“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” –Johnny Cash
In 2009, TV Tokyo’s anime department and Sony’s then-new Aniplex division established a collaborative project called Anime no Chikara (“The Power of Anime”), intended to explore the feasibility of all-original anime whose stories were not rooted in prior manga, visual novels, games or light novels. 2010’s Sora no Woto was the first of these projects, and two other anime, Senkō no Night Raid and Occult Academy, would be produced before Anime no Chikara concluded. An interview with Aniplex president, Kōichirō Natsume, would reveal that Anime no Chikara had not been intended to be a strict commercial endeavour. Rather, Natsume would indicate in a 2012 interview that Anime no Chikara was originally a one-year project, a sort of Skunkworks to explore novel concepts in anime, and while the project did fall short of some expectations, the lessons drawn from each work would go on to influence the production of original anime that would later go on to become commercial and critical successes, including Madoka Magica and AnoHana. Although Natsume declined to specify what precisely these lessons were, and makes an aside that these are trade secrets, one can reasonably work out what worked. Sora no Woto remained the most influential of the anime, and in an anime about a young woman whose journey into music would allow her to understand how music was a language that transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries, Sora no Woto would serve as the testbed for concepts that would become very prevalent in contemporary anime. For instance, critics of the time suggested that Sora no Woto‘s story had progressed too slowly, favouring slice-of-life over the incredibly detailed world-building the series had teased, and was set in a world whose stakes were not immediately apparent. Knowing this, Aniplex could now create an original anime which had similar depth and was similarly driven by characters. However, rather than re-treading familiar ground of self-discovery, growth and camaraderie, Aniplex realised that if they combined similar depth with a bloody premise, and challenged existing anime convention, they’d yield something that take the industry by storm. Madoka Magica resulted from this: the series was also constructed in a way that hooked viewers with world-building, but this time, each episode would leave more questions than answers, and the decision to outright kill a mentor figure reminded viewers the story was not to be trifled with. Viewers were taken off their feet, and Madoka Magica became a smash hit, a series that remained impactful even to this day. Aniplex therefore learnt that an anime original project could succeed, if it struck a balance between creating a connection with the characters, building a world with enough depth that encouraged viewers to ask questions, and was paced in a way so that one was always left wanting more. In this regard, while not exactly a commercial success, Anime no Chikara would be a valuable programme which laid down the groundwork for Aniplex’s later successes, and from this perspective, one can say that Sora no Woto, in being Anime no Chikara‘s best-received work, would become an indirect predecessor to Madoka Magica, a predecessor that, in retrospect, provided a measure of what some foundational elements to successful original anime would look like.
The underlying charm of Sora no Woto lies in the dynamics between the familiar characters and the remarkable world the characters’ stories are told in. Right out of the gates, Sora no Woto caught the viewer’s attention with a visually impressive opening. After introducing Kanata and her being inspired by Princess Iilya to become a bugler, Kanata is shown riding a train through the Helvetian countryside to the town of Seize. On her journey, the train passes through quiet rural fields, and after Kanata transfers to a civilian train, the terrain becomes more rocky as she nears Seize. Upon arrival, Kanata is caught in Seize’s Water Festival, a lively show of local customs, and her misadventures cause her to fall into a lake, where she spots the fossilised remains of a vast avian species from an unknown era. Quite separately, Rio would walk viewers through Helvetian legend, of how contemporary customs came to be. This beginning immediately established that Sora no Woto was set in a world with a lovingly crafted story, and in fact, one might even feel that there was a little too much to take in. To balance this out, Sora no Woto makes use of a cast of characters that prima facie feel as though they were lifted straight from Kyoto Animation’s K-On! – at first blush, Kanata is a carbon copy of Yui, and Rio is Mio. Filicia is Tsumugi in all but name, and Kureha resembles Azusa. Noël was a unique character by comparison, but one could easily make the case that she’s Yuki Nagato. However, one must also consider why such familiar characters were present, and the answer is that character archetypes provide a sort of control for the story – a story is worth telling not because of who an individual is at the start of their journey, but rather, because of who they become following their experiences. Having characters who outwardly appear derivative also helps to ground a series: in an anime like Sora no Woto, where the world feels very foreign, viewers can be reassured by the fact that they’ll have an equivalent of Yui to guide them through things, and by the time one settles in to a setting as distinct as Sora no Woto‘s, the story can then progress. Kanata, for instance, learns that music can’t be forced and should come naturally. Over time, she improves her bugling and eventually inherits Rio’s trumpet, a show of her growth as a musician. Similarly, while Rio had joined the 1121st to escape her lineage and responsibilities, seeing Kanata own her role as a bugler compels Rio to accept that there are things she must take ownership of, setting aside her own beliefs in order to stop a war. Serious, disciplined and short, Rio is practically K-On!‘s Mio, with none of Mio’s propensity for embarrassment, but engaging with Kanata helps Rio to loosen up. By the end of Sora no Woto, members of the 1121st are more comfortable and open with one another, and the sum of their discoveries suggests that individual agency matters. Kanata improves as a bugler because she sincerely learns the craft, while Rio learns that she always had a choice about where her life would go. Kureha accepts that she needn’t tough things out on her own, and Noël accepts that while she has the blood of others on her hands as a result of being exploited by the Helvetian army early on for her technical knowhow, she can still actively choose to do good in the present. Filicia comes to terms with past and similarly determines she must live for her fallen comrades. Each of the 1121st do grow meaningfully by the end of Sora no Woto, and in following their adventures, the world that the story is set in no longer feels quite so daunting.
