It’s Someday’s Dreamers: Summer Skies episode 2, and Sora finally makes her way to Tokyo, and immediately has to save someone from an accident (well, isn’t that familiar?). However, this makes her late to class where she finds out that the boy she saved is in her class and not really thrilled to see her.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review
- Sora arrives in Tokyo, trying to find her away around to find a subway station when a accident nearby scares an old woman in a crosswalk. A young man goes out to help her when a semi comes flying off a highway overpass on top of them, and Sora uses her magic to stop the truck from falling on them.
- It’s explained that magic is hereditary (something which is implied in the first series, but I don’t think ever confirmed), with Sora getting her magic powers from her father. People with magical power are required to go through training to control it. This training consists of a homestay at an instructor’s house as well as magical training by the Bureau of Magic.
- Sora finally makes her way to the Bureau of Magic building, but gets there extremely late for her first lesson. Sora soon meets a girl in her class named Hiori Yamabuki. Sora also meets the boy she saved from the city, whose name is Midorikawa. However, he starts out fairly cold towards Sora, being assigned to her group for the class’s first magical test (turning water into ice) but wanting to change groups since she’s in it.
- After Sora impressively passes the test, another girl in the class, Asagi, gets all jealous and is like “I’m not going to lose to you.” The girl then asks the teacher if “rivival magic” - the ability to revive people from the dead - is real, but the teacher says that magic cannot cross the boundaries of life itself.
- Sora finally makes her way to her instructor’s house, Hara, when she learns that other students are living there too. When Sora looks out the window of her room, she sees a nice garden…and Midorikawa.
Well, we’re keeping with the rather leisurely pace this episode, though perhaps not quite as leisurely as the first episode. This episode is aptly named “Tokyo” as most of the episode seems to be Sora trying to find her way around Tokyo.
In the meantime, we meet Sora’s teacher, Kawada, the teacher’s assistant, Morishita, Sora’s live-in instructor Hara, and four of Sora’s classmates - Hiori and Kouji Kuroda, whom Sora is generally on good terms with, and Asagi and Midorikawa, whom she’s generally on bad terms with at this point.
Most of these characters initially look like they will fit in regular character archetypes: Hiroi as the supportive best friend, Asagi as the rival who eventually comes around and respects Sora, Kouji who likes Sora, but is too shy to express his feelings, and whom Sora only sees as a friend anyway, and Midorikawa who is unresponsive if not hostile towards Sora, but whom Sora falls for (and who eventually falls for Sora) anyway eventually.
It’d be nice if I were wrong, since knowing everything after only the 2nd episode is a pretty good way of making a boring series, but that looks like where we are at this point.
Also, I wasn’t as bothered by this in the first episode, but it seems to be bugging me more this time: the difference between the “touched up live-action” backgrounds and the “action animation” is so strikingly different that it makes the “action animation” look just plain bad. I think it looks reasonably fine if everything is obviously animated at a more-equal quality, but at times it’s like watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit, except with the animation being not as high of quality.
I think it’s still too early to judge this show story wise, just because I don’t think we’ve really fully gotten into what the story is, but so far this series is a mixed bag which can either be an epic fail or be a pretty good series, depending on which way they decide to go with it.
