Final Impressions / First Impressions / Sora no Otoshimono

「空の女王（オトシモノ）」 (Sora no Joou (Otoshimono))
“The Queen (Thing that Fell) from the Sky”

I hate to say I called it, but there was really no other way I would’ve wanted things to conclude here. With the arrival of the Gamma Angeloid harpies and their Prometheus weaponry, Nymph’s master decides to toy with her until the bitter end. Tricked into believing he’s worried about her, Nymph cooperates with them but asks that they let her try to convince Ikaros into returning to the Synapse.

I can’t really blame Nymph for wanting to believe that her master actually wants her by his side, but realistically there was no way that sadist cared about her. All he wanted was to punish her for getting close to Downers by having her destroy the Uranus Queen and return thinking she’ll be praised, only to dispose of her right after. To that end, he has the harpies (Neya Michiko, Okamoto Maya) pretending to be support for Nymph in case talks with Ikaros break down. Meanwhile, everyone’s preparing for the Christmas party at Tomoki’s place. No one’s aware that Ikaros has already detected the attack from the Synapse and realizes they’re after her. Before engaging the Gamma harpies, she finds Tomoki to say goodbye, believing that he’ll hate her once he knows she’s a weapon of mass destruction.

When Ikaros meets up with Nymph, she explains that she already knew Nymph has been trying to take her back to the Synapse. However, their conversation doesn’t last long as the harpies lying in wait using Nymph’s P-Stealth fire at Ikaros, destroying one of her wings. Shocked, Nymph protests that this isn’t what she agreed to, so the harpies reveal that they’re only after the Uranus System’s variable wing core before deciding to destroy the rest of Ikaros. Nymph loses it at that point, thinking of how sad Tomoki will be, and fires her Paradise Song at the harpies to stop them. Her attack proves insufficient though, as the harpies quickly get up and tear off Nymph’s wings one by one. Tomoki then arrives with the others, after Eishirou predicted where they might be and Mikako offered them a lift, during which Sohara reveals that the Christmas party is meant to double as Ikaros and Nymphs birthday parties to try and cheer them up. (Mikako and Eishirou had suggested Christmas since they’re both angels.)

Somehow, Ikaros manages to get herself to her feet and releases the safety on her variable wing system to active her Uranus Queen mode. This in turn regenerates her wing, but all Nymph is concerned about is how Tomoki is witnessing it all. Before acting, Ikaros apologizes to Tomoki for keeping the fact that she’s a strategic type Angeloid from him all this time. Much to her surprise, Tomoki says he knew all along and actually feels sorry for her, knowing that she has a soft side from seeing her take care of watermelons and raise a chick. He goes on to say that he’s glad she’s a weapon now because it means she can save a friend, and asks her to help Nymph. With a huge weight lifted off Ikaros’ shoulders, the harpies quickly prove to be ineffective against her Aegis Shield, but even more so when she activates her Uranus System to chase them off.

On the ground, Tomoki and the others focus on freeing Nymph from her good-for-nothing master (Mikako’s suspicion) by twisting her chain enough so that they can cut through it. Having been freed, Nymph realizes what it feels like to smile from the bottom of her heart and notices how spacious the sky looks from Earth, just as it starts to snow.

 

Things concluded right after with a credits scroll accompanied by a Hayami Saori-led version of the ending theme from episode one, “I Just Want to Be By Your Side”. Regardless, the climactic impact was made when Tomoki told Ikaros that he’s fine with her being a weapon since he knows she’s not merely one. Likewise, Nymph was saved from her horrible fate despite losing her wings in the process. While I realize there’s still so much more going on with the Synapse and Angeloids we have yet to be introduced to, this was an awesome way to wrap up a one cour series. It was full of action/emotion and tied up all the issues they’ve built up thus far. As cool as it was seeing Ikaros use her Uranus System to kick ass (which is more or less a huge cloaked spaceship judging from the sponsor message), I was really drawn in by the emotional scenes.

In particular, I really liked how Ikaros approached Tomoki to say goodbye. He was too carefree to notice what she was getting at and put a Santa mask on her partway through, which probably helped Ikaros hold back the tears. The screenplay there was really well done, much like when Nymph lashed out at the harpies when they were about to destroy Ikaros. Let’s not forget how Tomoki and everyone desperately tried to help Nymph and show her what it means to be a friend either. To contrast all this, they had some difficult to watch yet powerful scenes with the harpies ripping off Nymph’s wings. All in all, a very dramatic finish befitting of a series that has impressed me every step of the way. Over the course of the season, they’ve shown us how it’s not all about ecchi fun here.