By the time viewers started settling in to Sora no Woto, a curious phenomenon began occurring, one which would later occur at scale with Madoka Magica. Because Sora no Woto had crafted such a vivid and detailed world, viewers took on a very keen interest in what led the world of Sora no Woto to reach the state it’d been portrayed in, and further to this, where in the world Sora no Woto‘s setting was located. The mish-mash of cultural elements, from French writing, to use of Japanese currency and customs, created a great deal of intrigue amongst viewers. This led to the infamous speculation charts, a compilation of the community’s thoughts and theories drawn from small details seen in the anime. Regardless of whether or not these theories had any merit (how correct the speculation was is neither here nor there for this discussion), the fact is that speculation resulted in all manner of conversations, and this phenomenon spoke strongly to how strong world-building could produce interest amongst viewers. The fact that viewers were intrigued enough to write extensive blog posts, spend hours debating one another, and even produce infographics that compiled information into a single spot, showed that Sora no Woto had been very successful in catching the viewer’s attention, and while commercial numbers in Japan might not reflect this, the fact that Sora no Woto generated discussion of this quantity and variety spoke to the series’ impact as a literary work. Clearly, the world had raised enough questions and piqued enough curiosity to encourage people to spend so much time in trying to make sense of the story world, and from a critical standpoint, it meant that Sora no Woto had succeeded in at least a few domains (enough that even fifteen years after I watched the series, I find value in returning to re-watch it and give it some thought). While the amount of speculation in Sora no Woto had been impressive, it was vastly eclipsed by the amount of discussion and speculation that Madoka Magica produced. While Madoka Magica and Sora no Woto are not directly related, it is evident that the learnings from Sora no Woto clearly made their way into Madoka Magica – when Madoka Magica really got underway, fans delved into everything from how Magical Girls, Witches and Incubators worked, right through to what each Witch’s labyrinth represented, and even which philosophical models could be used to predict outcomes. Again, the accuracy of these discussions is irrelevant to this discussion: what matters is the fact that fans were this engaged with the work, a powerful indicator of what deep world-building and strong characters could do. Armed with the starting properties from Sora no Woto, and a clear idea of how to make the story more captivating, Madoka Magica would end up being a sort of spiritual successor to Sora no Woto, one that illustrates how, while Anime no Chikara and Sora no Woto may not have been smash hits, the programme had nonetheless be a worthwhile exercise for Aniplex.
Screenshots and Commentary
- When Sora no Woto opened, I found myself spell-bound by the train sequence – the anime began with very little context, but the sight of Kanata riding a train through farmers’ fields, polishing her bugle and accepting some caramels from soldiers who believe that treating the bugler well will let them hear retreat signals better. Despite the limited dialogue, the setting and incidental music sets the tone effectively, indicating that this is going to be a very quiet world. The tranquility of the opening scene has lingered with me since; it was a quiet evening, after a full day’s of summer research, that I sat down to Sora no Woto, and I remember for all fourteen episodes, I was held spell-bound.
- Sora no Woto is not a revolutionary game-changer, and some episodes were weaker than others, but I vividly remember being captivated by the setting, and how the characters’ familiar traits meant that I never felt lost. Novelty soon gave way to curiosity, and I thus watched episodes with enthusiasm. As memory serves, I began watching Sora no Woto shortly after the May long weekend ended back in 2011, and I would’ve finished on this day fifteen years earlier. I would’ve resumed my driving lessons, brushing up ahead of my practical exam, as well, and that means this year will also mark fifteen years since I obtained my operator’s license.
