Sora no Manimani: a series combining some real astronomy with a romantic comedy story that reminds me a bit of Nodame Cantabile. Being enamored of space and astronomy for as long as I can remember (a Golden Book about the planets was one of my favorite books when I was 3 or 4 years old) I couldn’t resist wanting to blog this series. Since I just started here at THAT, I’ll be making some posts in quick succession to catch up to the most current episode.
Let’s begin
The premise: Saku Ooyagi returns to the town he grew up in to begin high school, recalling his childhood friend Mihoshi ‘Mii-chan’ Akeno (one year older than him) whom he hasn’t seen since he was a young boy. Mihoshi used to drag him kicking and screaming from his quiet days of reading to look at the stars and nature, and he fears a possible reunion. Seeing her at school, her enthusiastic and forceful ways unchanged, he inadvertently joins her astronomy club.
Episode 1: Welcome to the Astronomy Club!
The episode opens with Saku waking up from a dream in which he remembers when he was very young and Mihoshi dragged him out into a field to watch the stars. Setting up the background for Saku and Mihoshi, she shows him a pendant given to her by her father which she claims contains starlight.
No, saku, it is obviously the Amulet of Plot Device.
However, Mihoshi climbs a tree to get closer to the stars, falling as Saku dives to try and catch her. Awakening with a thud that breaks his bedside table (that’s some tossing and turning!), Saku wakes up the morning of his first day of high school.
His mother is so proud, and not unlike someone we’ll meet shortly.
Fears resurface as Saku walks to school, knowing that a demon from the darkness of the past lurks somewhere in this unassuming town. A demon of endless energy, the one who savored the destruction of his peaceful childhood of quiet indoor reading as Lucifer delights in twisting the souls of the damned!
The Nightmare of Saku-mon.
But it is a decently large town, what chance is there of meeting someone from so long ago? Looking forward to a quiet high school life, Saku arrives at school to find the clubs trying to attract new members, and then, this.
Haruhi?
Realization.
Her old friend/plaything sighted, Mihoshi is relentless in her pursuit, despite Saku’s futile attempts to claim he doesn’t know her. She chases him through the school, arms spread appearing to be attempting to gain lift. Well, they do have those snazzy pilots wings on their uniforms (why couldn’t my school have something cool like that?)
Locked on.
Fox Two, Fox Two!
Splash one love interest.
The cavalry, in the form of the other Astronomy Club members arrives too late for Saku, as Mihoshi invites him to join and the two give different answers as to whether they know each other. However, Student Council President Fumie will not tolerate such incidents occurring in her hallways. The Astronomy Club routed, Saku is left to contemplate his options for avoiding Mihoshi.
Just a little too late. Sayo Yarai (right) and club president Roma (left).
No, not this Roma.
President Fumie. I recommend viewing this image/scene while playing ‘Resistance’ from the Valkyria Chronicles OST.
However, Mihoshi will not be denied, running quickly to Saku’s classroom at the end of each period. He escapes for a time, only to be found in the library and chased down into the hallways, where a confrontation ensues. Hardening his resolve to the point of making Mihoshi upset, they get to the heart of the issue. After the falling accident Saku moved and neither said goodbye and Saku said to his mother not to talk about Mihoshi again. We get our first glimpse of some of the drama I expect the series to have alongside the large amounts of comedy.
Who remembers whom seems to be an important theme at the start of this series. Mihoshi seems especially upset when Saku denies their time together.
Perhaps this one of those ‘mistakes caused by youth’ that Char warned us about. Saku, having hurt Mihoshi’s feelings, realizes how stubborn and mean he was at their parting.
Unfortunately for him, his rapid confirmation of Mihoshi’s memories inadvertently leads him to sign up for the Astronomy Club.
