hold in extremely high regards as well. But none have reached the level of HiME. (Something which you should have figured out by now if you’ve been reading this post.)
And thus I’ve been waiting long enough to ascend from the status of a high school freshman to that of a college freshman for a series which can rival HiME.
But now the waiting is over, because Sora Kake Girl is here. And, to put it bluntly, this makes me extremely happy, because, well, I enjoy enjoying enjoyable things!
Speaking of which – unlike the shows mentioned above, I don’t see Sora Kake Girl fizzling out at any point; hell, that’s why I waited 10 episodes to espouse this opinion. The plot and its progression are constructed at a very high level, as with HiME, so I’m instead quite optimistic about the places it will go in the future. And, with its amount of insight into both the expectations of the audience (or at least my own expectations) and its own structure, I have feeling it may end up reaching a loftiness which even HiME could not aspire to. Time will tell, I suppose!
Wait a sec, this post doesn’t actually mention anything about the show itself, does it!? I’ll save that for the mid-season point, episode 13, I suppose.
Thus, in conclusion, I will merely say this: Fucking watch this show. Jesus Christ. It’s fucking awesome.
By the way, I’ll be bringing back my visual novel reviews this weekend or sometime next week. I’ve got Saya, Wanko, Umineko, Fate/stay night, ef, Hourglass of Summer, Ar tonelico II (it counts, okay), Chaos;Head, and whatever else I can think of lined up! I’ll probably rewrite some of my old ones, too.
Topics: Anime, Sora Kake | 13 Comments »
March 20th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
LOL I actually liked Sifr the most out of the successors, Sora Kake Girl excluded from the list until it finishes.
(Also, I swear it seems like half the anime bloggers list My-Hime as their favorite anime.)
March 20th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
My-Hime is a great show. In the bad way, but not in THAT kind of bad way. Whatever, moogy’s right.
That said I think Sorakakegirl gets a too close to the “cacophony of noise” line for me, but I do too think it’s the spiritual successor to the original Hime. Sorakakegirl runs the risk of getting too far ahead of themselves.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:54 am
As to me Mai Hime is a good show, but I like Otome more than Hime :)
I think what ruined Hime for me was the really unpredictable and kinda rushed ending..
Add to that, that Arika Yumemiya is one of my fav characters as well.. ;)
@jpmeyer
Yeah, I also liked Sifr more than Otome Zwei which story was kinda strange in my opinion.
As for Sorakakegirl, I never heard of that anime, but it seems to be a fun watch so I’ll take a glimpse.
The last anime I watched and enjoyed actualy wasn’t Casshern, Tales of the Abyss or Ride Back but Tweeny Witches (Mahou Shojoutai Arusu) :) Watching the OVA now :D
March 21st, 2009 at 7:02 am
I’ve never watched HiME so I wouldn’t know what the hell it’s like, but Sora Kake Girl is definitely a strangely refreshing show, full of all sorts of random shit going on.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:22 am
Hmm, I am more with Omo on this one. The nice thing about Mai Hime was that aside from the bookend crap beginning and ending it was a surprisingly tightly woven story with well-managed characters. SoraKake is fun at times, but the writing feels sloppy. I actually would compare it (in mood and in quality) more to Otome, but with slightly less craptastic political intrigue garbage.
I’m also confused as to why you find SoraKake so gripping? There are really only a few mysteries: what is up with Akiha and her funky dream world, what happened in the war in the past, and why did the boxheads abduct Itsuki’s parents to insert probes in their butts (ok paraphrasing here)? Considering most of the mysteries were only introduced in the last 2 episodes, how is it that you find the beginning of SoraKake as intriguing as Mai Hime as a whole?
The characters have not really displayed very much either. Nobody has been challenged, and all we get is how Akiha is sad she isn’t cool like her sisters, even though she gets to hang out with a talking colony, fire the most powerful weapon in the universe thus far, and pilot advanced machinery. I don’t even understand why Akiha is jealous, considering that Nami’s idol status seems pretty fake.
The nice thing about blogging each episode (for both series) is that you can see clearly when each series started getting good. Mai Hime began to break out of the silly comedy mold around episode 6, and in episode 8 things started getting real with Kazu’s fate. Thus far, I have not really seen anything much in terms of a grand story in SoraKake. I’m not saying that SoraKake is bad or cannot get awesome in the second half, but I do not know what you are basing your optimistic conclusion on.
I’d say so far SoraKake is the spiritual successor of Mai Otome at best, in terms of quality, characters, and story.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I … don’t know. lol, I actually had to dig to find my reaction to HiME, and to Sore Kake (fresh in my senses up to episode 6).
I think Hime was more plain-straight composed, and a dabble of mystery. Sore Kake has a larger spread of details, but it sort of jumps right in. To put it one way, Hime had a clean-cut contemporary delivery. Sure there were some cliff hangers and whatever, but it wasn’t very artsy. Sore Kake feels much more artsy and playful from the very beginning. What I notice is that Sunrise has constructed a pliable world in SKG, which may tend to attract the viewer from sheer allure and slight mystery (like I said, there’s a more subtle random details in SKG, compared to Hime).
Prying, poking, reflection, wondering about SKG… it makes the attraction grow, and subjectively, I agree that it could be more enticing/enjoyable/whathaveyou than Hime. It’s a more creative appeal, with similar appealing aspects *\/service\/*
… and I don’t know what else
March 21st, 2009 at 10:06 pm
@kabitzin
i have a feeling sunrise is doing their new “gundam 00 season 1″ pacing formula for SKG. that is, slow in the first half, increase in the middle, WTF THIS IS AWESOME at the end.
i think soaring cake girl is one of the best shows i’ve seen in a while. leopard is damn hilarious.
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Fucking seconded this post.
SoraKake truly is the spiritual successor of Mai Hime.
March 31st, 2009 at 6:27 am
Hoping sorakake will become next HiME ?
you wont get it.
see the opening song where a character and a mecha is shown in the same screen. it will be the next Code Geass R2, a good show which turn into Mecha ads by Bandai (Sunrise Parent Company)
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November 13th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Ok, the whole point of Hime for me was that the show elicited an emotional response from the viewer. The situations felt real and intense. Sora Kake girl however, is a light-hearted, lalalalla happy happy boring anime. What the Fuck?