Iriya no Sora UFO no Natsu Review
Aug 14th, 2008 by lordgoth
Story
Asaba wanted to sneak into his school pool and swim the night before Spring Break ended. But when he got there, a girl was perched on the edge of the pool, staring into the water. Surprised, he calls out to her, but BECAUSE she was surprised, she falls into the water. Seeing as she couldn’t swim, he went in and saved her, and ended up giving her swimming lessons. The next day, she ended up in his class and seemed very anti-social with some odd happenings around her. She isn’t exactly the most normal girl around, but what is she exactly?
Art/Animation
The art is really quite nice. All characters are drawn clearly with just the right amount of detail to make them all look nice. Emotions and feelings are portrayed quite nicely from when Iriya smiles to when shes crying. This is a more serious drama anime so there aren’t any “chibi” forms on-screen, but no matter what is happening, the characters retain the same quality. The animation… leaves a bit to be desired though. Seems like they skimped out on the animation part, making small repeated motions look awkward when the images look so nice. The CG animation is quite nice, but you see very little of it (during the OP and around only 2 episodes). But, this anime was never supposed to be about action so its alright.
Characters
Seeing as this entire show is only six episodes long, there isn’t much character development outside the two main characters. Iriya shows a lot of development and its really interesting to see how she and Asaba interact with each other. She is somewhat shy and anti-social, but its mostly due to her past and she slowly starts lowering her barrier for Asaba, the one person she likes. Asaba follows more of the typical boy character where he must save the girl no matter what happens to him, but its alright.
Music/Sound Effects
Music was alright I guess. The OP and END are nothing I’d listen to on my music player in my spare time, but its certainly not unpleasant to listen to. The sound effects where above average in my opinion though. Actually noticed it…
Overall
I enjoyed the story very much with some bizarre characters and some heartwarming moments. But due to the fast nature of the show, all the heartwarming moments tend to go into something very bad or negative very quickly. The twists and turns and one particular character not being clear on what he wanted makes the show really gripping till the end. Pretty much, the only thing lowering the score down from a 10 is the low animation quality at some mundane times and some odd character behavior that I believe wasn’t explained very well. But those are small, and the animation quality isn’t as bad as I probably make it seem. A very good drama to watch for anyone, unless you hate these types of shows.