The episode comes to a close with the club recruiting fair as Fumie harasses the Astronomy Club, apparently old foes, and Saku and Fumie by chance discover their mutual love of literature when he spots her Literature Club president materials. Mihoshi, feeling threatened, makes sure to remove Saku from such a dangerous (to her) environment and attempts to use inspiration instead of brute force to secure Saku’s allegiance to the Astronomy Club. Telling him about her dream to show everyone the beauty of the night sky seems to have worked, as by the end of the episode Saku proceeds to produce larger pictures for club recruitment.
Jealous Mihoshi is rather cute in a devious sort of way.
Final Thoughts: I’ll use this spot for observations on things other than the narrative of the current episode in this and my future posts.
- The animation is quite crisp and nice, well defined lines and good flow of camera movement in some scenes.
- I rather like the technique of having the ED start playing as things are still going on, blending the end of the episode into the credits and letting the song rise naturally from events.
- Also, adding everyone’s astrological symbol by their names in the credits was neat.
- I’m still guessing a bit if this is going to be much more comedy than romance/drama or if the latter will work itself into things as time progresses. I’m fine with it either way.
Loading ...
9 Comments
I’ve read SNM be compared to Nodame Cantabile a couple times now, I’m going to have to check it out. If it’s half as entertaining as HNM has been… I should love it.
Oh, and welcome new guy!
Looking forward to your SNM posts.
It’s not a bad series at all, but it’s nothing like Nodame Cantabile. It is sadly a bit on the shallow side, story- and character-wise. Though both deal with something interesting, music or astronomy, they do so in different way : Nodame depicts fairly accurately what learning classical music is (and moreso piano, which is one of the harshest instrument to play at concert level because so many people invest their lives in it), while Sora no manimani is a more laid back approach, “let’s have fun with astronomy” kind of slice of life anime. None is “right” or “wrong”, I just feel Nodame has a deeper ring to it. On the other hand, I’m a pianist and know nothing about astronomy, so I might be a little biaised.
Stopping with the comparison now – I’d love it if they deepened a little some of the characters. Right now, Mihoshi is fairly 1-dimensional, as is the ginger girl ; I’m also expecting some kind of drama / romance to start, I would be disappointed were it to stay on the slice of life / funclub level. For now, the slow pace is not a major flaw, but it has been 3 episodes (gonna watch the raw this moment) and there has been very little developpement.
On a side note, I have nothing against the cliché progression, “guy with childhood friend is forced to join club” ; to me it’s the same as in Princess lover, those kind of show run on a cliché-engine but don’t necessarily go nowhere. You just need to push the story a bit. Well, in Purincess Lover, they’ll have to resolve the harem situation (the biggest reason I like to play Eroge and not watch their adaptation).
After all, animes have always dealt with clichés : mechas, lolis, nekos, weird hairdos (whairdos?), center-of-the-world schools, etc. That’s also what makes show like Shaft’s or Gintama interesting, as they play with that.
Hi! new guy! welcome!
I’m watching this, is so cute! xD
i love that h.a.w.x. reference you gave back there.
@ RP:
Thanks for the welcome! Another post to come shortly.
@Nemo:
I’m kind of taking a long view of things since I think the series has the potential for more drama and romance and has already had a few moments that could lay the foundation for them. I do agree in that I’m not expecting the show to be as deep about astronomy as Nodame was about music. I look forward to some drama/romance, but if it doesn’t develop much I’ll still enjoy the comedy. Besides, I’m also watching Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei this season, for my doses of serious and unconventional, respectively.
Also, ‘whairdos’ is a great term.
@Haruhara:
Thanks, it’s good to be writing here! And it is so cute.
@homina-homina:
I do have to buy H.A.W.X. sometime, it looks pretty cool. Not exclusively a HAWX reference, just the standard real life terms I’ve picked up from many years of playing flight sims and console flight games.
How would you compare HAWX to the more recent Ace Combat games?