- According to my old recollections, at around this point fifteen summers ago, I had made a considerable amount of progress in my research. That year, I was working on a model of renal fluid flow and filtration in a nephron, and my task had been to build a system in which physics objects could navigate a convoluted vessel without making used of splines or a pre-defined path. I’d been using the lab’s in-house game engine, and the graduate student driving that project had implemented something called a “flow field”, which applied a constant force to any physics object within its bounds. These flow fields could only apply forces in a linear fashion, and when objects reached a curve in a vessel, they’d simply accumulate here, creating a clog of sorts.
- My solution had been creative, if computationally demanding: because objects like water molecules always had access to their own properties, it was possible to tell velocity and determine which vector represented the “front” of the object. In this knowledge, I cast a ray in front of the object and then performed some trigonometry to apply a smaller force that was orthogonal to the direction of movement. This had the effect of guiding an object through curves in a vessel, allowing them to flow through a complex network of vessels on its own. In addition, I had also been experimenting with collision masks, which selectively allowed some objects to pass through others without a collision. This was something I had intended to use to illustrate fluid re-absorption: water molecules should be allowed to pass through the walls of a nephron, while urea molecules should be secreted and expelled.
- By the end of May, I’d defined an algorithm for dynamically punting water molecules back into capillaries, while excluding urea molecules, and had a rough debugging UI built out to test things. While this project was quite primitive compared to my graduate thesis work, The Giant Walkthrough Brain and even my undergraduate thesis project, its significance was that it set the stage for everything I would subsequently do, and even marked the first time where I began contemplating software development as a feasible career. I’ll return later to reflect on this in greater detail, since it is a story I’ve only become comfortable telling now, but I will also remark that this revisit of Sora no Woto is not going to be a conventional discussion of themes and literary elements.
- This is because I’ve already gone through Sora no Woto once before, back during 2017 – back then, I’d taken on the task of episodically writing about Sora no Woto, and while those posts are almost a decade old, revisiting them finds that I still agree with the things I’d said back then. Consequently, there is little need to revisit each episode and delve into themes, foreshadowing, symbols and motifs, especially when the me of nine years earlier had done a passable job of summarising things and performing a rudimentary analysis on what each episode contributed to the story overall. Instead, this post will act as a bit of a commentary on why Sora no Woto, despite being an unpolished and rough story compared to later anime, retains so much of its charm even in the present.
- When Sora no Woto finished its run in 2010, contemporary anime fans quickly dismissed the series as being “military K-On!“, and following the lacklustre performances of Senkō no Night Raid and Occult Academy, anime bloggers of the time suggested that the Anime no Chikara programme was effectively dead in the water, failing to produce any breakout hits. It was therefore easy for critics of the time to suggest that Sora no Woto was a failure, being something that “didn’t really capture the imagination and attention of viewers with unique, compelling, original anime ideas or execution”.
- However, with the benefit of hindsight, and an interview with Aniplex president Kōichirō Natsume, I now have a more complete picture of what Anime no Chikara was meant to achieve. Right out of the gates, Natsume would clarify that rather than being something to be sustained, Anime no Chikara was meant to be a one-year project, a project that aimed to produce a maximum of four anime and test the feasibility of certain creative approaches in original animated projects. While the goal of any company is to turn a profit, and Natsume indicates that this was an area Anime no Chikara had indeed fallen short in, he did not view the programme as a failure because Aniplex was able to take learnings from Anime no Chikara and apply them to later works, which include Madoka Magica and AnoHana.
- This outcome means that Anime no Chikara is reminiscent of the Advanced Combat Rifle initiative, which was opened in 1986 to identify a suitable successor for the M16 assault rifle: it was found that at a range of 220 metres under battlefield conditions, most soldiers would have a hit rate of ten percent, and it became necessary to design a rifle that doubled this hit rate. The programme ended in 1990 and cost 300 million US dollars in total, but all of the designs, which include the Colt ACR, Heckler and Koch G11, and flechette rifles like the AAI ACR and Steyr ACR, were rejected. This eventually led to the OICW programme, which would itself end in a failure. However, the ACR project did generate valuable learnings about lightweight ammunition and weapon optics, and similarly, the OICW project demonstrated that airburst grenades were feasible.
