Sora no Otoshimono

I was made aware of Sora no Otoshimono after a post on Cartoon Leap Anime Blog that had picked up on this shows rather unique ending. An ending that turns out to belong to the 2nd episode as so far they have a different ending for every episode. After getting some marginal info from Anidb I figured I might like it even though I was a bit dubious, but since it was about an angel 'descending' to earth I figured it had some Oh! My Goddess ring to it and seeing that's one of my favorites I thought I'd give it a shot. Alas, this isn't as good in MY humble opinion ... and that's pretty much the only thing that counts around here.

Our male lead, Sakurai Tomoki, has had a dream since early childhood in which he sees a girl he loves who loves him back but at the end heaven always takes her away leaving him behind, often in tears. The story begins with one of the stereotypical scenes of a childhood girlfriend (Sohara) trying to wake up our male lead and trying to get his attention by pulling away his sheets and finds that he is paying more attention then she bargained for. And for another stereotype we learn that Sohara comes equiped with a karate chop that would instill fear into the hearts of strong men.

The only thing Tomoki wants is peace and quiet, but little does he know that those days are all but over and gone. After a nap at school where he has his dream again, he is woken up, again, by Sohara who is worried as he is crying again. Sohara wants him to visit the hospital, and when he refuses that, go see the upperclassman Eishirou Sugata to which Tomoki objects even more vehemently. Not entirely without good reason as even Sugata's childhood friend (Mikako) describes him as knowledgable, but somewhat creepy, severely perverted, a weirdo and a freak with glasses.



Ofcourse in the end Tomo goes to Sugata and with reasons that come from thin air Sugata makes the assumption that the floating hole and Tomoki's dream are connected. As it just happens *cough* the floating hole will fly over their hometown at midnight so he suggests they all go to a somewhat famous local cherry blossom tree to watch it. Due to various reasons though Tomo ends up sitting alone under the cherry tree and he is about to go home when he receives a call from Sugata warning him something odd is going on. Naturally that warning is just to late and after a fairly good sized blast Tomo finds an unconscious girl in a crater. A girl with wings no less.

With a sharp instinct Tomo correctly assumes this stinks to high heavens (pardon the pun) of trouble and makes for a quick exit of the scene while seemingly some part of heaven is raining down around him. Good guy that he is, and giving us a story in the process, he decides he can't leave the girl lying there and darts back. 10 out of 10 for the gentleman perk, 1 out of 10 for common sense though. Luckily for him the girl regains consiousness and saves him instead before things turn out badly after which the girl bonds with him and introduces herself as being an Pet-class Angelroid, ready to fulfill his every desire.



I'll leave at this. Read on if you don't mind spoilers (or have seen this episode already).

[Spoiler]
Tomoki gets a little on my nerves which is not because of his standard role of somewhat perverted boy, but at times his laughing has all the charm of nails going over chalkboard (something which I find almost impossible to stomach) and because of the superdeformed way he often is portrait. Now SD has it's purposes, but here it seems either done at random or it is supposed to be funny and perhaps I don't get it, but I find it distracting, no annoying and that's not really the way to go. To be honest, others are put in SD-mode in seemingly random fashion as well, but Tomoki more and it grates on my nerves.

Kudos for Tomoki though for (ab)using his new found powers getting some revenge on Sohara for all her karate chops on him. My only question though is: "if you're invisible then why do you need the invisible making ninja blanket (Naruto fans should know what I mean)?"

I have wondered before about the sanity of japanese animators and one of the things Tomoki does when finds there is basically no limit to what he can do, makes me wonder again. Really, if you're basically omnipitent is one the things you do go naked onto the street? Sigh, invisible or not, I doubt very much many people would see the fun in that.

I also need to give credits for the last part of the first episode in which Tomomki is misunderstood by Icarus (the name of our Pet-class Angelroid) and he ends up erasing all of mankind. It reminded me a lot about an episode of the X-files in which Mulder finds a genuine Genie in the bottle (actually a carpet if I recall correctly) and he whishes for worldpeace and the genie, who has somewhat of an evil stride in her, also erases humanity entirely. Luckily for Tomoki things are reversed when Icarus takes the remark that he wishes it was all a dream as a request for a wish.

As for Icarus. She is cute and follows what she thinks are commands/wishes of Tomoki blindly. She seems to be naive, not stupid though, but naive which most likely is because she has very little to no prior experiences. She also does remind me a lot of Chobits with those thing on her head next to her ears. Her cuteness at times is a little diminished as another annoying trait of japanese animators pops up which would be that womens breast should be in size large, extra large and extra extra large. Thankfully they don't take it to extremes here, but I sure wish that the combination of a skimpy outfit and large breast would be given a rest ..... for a couple of decades.

I've read about the manga a little and it seems your general harem anime with more heaven visitor coming down .... not all friendly though and from what I can gather without having actually touched the manga (though I WILL be downloading them) there is some action, some rather serious action actually, to be had. I doubt very much though we'll see much of this in the anime with half of the series having aired already without any real progress in the story at all.

As last thought something that has been puzzling me. Tomoki has been dreaming about a girl, but this girl is NOT Icarus. In fact he has a dream later in episode 1 in which he sees this girl again and she tells him to treasure his angel and never leave her. I'm wondering if, in both the anime as well as the manga, we'll ever get to see her and what part she'll play.

So all in all what we have here is your basic romance harem anime (the harem part still to come sort of). Guy gets an angel(roid) to live with him, childhood girlfriend gets jealous and an male lead, that's oblivious to the the girls feelings. The art is pretty good, but I really don't like the overuse (at least in my eyes it's over use) of the superdeformed style. The male lead has it's good points, but also his bad which in particularly to me detract from the experience. So far, and I have seen up till episode 6, there is also not an inch movement in what you could call a plot which is a pity because the manga does seem to have one. In short, it watchable, but I've seen this done better.

Temporarily verdict: 6,5 out of 10.