Sora no
Otoshimono
Number of episodes: 13
Production Studio: AIC A.S.T.A.
Fansub Release Viewed: Shinji-Nekomimi
Likelihood of US Release:
Streaming from Crunchyroll.com
Tomoki often has dreams of a mysterious girl asking for help, but once he wakes up he can’t seem to recall her face. Then one day, an angel falls out of the sky...
Episode Summary
Tomoki is a high-schooler who would love nothing more than to live in peace, but he keeps having a recurring dream about a girl who asks for help but is whisked away. Against his better judgment, Tomoki goes to the bizarre Sugata-Senpai for help. Sugata shows Tomoki a screen monitoring a strange anomaly in the upper atmosphere, and tells him that his dreams are related to this phenomenon. That night the anomaly will pass over their area at midnight, and they make plans to witness it in hopes of solving Tomoki’s problem. Unfortunately, due to his friends having other plans, Tomoki ends up alone underneath the town’s giant cherry tree by himself. A panicked call from Sugata-Senpai comes too late as the anomaly, a giant atmospheric wormhole, begins to drop things to the ground, including a pet-class angelroid named Ikaros who instantly bonds to Tomoki (via a chain around her neck).
Ikaros has the power to grant Tomoki’s every wish, and so he uses that to his advantage, peeping at girls, grabbing boobs and stealing panties. Before going to bed he makes an offhand wish for world domination, and when he wakes up the next day, everyone has disappeared. Ikaros tells him that no one would have recognized him as leader, so she made them all vanish. Unfortunately, she cannot cancel an order once it’s been issued, and so when, in his despair, Tomoki says that she can just kill herself, she nearly does, before wishing that it was all a bad dream. Ikaros is able to grant that wish, and the next day things are back to normal. Tomoki says that he would be most happy if Ikaros would just do what she wanted.
Thoughts
For some reason I got the silly idea in my head that I might actually go an entire season without seeing something that I wanted to toss into the Hall of Shame. Oh, how naïve I am! If you want to spare yourself from reading a review which is likely to delve somewhere into “rant” territory, quit reading now. Otherwise, let me offer you faithful readers a bevy of reasons why series like this make me completely ill.
First, I should note that there are plenty of fanservice shows that annoy me without sickening me. Most of them are nothing more than comedic pandering and are easily ignored by those of us who aren’t attracted to shimapan, bath scenes, or lonely boys with nosebleeds. Every-so-often, however, there are series which skirt (or cross) the line of tastefulness and seem to revel in their own lewdness, and while this series is visually pretty tame as far as fanservice goes, the overall content including things that are suggested off screen and the implications of the actions in which the main character engages are wholly unforgivable.
A lot of the objectionable content seems to boil down to a feeling on the part of the main character (and, perhaps by extension, the author who was willing to write this tripe in the first place) that one might classify as an extreme fear of or disdain for women on the whole; two feelings that, I might add, are most likely more connected than not. Tomoki’s first order of business once realizing that he wields almost endless power of fulfillment for himself is to both peep on a girl who picks on him, and to molest her while he’s shrouded in invisibility. One of my pet peeves is when sexual assault is played for humor; while I don’t believe that the people who create and produce series like this are actively out to glorify criminal sexual behavior, I think that they also aren’t considering the repercussions of the actions that they portray as light-hearted and comedic. This episode stands as another example of a completely dimwitted disregard for good taste that certainly doesn’t help facilitate good relations between the intended male audience and the women who seem to mystify them so.
This type of behavior continues throughout much of the second act, as Tomoki pauses time so that he can run around naked, steal the underwear from his female classmates and bust in on girls changing clothing. Perhaps a more disturbing aspect of the show, however, is its willingness to portray Ikaros as a literal slave. Not only is she tied to Tomoki by a chain around her neck, a leash so that he can make sure that his pet-type angelroid is by his side to do his bidding at all times, it’s suggested more than once, first more lightly and then completely bluntly, that as part of the deal, Ikaros is more than willing to follow any sort of sexual order she’s given by her “Master.” Again, this goes beyond fantasy wish-fulfillment; Ikaros isn’t some normal angel or goddess sent down from the heavens to cook, clean and mother the male protagonist; she’s literally nothing more than an emotionally-void sex robot, if that’s what she needs to be. No strings attached, no emotions to get in the way of the main character relieving his considerable (and most-likely frequently-frustrated) libido. While I get the impression that eventually Ikaros might become a real girl as opposed to a Real Doll, I also get the feeling that her devotion to her undeserving master will not wane in spite of his obvious worthlessness as a human being.
I suppose that another disappointing aspect of the show is that the animation quality is actually pretty good. The disappointing part, of course, is that some obviously talented animators wasted their time and energy on this garbage rather than on something more worthwhile.
One positive thing about series like this is that they serve to provide perspective on the rest of the shows floating around out there. Some time ago I was inclined to get very fired-up indiscriminately over every stupid fanservice vehicle out there. Seeing shows like this reminds me that most series that spend a lot of time peeking at women’s underwear are simply stupid and forgettable, not worth pitching a fit over. It’s series like this that inadvertently advocate sexual harassment and glorify really terrible relations between males and females that are truly worth the ire and disdain of anime fandom. Long story short; this is complete garbage and whoever values their time should stay far, far away.
Pros
- This show provides good perspective on the quality of other shows
Cons
- Woman-hating; sexual assault; where do I begin?
