Sora no Manimani: 01 – Day Stars

Finally, this miserable Summer season had begun brightening up~.

Story

Some call it “typical school romance anime”, I call it “WIN”. Hence, this turned out to be personally what I liked the most so far this season! Also, are they really sure it’s seinen demography? It feels like some awesome shoujo soul stuck on a seinen body xD! Here’s a little summary on the first episode. If you want to see screencaps, then proceed to the gallery page.

We get to see some sort of a flashback at first, with a young Saku and Mihoshi. They’re indeed childhood friends. Mihoshi shows Saku a star pendant. Later after that, driven by Mihoshi’s enthusiasm about the night sky and the stars, she climbs up a tree, only to lose her balance atop there and fall. Saku saves her, catching her fall, but he ended up being the one injured. Back to the current time, Saku is still traumatized by this childhood incident, being back to his hometown after being away for seven years.

Saku, now entering high school, encounters falling stars in day, due to some promotions by the Astronomy club to join them, lead by none other than his childhood friend, Mihoshi. Saku suddenly became terrified and says her name in shock. And with Mihoshi’s super-human hearing, she heard Saku’s voice and thought he’s finally back to she goes off to greet him, which lead to a huge chasing.

*SUPERGLOMPTACKLEHUGSTRADDLE ATTACK!!!*

After some chasing and some cough.. straddling cough, Mihoshi gladly welcomed Saku back and invited him to join the Astronomy club. Saku of course, refused, since he doesn’t want Mihoshi’s childhood antics to terrorize his life all over again.

But then again, Mihoshi didn’t gave up, for she continues to invite her childhood friend over and over again every day, and the commotion is already becoming a buzz at school.

Mihoshi finally founds Saku in the school library the other day, and tackles him again. She glomptacklehug attacks him more and invites him, but Saku still refused. He made it clear that he doesn’t like he for what she had done to him seven years ago, especially when Saku just had those memories going back at him. Saku then exploded and ranted about everything he experienced back then. So much drama lol~ And Mihoshi seemed hurt. After Saku realized that he had been selfish, he finally accepted to join the Astronomy club.

The astronomy club is almost complete, but there’s still need one more member to recruit so that it’ll be official. The group promotes inside the school more, with Saku now helping. Mihoshi even had a weird way of promoting by writing on Saku’s back. Fumie bitches around, which annoyed Mihoshi. Saku also showed a really geeky side when he sparked interest to the book club, but then Mihoshi got annoyed and she said that she formed the astronomy club to show everyone stars just like what her father did to her when she was little.

The day ended without having a new recruit, but Mihoshi conducted a daytime activity fo the club, but tough luck that it started raining. The rain stopped at evening already, but lots of stars are shown in the sky, under the star-filled night sky, Mihoshi officially welcomed Saku to the club.

So here we go to some first impressions~~~

Animation

Some scenes aren’t really perfectly animated, and when I say that, I mean that gif picture above. That part was just terrible and Saku looked from megane cutie to MS-Paint-drawn-out-of-nowhere guy.

But other that that, it was pretty decent. It seems like Studio Comet spent all their budget on all the falling stars on the early part of the episode so I guess that’s it. But it’s not overall, horrible either though. Just alright ^^.

…AND IMPORTANT! Don’t EVER try to watch the AT-X broadcast of this show if I were you, because the quality is just HORRIBLE compared to the other ones. That’s the raw I have in this post so yeah, the quality just sucks in there. You have to wait for almost a day and a half for the other broadcast though, but it has a higher quality anyway so the wait is fine ^^.

Music

OP: “Super Noisy Nova” by sphere [Aki Toyosaki, Ayahi Takagaki, Haruka Tomatsu, Minako Kotobuki]

For such an embarassing song title, the OP ended up being… so-so. Such a shame that almost all OPs this season are like that, nothing really spectacular. So yeah, the song’s forgettable, but the scenes in the OP were really cute, especially all the group shots. It’s fun, and totally slice-of-life. But who cares about a skippable OP anyway when I have a good whole show to fangirl on~? xD

ED: “Hoshikuzu no Surround” by CooRie

I really love CooRie and it’s been a while since I remember hearing something from CooRie again. I really like the song, and I love how it played why it’s still on the actual episode. I guess there’s gonna be a different animation for the next episode, and it would be the official, hopefully.