- Learnings from the ACR and OICW projects impacted the designs that produced today’s service rifles, and in this way, Anime no Chikara is no different – lessons learnt from Sora no Woto would shape later anime, which were very successful. Consequently, while Anime no Chikara might’ve been a commercial failure at the time, it still produced valuable outcomes, as well as a legacy that outlived the original project. In today’s world, video game studios regard weapons like the G11, XM8 and even the OICW as cool-looking weapons with remarkable performance – 007 Nightfire featured the OICW as the AIMS-20, the G11 appears in both Black Ops and 007: Agent Under Fire as the Koffler and Stock D17, and Bad Company 2 has the protagonist’s squad using the XM8 as their primary weapons. Similarly, Sora no Woto, despite being a commercial failure and only moderately successful from a critical standpoint, would leave a lingering legacy in the anime community.
- This was most apparent when iblessall of Mage in a Barrel wrote a short piece on how Sora no Woto sought to illustrate that if war is a human construct, so too is peace, implicitly suggesting that people can choose peace for themselves. This post is particularly telling because of when it was published: dated March 2020, a full ten years after Sora no Woto had finished airing, the fact that iblessall wrote of such an obscure anime, a decade after the series had finished and faded into obscurity, shows definitively that even though Sora no Woto might not be the most well-known or well-regarded anime, the series had clearly left an impression on viewers. Similarly, a glance around places in Reddit finds that in 2016 and 2020, people also embarked on re-watches and wrote extensive pieces of their impressions of the anime.
- If we roll the clocks back further to 2010, Sora no Woto was a series that was very successful in promoting discussion and speculation from viewers even at that time: observant viewers, also captivated by the details and world-building, enthusiastically took to picking apart episodes frame-by-frame and attempted to piece together things like how the world of Sora no Woto came to be, where in the world Seize and Helvetia were located, and even how objects in a scene might’ve foreshadowed what would happen in later episodes. Things reached a point where anonymous imageboard users put together charts to summarise their findings, and these charts wound up being a definitive community resource people would constantly refer to, long after Sora no Woto itself had concluded (and even invalidated some of the speculation with its ending).
- Again, the fact that the community was this devoted to Sora no Woto, an experimental anime equivalent to the G11 or XM8, suggested that there had been considerable interest in the series. If Sora no Woto had been a literary and storytelling failure, fans would have abandoned the series and allowed it to really fade into obscurity. Instead, that fans put in an effort like this was a strong sign that Sora no Woto was something with merit, enough that people were excited to watch episodes weekly, pick them apart and see what could be learnt. With this being said, Sora no Woto was not perfect in any way: the critics’ remarks about pacing, story flow, and even visual consistency, still apply – Sora no Woto was rough around the edges in these areas, and community reception to the anime would be reminiscent of how, while some rifles from the ACR project were curious, the project’s failure came from the rifles failing to meet specifications, even if they were technically creative and valid solutions.
- From this standpoint, Sora no Woto is something that merits being assessed from two angles: as a complete product, something to put into production, Sora no Woto does fall short, but from a prototype standpoint, the series was absolutely valuable, producing meaningful lessons. I reiterate that I would only be afforded these insights because I’ve read the interviews, and seen Aniplex’s later productions, as well as other highly successful anime-original projects. To viewers of the time, who would’ve assessed Sora no Woto purely on its own merits (the same way the ACR project’s rifles were tested against real-world reliability), Sora no Woto would’ve been an average anime, one that was eclipsed by period titles.
- However, I would not have been aware of any of these discussions when I picked up Sora no Woto in May 2011. I’m not too sure how I came about this series, but since I had finished K-On! and both Strike Witches, I was very much hoping to watch more anime that were similar. Regardless of how I came upon Sora no Woto, it was serendipitous that I did, since this anime did bring together the two shows in a way that I definitely found satisfactory – after I finished watching Sora no Woto in 2011, I wrote that the series was a “curious [amalgamation] armed conflict with Kanata’s desire to gain insights into the music and her world; this particular aspect means that the series will feel similar to a slice-of-life anime”, whose visuals “contribute to the depth of the series, immersing the viewer in a richer universe”. Furthermore, adversity juxtaposed with slice-of-life moments meant “characters [were forced to respond] to events outside their control and rising to the challenge, [leaving me to conclude] that there is a solid story”.
- This review was posted to my old website, and while my old wording was clumsy and imprecise, it still conveys the fact that I enjoyed Sora no Woto. Back then, my posts were much shorter, and I was more focused on my own impressions than I’d been about the themes and authorial intent. In this revisit of Sora no Woto, however, I return with a different objective, and this is why I’ve not bothered to spend any time breaking down themes and messages – this post is intended to be a retrospective of what Anime no Chikara‘s best known work is, and my own recollections about Sora no Woto, as well as the world surrounding me fifteen years earlier. While the specifics are lost to time, I vividly recall that at around this time fifteen years earlier, I’d been completely focused on touching up on my driving knowhow.
