Anime Review: Sola

One of the biggest problems with anime adaptations of manga and visual novels is that in many cases, the pacing of the anime just doesn’t live up to that of its original work. Pacing is tough to manage, especially since most anime series are limited to 13 or 26 episodes, each of which must be around 23 minutes long. Some anime deal with this problem brilliantly, and others, not so much. Unfortunately, Sola falls under the “not so much” category.

Sola is a story about Yorito, a young boy in high school who loves to take pictures of the sky. His older sister Aono has been in the hospital for several months, and is visited frequently by his friend Mana and her sister. Yorito doesn’t devote much time to seeing Aono in the hospital, and Mana gets annoyed by this. Instead of caring for his sister, he prefers to spend his time taking pictures of the sky. On top of that, he has been becoming close to a mysterious girl named Matsuri. What he doesn’t know is that Matsuri has her secrets, and there may be more to her than meets the eye. The story is actually pretty good. It’s fairly original, and the addition of supernatural elements into what would be a typical slice-of-life drama make it more interesting.

Unfortunately, the story is very stretched out. Most of the first half of the episodes consist of “filler fluff” where nothing really happens. There are some good plot points, but they are few and far between, and when something interesting does finally happen, the plot immediately slows down again. The story doesn’t get all that interesting until more than halfway into the series, which is way too late.

The characters seemed bland to me. Aono is the generic “silent girl” role that’s starting to become very overused these days. Even though I usually like the silent types, Aono did nothing for me. Mana plays the typical “childhood friend” (although I don’t think she’s technically a childhood friend, she acts similar to that role), so there’s not much interesting about her either. Matsuri was the only character I found somewhat interesting, but I still didn’t feel for her that much overall.

Visuals are pretty standard, and aren’t impressive, to say the least. They’re not bad, but I think my enjoyment of the series would have been greatly amplified if it had better animation and a more unique art style. The music, however, is very good in some parts, and is one of the aspects I enjoyed the most about the show.

Ultimately, Sola is a good story to sit through if you have a great deal of patience. Unfortunately, I don’t, and it greatly impacted my enjoyment of the series. It’s sad that such a good story is essentially ruined by poor pacing. Perhaps I should consider reading the manga sometime, as I may enjoy that more. The series is available on DVD from Bandai Entertainment, although I would very much recommend True Tears instead.

Sola is currently on sale and is licensed and distributed by Bandai Entertainment.

ENJOYMENT – Uninteresting

RECOMMENDATION LEVEL – Probably not

REWATCH VALUE – Definitely not

Purchase Sola at RightStuf