Didn’t like Saku. He’s like a self-insert reverse-tsundere: initially reluctant to whatsherface, but will quickly succumb to her will. It’s like an otaku who tries to be cool/reticent, but deep down really wants attention. At least, the anime tries to portray Saku as “innocent”, but he’s just a contrived self-insert.
I agree lelagir, in a stealthy way Saku is your generic washy washy protagonist – just watch how quick he’s to feel bad for Mihoshi. That’s why I’m hoping for something to happen before we get locked into a love triangle or something… Like, they are watching the sky when they discover a huge meteor threatening to crash on earth, ending life as we know it, so they decide to infiltrate the Nasa headquarters and end up rerouting a russian spy satellite to blow the meteor up… Or something.
Regarding Tokyo Magnitude, will you cover it, at least partially ? I don’t quite know how to feel about that show ; it is threading a very thin line between okay and boring. What is ticking me off are the carefully placed theatrics ; the whole earthquake setup was already quite telegraphed, but the crashing bridge, the crowd movement and then the boat incident… It’s like they’re carefully using everything that could happen during an earthquake, peppering those event in the show as a cook would to add flavor.
Still, that may be the inherent flaw of the subject ; the way the character are presented, there is very little possibility for drama. A natural catastrophe has in itself little potential for drama, because it is unreasoned and foreign to our logic, but when it stages children it becomes even harder. I’m curious how it will walk the line between documentary and drama. It’s quite the thing, a show without a villain, yet not slice of life ?
@lelangir:
I don’t think Saku is the most interesting lead evar (at least thus far), but I don’t find him annoying myself and in fact somewhat likable. I tend to be more annoyed by the archetype of the weakling male lead who angsts/lusts over every girl in sight. But everyone has their own preferences/tolerance levels for characters.
@Nemo:
I wouldn’t call him feeling bad for Mihoshi wishy-washy, I think it’s just that while he wants to avoid her he isn’t a jerk who’s just going to be okay with making her so visibly upset. I’m thinking the show is leading us into something more with the characters, but if it remains a purely fun comedy series then I will still be entertained.
Haha, I kind of like your idea though. Maybe they find the meteor and Edogawa and the Photography club have to construct a giant lens while the Astronomy Club attempts to unlock the hidden fusion power of Mihoshi’s starlight pendant, focusing it into a beam to destroy the incoming satellite, which is actually a colony ship from an alien species and the Astronomy Club inadvertently touches of an intergalactic war! Season two will take place 2 years later as the high school converts into an academy to train an elite corp of mecha pilots that must fend off the aliens before discovering that the whole war was a mistake and fighting alongside a breakaway faction of aliens against both the human and alien governments! (ok, I need to restrain myself.)
As for Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, I feel much the same way. When I heard about the concept it seemed like it would easily be my favorite of the season, but it’s been quite slow to start. The characters could turn out better, but so far they seem bland. I’m also a bit underwhelmed by the terror that such an event should be conveying in the show. The opening animation is great in for this, it’s really kind of eerie seeing really familiar places ruined like that. But the show itself isn’t very dark and in fact feels rather sterile and clean. I’m holding out hope because it’s a great concept, and if it picks up then maybe I’ll start covering it here in some fashion.
“Perhaps this one of those ‘mistakes caused by youth’ that Char warned us about.”
You just went up plus one in my book, my friend.
About this show, I just downloaded the first episode by accident, watched it, and was genuinely surprised. Loved the astronomy theme as it is also one of my childhood fascinations (and one of the reasons why I love giant robot anime, particularly Gundam and Macross, because of their heavy focus on space.) Hell, if Mihoshi was a real girl, I’d be head over heels in love with her. But that’s beside the point.
I couldn’t help but get a bit of a Haruhi vibe what with the club antics, but that’s more or less where it stopped. Loved it when the student when Saku and the Fuumi discovered their shared love for literature. That and Fuumi’s apparent long running relationship with Mihoshi should make for an interesting rivalry.
All around, good stuff. Not a show I’d normally watch, but an interesting and nice surprise.