- It is a little surprising to recall that it has almost been fifteen years since I got my operator’s license. I’d actually started taking driver education courses the year before, but hadn’t been confident that I could pass. I therefore decided to take the exam a year later, and by then, I’d been quite comfortable operating the family Mazda 5. By the summer of 2011, I took a brush-up course for a refresher on things like parallel parking and hill parking. I had watched Kanata butcher driving right before my own exam, and although I’ve never mentioned this anywhere else, Sora no Woto does remind me of the point in my summer when I’d been gearing up to take the first drivers exam.
- When I made my first drive to Banff National Park back then, I still remember how that first drive had been quite exhilarating and stressful: there are a couple of curves on the Trans Canada Highway between Exshaw and Canmore that gave me some trouble. Fifteen years later, driving those segment of the highway are routine, and last Friday, I made my first trip out to the mountains. I’ve been driving these roads with a nontrivial frequency now, and even with all of the construction and increased traffic, the journey down the Trans Canada Highway is still quite relaxing. It was under the busier, construction-heavy conditions that I drove out to the mountains for my first Banff outing of the year – after the tumultuous week we had, the weather settled down enough to make this trip feasible.
- For much of last week, the Alberta region was under a rainfall warning, and in Calgary, forecasts had called for 70 to 110mm of rain. This came to pass, and in this way, a great deal of rain fell, causing river levels to surge. The thought had occurred to me that the conditions this year were quite similar to the weather we had in 2013, when a flood swept through southern Alberta. According to meteorologists, however, the cooler temperatures in the mountains meant that while the precipitation was high, the snow melt was much less than it’d been thirteen years ago. In this way, the week passed, and while river levels were elevated, flooding at scale was fortuitously averted. This meant that I was able to make a trip out to the mountains mere days after the rains stopped.
- This trip to the mountains actually shares parallels with my trip from fifteen years ago in terms of itinerary, as well as for being a trip of firsts. Fifteen years ago, the first Banff trip opened the gates to a summer that would shape my future, and in the present, a day in Banff with my girlfriend marked the first time I share the sights I know with someone I love. The day opened with a drive to Two Jack Lake. The morning weather gave us clear, cool skies, and it felt like in the blink of an eye, the morning vanished as we walked the shores of the lake, hand-in-hand. Out here, I made use of my iPhone’s front-facing camera for the first time. We subsequently drove to a viewpoint overlooking Lake Minnewanka, where we spent a few moments. With the wind picking up, I decided against going to Bankhead and its ruins.
- Instead, we would make our way over to the Cave and Basin exhibit. Since this is the place where Banff National Park’s history began, it felt appropriate to come here. By then, the skies had begun darkening slightly, but since it did not rain, my girlfriend and I were able to enjoy our submarine sandwiches on a picnic table outside of the Cave and Basin. Once the sandwiches were squared away, we made our way into the Cave and Basin exhibit. This site is famous because in 1883, Frank McCabe, Tom McCardell and William McCardell located an underground thermal pool inside a cavern, and laid claim to the site with the aim of commercialising it, but in the end, John A. MacDonald decided to intervene – by 1885, the Cave and Basin area was designated the Banff Hot Springs Reserve, setting precedence for the National Parks of Canada. As a place of beginnings, the Cave and Basin is an essential visit for anyone.
- Admissions to the Cave and Basin are 10 dollars for adults, but since I had a Canada Park Pass, my girlfriend and I gained complimentary access. We made our way into the cave, following the path of an artificial tunnel that was dug in 1886, and underneath a cozy subterranean pool, we took another selfie together. At that moment, a ray of sunlight broke through the natural skylight and illuminated the cavern. The sunlight vanished within the space of a minute, but not before I managed to capture a photo of it using my phone: inside the cave itself, it’s much too dark for me to shoot handheld on a full frame. After exiting the cave, a member of the staff offered to help us to take a photograph, and we subsequently made our way to the museum and interpretive trail. At a large pool outside, I asked the staff what the floating gunk on the pool was – this question had always lingered on my mind since I saw it as a child, and I learnt that it was chunks of the algal mat that had broken off from the bottom.