Looking back at the start of the fall season and how I was going to skip this show, I can’t believe what I would’ve missed out on. Thankfully, I checked out the first episode of every series that remotely interested me (and blogged them) and Sora no Otoshimono’s premiere was all I needed to get hooked. I mentioned before how this would’ve been the second series on my list to cover had I decided to cut back on shows like I originally planned. As such, I’m hoping they’ll announce a second season sometime down the road under AIC ASTA again; I would be totally all over it.

In terms of who I’d recommend this series to, if you’re into anything remotely ecchi, this one’s an easy sell. It has that, plus a whole lot more. For everyone else, if you can tolerate some slapstick ecchi humour, then you have to check this series out. Production quality is top-notch even though it isn’t high definition, the character designs and personalities are awesome, and the premise is simple yet done well. Reading a synposis of this series would probably mislead someone into thinking it’s some rehashed gimmick that’s been used time and time again. I can’t argue against that being the case in all areas, but it just works here with all the ways they supplement it.

If you’ve only been reading my posts and following along, do yourself a favour and check out the series yourself. It’s only thirteen episodes, so what do you have to lose?

 

ED13 Sequence

ED13: 「そばにいられるだけで 」 (Soba ni Irareru Dake de) by blue drops — 吉田仁美 & 早見沙織 (Yoshida Hitomi & Hayami Saori)
Watch the 13th ED!: Download, Streaming ▼

Uranus System

67 Comments

  17. OMFG, FREEDOM!!!

    lol, OK, its worth watching. If only the series focused more on this stuff instead of the hopeless retarded fanservice then it would have been great, 11 out of the 13 episodes was just way too f’d up for me to watch all the way through.

    Megas
    Reply

  20. I was so pissed off when it ended like that. I was like “Wait…that’s it?”, now the whole episode was amazing as usual I think for once I can say it was really a gamble to pull something within 20+ minutes and they just pulled it off. Though I think it felt horribly rushed out of proportion, then I guess you can’t help it when you have a schedule. I really hope they continue on with this series because there is so much questions left in this series (especially the guys up there). I’m glad they helped Nymph though, plus it was really a nice touch when they added the snow to a Christmas episode.

    Jason Isenberg
    Reply

  21. Boooo show! You teased with us with third Angeloid for the harem in the preview last week, and don’t even show her now? Booo! Unless it’s foreshadowing for the next season? Well it better be!

    fragbet
    Reply

  27. End? I didn’t read the post to not spoil it for myself. But, i just have to wonder how the show could possibly end after all that is yet to be done….guess i will be disappointed yet again…

    Feenix
    Reply

  29. Surprisingly, manga was better. After reading the manga it showed nymph to have more guts and a stronger personality. Not often do I see a manga beat an anime in emotionally moving you but this one did.

    wizmerlin
    Reply

  35. BEST ANIME FALL ’09???? well, its definitely in my top 3. will there be a season 3? i hope.
    “it isn’t high definition” who cares. honestly most of the shows that get HD treatment never deserved it to begin with, it’s like staring at an ugly chick with 20/20 vision “WHO NEEDS THAT IN THEIR LIFE?!”. great show. BTW- wtf happened with sacred sword smith??? u never finished dat shit. it too was great.

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  36. BROOKLYN otaku:
    I meant to say the series has good animation without being HD.

    As for The Sacred Blacksmith, I finished it but left the series in Omni’s hands to continue blogging after filling in for episode two. He chose not to continue watching it. I suppose I could’ve wrote a post on the final episode, but it’s a bit late now.

    divine
    Reply

  40. IMO, the anime played the drama too much in this finale. There was no good-bye in the manga. No time wasting search while gathering the entire cast, no Ikaros falling for their trap (Nymph didn’t believe in their BS to begin with in the manga). Might be hindsight bias, but even then, I just felt that they took away a lot from Nymphs character by making her powerless and STUPID (she believed their lies). Not to mention that this is after screwing up episode order to include her slice of life prior to dewinging. If there’s a weakest link episode in this series, this one is it. Overall, I think it would have been better had they stuck to the original source which had a joke of Ikaros smiling at the end.