Characters

Saku-chan

This is our leading male tsundere of the story~. Saku is totally funny as well xD. With a teeny weeny (…ok, a lot of) dash of tsun and geeky, Saku is already a main male full of win. I just LOVE tsundere guys. There’s something that makes me love them so much (I don’t know~ blame England I guess?). His comedic style of expressing anger just don’t fail to amuse me so freaking much. The moment we get to see Saku rampaging the hell out of his annoyance on Mihoshi, the more I giggle because that would just make him fall harder on her xD. Haha, romance~.

He’s voiced by Tomoaki Maeno, which is someone I haven’t been heard of for a while since Dojo on Library Wars and Someday’s Dreamers ~Summer Sky~ as Midorikawa (and oh, he also voiced the main jerk on White Album, >.> anyway…). So yeah, glad to hear more of him, and this time, it’s more on slapstick comedy so it’ll be interesting ^^.

Mihoshi

Mihoshi crack gif wall for everyone because she’s so lovable~ ^^.

OMG where would I start on the STAR of the show, literally??? I LOVE Mihoshi!!! Just from how she’s introduced with falling starstotally made her awesome. Love her simple character design, her bright and cheery personality that has a vulnerable and sensitive side AND Kanae Itou is just excellent on voicing her. She is totally climbing up on becoming one of my favorite female seiyuus lately, which is quite rare for me to like female seiyuus that much (except from Nana-sama of course~) because all I care about are the male ones voicing bishies xD.

Gah~ I just never get tired of Mihoshi’s personality. So fun, quirky, energetic and she glomps so much xD!!! Of course, there are some haters that would possibly be annoyed with that attitude (Boo~ *throws a chair on them*) but pssh~ come on, Mihoshi is just adorable and lovable!!! Her expressions are always funny and win xD. Love her chibi ones. Lol she’s automatically one of my favorite girls of the season~.

SakuMi – a ship is born.

And when these two are just shown together (even though in most cases, Mihoshi just attacks Saku lol), their chemistry just sparks! AND I’m so weak in regards to childhood friends thing~. Yeah right, so what if they’re cliched? At least it always tingle my fangirling bone~. I’m totally enjoying the series even though they don’t really imply much on the romance yet, since I can’t see both of them being rushed in a doki-doki way because I only see childhood friends with one-sided hate xD, but I will totally go gaga whenever I see cute moments of them! That’s another one thing I’m totally looking forward to on this ^^.

Others

Moving on to other characters, I guess they’re all pretty interesting too ^^. From Sayo (VA: Saori Hayami, another one of the seiyuus I’m keeping an eye on recently for being really good), Fumie, and oh, who would ever forget that guy who coughs blood? XD. Saku’s mom is incredibly hilarious too XD.Well since I mentioned a thing already about seiyuus, other seiyuus to note for are Ami Koshimizu and Haruka Tomatsu, whom will be playing the role of Hime.

This show is just blood-spewing awesome.

Lol @ that guy. Dude needs a coffin prepared for him already xDD.

I’ll totally say this. The shows I’m only liking so far this season [which is barely counted only to 3 (CANNAN it’s so awesome watch it nao!!!, Bakemonogatari, and Umineko even though I’m partly leaning on it being sucky), not counting Taishou High School Musical… ALL had blood. Believe it or not, except this show to have blood spewing out of I forgot his name, is it Takeyasu??someone’s mouth xD. Now I guess I can call it “bloody awesome” too xD.

So there, I think I can finally declare that there’s one Summer show I’m definitely looking forward to every week. It’s this one. It’s refreshing, light, CLEAN, (hell, I’m sounding like I’m promoting a mineral water ad) but really~. I’m LOVIN’ this. :thumb:

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