- As the evening set in, I surprised my girlfriend with a dinner at the Park Distillery – she’d been looking to try Canadian cuisine. When we entered the restaurant, it was already busy, but there had been bar seating, so we were able to get seated without a wait and had our orders taken expediently. My girlfriend enjoyed the Park Burger, and I decided to go with the Slow-Smoked Prime Rib (a superb 12 ounce cut of Alberta Prime Rib roasted over applewood smoke, served with potatoes, roasted vegetables, au jus and horseradish), as well as a pint of Annex Root Beer. Our dinner arrived quickly, and an evening of conversation followed. By the time dinner was done, the sun had returned, and we decided to stop at Vermillion Lakes to check out the scenery. The weather had become somewhat blustery, so after a few hasty photos, we retreated to the shelter of our vehicle and rested here, before driving out to Surprise Corner for one final set of photos of the Banff Springs Hotel.
- The day concluded here – it’d been a windy and cool sort of day, but in spite of this, it was still superbly relaxing. The weather this year’s been much wetter and cooler than usual, and with the overcast, rainy days, I admit I’ve been reminded of the weather in Sora no Woto. The conditions seen in the fourth and ninth episode are the minority, but I’ve long felt that cloudy weather and the quiet melancholy suits the atmosphere around Seize; after the energy of the festivities, the first time Kanata goes into town on a shopping run with Noël, she sees Seize as it appears during the typical day. The calm stands in contrast with the boisterous energy of the Water Festival, and in this way, the tranquility of rainfall would come to evoke memories of this series the most strongly.
- No discussion of Sora no Woto would be complete without the infamous speculation charts. As the story goes, as episodes aired, fans of the series would comb through episodes and draw out charts compiling all of their observations. From the brand of caramels Kanata enjoys, to the model of wristwatch she wears, fans tried to piece together where in the world Sora no Woto was set. Early charts focused on these details, but as the series wore on, fans also began delving into themes, and tried to see if there was any foreshadowing in regard to what future episodes would bring. Looking back, these charts were the surest sign that fans were having fun with Sora no Woto: one does not rewatch episodes to see what details could be found if they were not enjoying things.
- Over time, an entire community was built around Sora no Woto: the creator of the speculation charts to the first few episodes contacted me and expressed that after he’d made the first few, other members of the community would take over. The fact that people clearly enjoyed this process suggests that Sora no Woto was positively received amongst viewers during its run back in 2010, and this was an encouraging thought: nowadays, when one searches for Sora no Woto, AnimeNation’s John Oppliger and his review of Sora no Woto is one of the first results that comes up. Oppliger is more critical of Sora no Woto, but rather than expressing this as his perspective, Oppliger asserted that “viewers found it especially familiar, despite it being an entirely original series, and especially subdued rather than exciting and dynamic”, and that it was the community who “didn’t really feel like [Sora no Woto] found an individual voice and a compelling purpose until about mid-way through, and its conclusion was “widely criticized [by viewers] for being anti-climactic”.
- The lack of citations clearly indicates that Oppliger’s opinion of about Sora no Woto is his own. They do not speak to the community’s reception of the series: the existence of speculation charts, countless pages of forum threads delving into Sora no Woto and its world, and blog posts focusing on smaller details (such as iblessall’s short revisit a decade after Sora no Woto aired) definitively refutes that viewers met Sora no Woto with a tepid reception: in reality, there were viewers felt the details were clearly worth exploring, and hints interspersed throughout the anime proved to act as an effective means of captivating viewers, who would come to care about the characters and what happened next.
- Three years after Sora no Woto aired, I embarked on a project to replace the existing charts and streamline their appearance. The original charts had been speculation-driven and were made while Sora no Woto aired, and without knowledge of what happened next, sometimes contained inaccuracies as future episodes revealed more of the story. Since I watched Sora no Woto with full knowledge, I determined that the community would’ve benefited from newer, cleaner charts. My charts retained all of the information from the originals, stripped away speculation later episodes refuted and dispensed with memes from the time, producing a cleaner and more readable poster. Altogether, my project had taken around twenty-five hours, over the course of a week and a half, to complete.
- My speculation charts were well-received by the Sora no Woto community, who immediately replaced the old charts with the new charts – the administrator who ran the Sora no Woto fandom Wikia even acknowledged the old charts looked poor, but contained enough information that they were quite hard to replace. In retrospect, my new charts, while boasting a cleaner layout and a more concise description of what fans found, also lost much of the original speculation that fans had proposed. Because it’s now been thirteen years since I made the replacement charts, one would be hard-pressed to find the original charts on Google: search results come up with my new charts. This is unfortunate because, while the originals did have a number factual errors in them, they also represent a glimpse of how the anime community of the time approached shows like Sora no Woto.