    Rawr
    Reply

  42. I don’t know about the Gundam Freedom, but that megablast by Ikaros’ Uranus system reminded me of the opening sequence of the original Macross anime (Robotech in the USA). Hell, Ikaros has the angeloid version of the Macross, and that sucker has cloaking! I wonder if she blew a huge chunk out of the Synapse or even killed Nymph’s master. The Gammas are still alive though. Seems like Ikaros missed them on purpose. Great ending, although it seemed rushed with all the things happening, but here’s hoping for a second season. And Nymph’s wings…that sucks! Well, at least she’s free. And Ikaros still didn’t smile! They can’t let it end like this, ohhhh nooo!

    samu
    Reply

  46. Well that was a bit different from how the manga did it. Though thats still not to say it wasn’t good. Despite the differences from the anime and manga, this episode was pretty good. The one thing that threw me off a bit was when Ikaros engaged the Uranus system. I was like lol…what?…seriously?

    Though like i mention last week, the jumble and cutting of story kinda soured the series a bit for me. One scene i wish they would of kept from the manga, that would of tied in perfectly to this episode. Show Spoiler ▼

    Instead they went with a stranded island thing that didn’t make any seance.

    Then again that’s my opinion.

    -Overall it was still a good series. I just wish they would of stay a little true to the manga.

    Azar
    Reply

  47. well even though there was some emotion I’m kind of depressed because we dont get closure at all. Thar’s all this other world crap referring to that evil dude and I want to see some more angeloid action.

    Exia
    Reply

  48. Keeping in mind of course that its hard to adapt a manga to a show with a set number of episodes. Everyone has a slightly different idea of what to keep and what to change. The pacing in manga scenes also doesn’t work in anime at all. I can skim entire sections of manga fairly quickly and get it all, but you can’t do that for a show.

    mlh43
    Reply

  49. This was really the biggest surprise for me this season. When looking at the season preview, I had put this next to Kampfer as a fail ecchi series that I might watch for the hell of it. But the combination of above average humour, an unusually perverted male lead, nice character development for both of the angeloids, and the level of production quality (animation, new endings every week, tweaking the opening for episode 12) really put this above a lot of shows for me. This is one of the few that I would really enjoy having a 2nd season of.

    Thanks for blogging, Divine.

    AuroraFlame
    Reply

  50. We need a second season yes.
    And i hope we will have one.
    Anyways, the dramatic thing are good in this episode and i thought the Goodbye really nice.
    Like the nipple song. (in the manga, we don’t saw the nipples. XD)

    ShiroiRyu
    Reply

  51. Very hard to add compliments to the best underdog show of the season. I’m getting it for my collection. The flying flock of pantsu is enough for me. Tomoki lewdness , lots of fun. The only flaw will be for Nymph fans, yes she behaves childish. Did enjoy the fight scenes; because they were limited and took backstage to the actual character development.

    Island Esper
    Reply

  55. i understood what’cha meant pimping! was just pointing out something random that i observed. too bad about blacksmith though, i felt just like this show, that one also deserves a second season.

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  56. @BROOKLYN otaku Well they left a couple of things open, like what’s going to happen with Aria and Lisa, the “false” heir to the kingdom and her 3 companions and they killed Siegfried (sp?) but not the actual killer of “real” Lisa, Finally Cecily never got her katana because the one she had broke. So yes we need a 2nd season

    Island Esper
    Reply

  63. Well I guess its a given nowdays hearing people complain about the Source Material… You read the manga and get different impressions, so when it comes to adapting it, it could come off a bit different. Really you’d think people would know by now that the anime hardly ever follows the manga/Light Novel/VN, that closely, nothing wrong with comparing, but I read way too many people just Bitching…

    Anyway. Fantastic show that I dont think many people watched (I passed at first but come back to it) As long as you can laugh at the humor, then its truly a awesome show.

    dakiara
    Reply

  65. I’m not really into ecchi shows (Don’t really see the point of watching 20 minutes of fanservice cliche), but after seeing the good reviews by Divine here, I couldn’t help but feel curious, so I tried watching it- and boy was I pleasantly surprised.

    The one thing I’ll commend this series for is it’s outlandish humor. That’s what really set it apart from other series for me. The manga author really did a good job of taking the old, tired jokes we see in ecchi comedies and innovate them into something new and enjoyable. Sure sometimes the jokes were predictable, but the out-of-the-box outlandishness (usually)made up for that.

    That’s what really carried the show for me. In my opinion, it wasn’t all that unique in other areas, but this one thing really made it one fun and hilarious ride. I’d definitely watch a second season of this.

    Sentinel
    Reply

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