Sora no Woto episode 10 metablogged

Seems we’re given a bit of new date info here. From the ‘year­book’ that Rio is look­ing at, it appears that each pic­ture has a single or pair of dates beneath it, pre­sum­ably birth and death years, with the years marked as ‘AP’ (After /something/). Illya’s is marked with death year AP 269. Since that was two years ago, that puts the cur­rent year at AP 271, and thus 271 years since the great cataclysm.

Com­ment by David on THAT Anime Blog

This is why you shouldn’t just read blog posts on feed read­ers. You miss out on com­ment gems like this one. Visit the site instead of just read­ing off google reader.

Given the vagar­ies of the casus belli for the war other than what Kur­eha said part of me is temp­ted to dub the War between Hel­ve­tia and Rome to be the War of Iliya’s Honor since at cas­ual glance the war star­ted after the Emperor was rejec­ted and he seem­ingly invaded Hel­ve­tia to claim Iliya for his dirty rot­ten hetero-harem. I don’t think much can be said about the oppos­ing force other than their Emperor seems to be a lech­er­ous bas­tard or some wicked man who wants to hold prin­cesses host­age. I am glad that after Rio heard that the Roman Army was already mobil­iz­ing that she knew what she had to do and did it. With any luck Rio will be saved from an cruel fate when Takemi­kazu­chi gets full mobile again as Noel seems to have finally star­ted to get all the parts she needs to fix her mecha

THAT Anime Blog

I must admit, I was sur­prised by the total lack of gloat­ing done by Cru­sader of THAT. He called the ‘Rio get­ting mar­ried off to for­eign fel­low to settle the con­flict’ sev­eral epis­odes ago. It seems like an awfully stu­pid way to start a war. Guy doesn’t get the latest addi­tion to his harem so he wages war on them? Of course there was more to the thing and I’m sure there were hun­dreds of other polit­ical and eco­nom­ical factors but the fact that the Duke being rejec­ted by Iliya was the spark that set the war off seems like such a ridicu­lous reason. I know sol­diers only really com­ment on the polit­ical affairs as small talk to pass the time, which the pla­toon here fre­quently engage in, but the idea that the sol­diers on the Roman side are going to war for that doesn’t sit right in my head. How much power does this duke of Rome have anyway?

There’s some­thing about Sora no Woto brings dif­fer­ent stor­ies and remin­is­cence the past of the platoon’s mem­bers in each epis­ode that just works. Felicia’s story about how the war changed her life, the per­son Kur­eha looked up the most, and in this epis­ode the sis­ter that Rio couldn’t be with due to polit­ical affairs who turns out to be per­son Kanata met before. Seem­ingly simple stor­ies have served to explain parts of the story and to make the viewer under­stand of the world they live in a simple fash­ion. This epis­ode was no exception.

Just as Planned

It is indeed a very simple for­mula and I hadn’t noticed how this has pretty much been how most epis­odes run. This time though, it fell flat IMO. Rio’s angst never felt very well done and her leav­ing didn’t feel right either. It felt sud­den with min­imal buildup and the use of Amaz­ing Grace yet again felt like cheat­ing. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but the whole epis­ode just felt off-beat. I never cared about the old lady’s story and the con­nec­tion they made between her and Rio felt forced. I’m using the word ‘felt’ an awful lot but that’s what happened here. This was no plot fault or annoy­ing out-of-character. It’s the way everything was presen­ted in the episode.

Noël has almost fin­ished rebuild­ing the tank.  Since they already put it to use to save Klaus and Kur­eha, I doubt they would spot­light it again unless it will see another use.  I think the second DVD bonus epis­ode will focus on how they got the parts.  Second, they still haven’t resolved the fire maiden plot­line that star­ted in the first epis­ode.  The story shunted the legend off to the side for quite a while, but in this epis­ode, they bring it back into focus.  How­ever, this has served its pur­pose by reflect­ing Rio’s char­ac­ter, so we can safely live without a blatant resolution.

Bor­der­line Hikikomori

Now I want to say that this likely won’t be the last time we see Rio, but with only two epis­odes left (not includ­ing the two extra DVD/BD ones), I’m not so sure. It all depends on what kind of con­flict they build up next epis­ode, like if there’s going to be another out­break of fight­ing or if there’s going to be some­thing con­nec­ted to the legend appear­ing. The pre­view on the offi­cial site doesn’t seem to point to either of those though and instead indic­ates that the girls will meet a hos­tile soldier.

Ran­dom Curiosity

Now, with only three epis­odes left, the cli­max has finally begun, though not exactly in the way that I expec­ted, now that Rio is gone. I really won­der whether the final three epis­odes are going to her, over Kanata who’s sup­posed to be the main char­ac­ter. To be hon­est, I’d much rather that the focus would stay on Kanata and the town that we’ve been in. It’s too late at this point to sud­denly intro­duce politics.

Star Crossed Anime Blog

Ah, end­ing spec­u­la­tion again. There are two epis­odes left (get your facts right psgels!) with some more extras on the DVD/BD. These extras almost cer­tainly won’t be cent­ral to the plot or any­thing. They’ll prob­ably explain some­thing that happened in the middle of the series, such as how Kanata found out about the illegal brew­ing done by the pla­toon. Oth­er­wise, the depar­ture of Rio leaves a bit of an empty feel­ing around the pla­toon now. I don’t think they ever spe­cified that there would have to be 5 fire maid­ens and I would be shocked if they left that part out of the finale see­ing as how much time they spent on fore­shad­ow­ing the events. The tank being given legs also shows that it will make a reappear­ance before the end. As I said before, I feel the qual­ity of this anime depends hugely on how it ends. I know it’s cliche to say this, but I’m keep­ing my fin­gers crossed that they won’t fuck this up.