- One thing I would’ve especially liked to have seen was an official animation guidebook, featuring director’s commentaries, cast interviews, concept artwork, production notes and supplementary materials. In the past, the animation guidebooks have purchased for other series have been veritable treasure troves of information: some provide full short stories of world lore, and others may offer a step-by-step guide to performing the dances in a given anime. For something like Sora no Woto, this would become an indispensable resource, one that would clarify many of the lingering questions fans have had. Unfortunately, no such resource exists, and the closest to an official animation guidebook were the twenty-eight page booklets that came with the limited edition BDs.
- For devoted fans of the time, purchasing these BDs (there were seven volumes in total) would’ve given access to interviews, commentaries and production notes, along with a limited amount of character artwork and official art, as well. Although no official Sora no Woto merchandise is a little disappointing, especially for people who do wish to understand the creative intentions, it does feel as though the absence of staff commentary and interviews means that fans are left to make of Sora no Woto what they will. My own episodic revisit back in 2017 had been intended to provide me with a chance to express my own thoughts on the Sora no Woto, and I concluded that this anime had sought to communicate five different themes through each of the characters.
- For Kanata, she’d joined the armed forces hoping to connect people with music, and in the process, learns that music can indeed communicate thoughts and emotions transcending linguistic and cultural boundaries. Kureha accepts it’s okay to count on support from others, and Noël decides that, even in light of her past involvement with an atrocity that lead to the deaths of countless lives, she can actively choose to save one life now. Filicia reaffirms that while war had taken friends from her, she can actively conduct herself in a way that preserves the lives of those around her. Rio comes to realise that sometimes, one must necessarily step up and do all that is necessary to protect peace, even if it means swallowing her own pride.
- Each of the characters in Sora no Woto have their own story to tell, and this provided the human grounding that allowed the anime to hold such a strong grip over the imaginations and intrigue of viewers. Without any insight into what Aniplex had officially counted as lessons learnt, I would suggest that Sora no Woto, from a constructive standpoint, demonstrated that having familiar characters that struggle with relatable problems would allow an anime to be set in a more complex world without introducing any problems for viewers. From an instructive perspective, Sora no Woto would show that it was necessary to challenge the characters and take them out of a more comfortable set of circumstances. A slice-of-life work with limited stakes would not incentivise viewers to watch and root for characters the same way something perilous would, and this peril necessarily needs to be present early on in order to ensure viewers develop an interest in what lies ahead.
- This is why Madoka Magica would end up successful – taking advantage of what was learnt, Madoka Magica hit all of the right notes for viewers. The story immediately set up the stakes, establishes why characters are willing to disrupt the status quo, gradually revealed more elements about the setting and through it all, constantly reminds viewers that being a Magical Girl is a dangerous occupation. The successes of Madoka Magica clearly came form improvements made to Sora no Woto‘s concept, and when considered alongside fan discussion, it was evident that Sora no Woto could be seen as a stepping stone for Aniplex’s later triumphs. For the anime fan who is interested in the evolution of writing in anime, then, Sora no Woto becomes a wonderful case study and an example of a precursor work that speaks volumes to industry trends of the early 2010s.
- On the topic of Anime no Chikara, I am a shade ashamed to admit that I’ve only seen Sora no Woto in full: Senkō no Night Raid and Occult Academy hadn’t caught my attention quite to the same extent, and I recall back in 2013, I had made an attempt to watch the series because the protagonist, Maya Kumashiro, had been voiced by the legendary Yōko Hisaka. I know Hisaka best as K-On!‘s Mio Akiyama and Houki Shinonono from Infinite Stratos, which fuelled my intrigue. As memory serves, by Occult Academy‘s third episode, my interest waned, and I subsequently dropped the series in favour of other anime. On the other hand, Senkō no Night Raid is something I am completely unfamiliar with – the premise was not something I was interested in.
- Ordinarily, I would say that since I’ve not watched either of Occult Academy or Senkō no Night Raid in full, I won’t have a full picture of how each of the series would’ve produced learnings that studios could use. A glance at sales numbers, however, paints a clear picture: Sora no Woto sold an average 4163 copies per volume after launch, and Occult Academy averaged 1785 copies per volume. Senkō no Night Raid was a failure by any metric: only 587 copies per volume were sold. Aniplex would’ve taken this data and concluded that Sora no Woto likely had the most lessons to learn from, with Occult Academy and Senkō no Night Raid being series whose approaches were not worth investing in later down the line. These numbers would provide a plausible account for why newer anime would draw primarily from what Sora no Woto, and why Sora no Woto remains a work that has endured into the present.
- Once I finished Sora no Woto during the summer of 2011, I began watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Shinryaku! Ika Musume and Broken Blade – since there was no examinations or assignments (least of all from organic chemistry) to trouble my mind, I had time enough to begin exploring anime. In those days, being an anime fan was a slower experience; slower internet connections meant being more selective about which shows to pick up, and further to this, of the shows I would watch, I’d also become a little more interested in them. This is what happened with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumya and K-On!, which were immensely popular series that also had a significant commercial presence in the form of merchandise. I believe that while looking up music for K-On!, I came upon Danny Choo’s Culture Japan blog, and his content on the K-On! Nendoroids.
- In exploring Culture Japan, I was exposed to otaku culture as Choo had presented it, and this formed the inspiration for how I would write for my blog. However, I would not have adopted my current style until much later, and it wasn’t until 2017 that I would properly review Sora no Woto. Reading through my old episodic reviews, I generally agree with the conclusions I’d previously reached, and since my thoughts of Sora no Woto have not changed substantially, this post’s aim was directed at understanding what Sora no Woto and Anime no Chikara‘s legacy was: while perhaps not a financial success, Sora no Woto‘s legacy is more than just disk sales. It’s now been sixteen years since Sora no Woto aired, and fifteen years since I finished the series for myself, but even now, I periodically return to the series and give a re-watch to experience the quieter world of 2011.
- The realm of anime has changed considerably since 2011, and in the present day, anime is a fast-paced hobby, with fans watching the latest seasonal shows, sharing a laugh at the short-form meme videos on TikTok or swapping thoughts on Discord, and then moving onto the next show. Older shows like Sora no Woto and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, when they do come up, would become glimpses into what anime fans of 2011 would’ve known, and fans nowadays may find that series like these also have their charm. For me, Sora no Woto continues to retain its masterpiece ranking from me: thematically sound, set in an intriguing world and holding its enjoyability even in the present, Sora no Woto has aged very well.
Although it might not be the most well-written, critically acclaimed or financially successful anime, Sora no Woto was a series whose unique world-building and sincere (if simple) story allowed it to endure in my memories even after a full fifteen years. The reason why for me, Sora no Woto especially stood out was because of the world – after the anime captured my attention in its first episode, I was committed to finishing, and in Sora no Woto, I felt especially strongly about the idea that K-On!-like characters could be subject to the horrors and desolation of warfare, and in spite of it all, could still maintain a pragmatic and positive disposition, resolving to make the most of the hand they were dealt. This message had lingered with me long after I finished the finale: I had, after all, just come from a superbly difficult semester in my undergrad, and while I could’ve abandoned my dream of finishing my bioinformatics honours degree there and then, the fact was, I’d made a few mistakes in my semester, and I necessarily needed to bear the responsibilities. Sora no Woto would show that it’s never too late to turn things around, and while the past might be indelible, the agency to keep trying to better things remained with me. Sora no Woto‘s world might’ve been post-apocalyptic, and slowly dying, but this doesn’t stop Kanata from trying to master the music that can reach people’s hearts, or Rio from deciding that she’d still like to explore the world and see if she can’t help keep humanity going for as long as she can. The details in the anime, especially in regard to the attention paid to reproducing Spain’s Cuenca, as the setting Kanata and the others’ lives were situated in, further accentuated that Sora no Woto might’ve been an experiment, but it was still one where an effort had been made to produce something worthwhile. Together with the lore and mechanical details, Sora no Woto would become a work whose production history was something I’d be curious to learn about. Having access to the director’s commentary, cast interviews, development notes and concept art would be an unparalleled chance to learn about how an original anime is produced, and for this reason, I would’ve loved to have seen an official animation guidebook. To the best of my knowledge, no such resource exists: aside from the BDs and a manga adaptation, as well as the soundtrack CDs, there is no official merchandise for Sora no Woto. This is unfortunate, since an animation guidebook would offer fans a sense of what went into the project. However, from a practical standpoint, one can also understand why merchandise for the series is nonexistent – Sora no Woto was never commercially successful, and further to this, Kōichirō Natsume would probably not have agreed to sharing the secret sauce to Sora no Woto, the secret sauce that would be refined and honed into something that would make Madoka Magica a revolutionary, acclaimed work that both satisfied critics and sales requirements. While Sora no Woto might not be flawless, the anime still presented a compelling world, lovable (if familiar) characters, a satisfactory theme, excellent music and left a legacy that would later impact other works. For these reasons, I would consider Sora no Woto a masterpiece.
The Infinite Zenith 
