This episode starts off with Mari getting almost no sleep after last night’s incident, Hagino continues to play it off as Mari is just dreaming or just confused. Then we get a scene change to a command ship that looks just like the one we’ve seen Hagino with, and it is searching for a missing ship (I assume its Hagino’s ship). Later the ship that Hagino is from places a phone call to the school making an excuse for Hagino to leave the school for a while. Hagino boards the ship called Blue and they leave the water and head into space (help I’m confused) meeting four other ships to do something. Then before dinner Mari finds out that the students are required on a monthly basis to cook dinner for themselves, she is completely helpless and almost dangerous when it comes to cooking. That night Mari goes to bed wondering what Hagino wants from her, and Hagino’s ship makes it to the rendezvous point. That’s all for episode three, below are some screen shots.
OK, I felt that this series had the elements to make a fairly good science fiction based yuri anime, but enough is enough, this episode almost put me to sleep. All the plot covered in this episode could have been done in five minutes time, not a whole 25 minutes. In takes more then good character design and great animation quality to make a series worth watching, it also requires a good storyline and the pacing of the story is critical, its got to move fast enough to keep you awake but not so fast as to wear you out. After three episodes of Blue Drop I’m quite bored, I care for neither the aliens or Mari, and I will not continue to cover this series episode by episode, I will post a wrap up entry once the series is over.
This episode begins with Aunt Elizabeth discovering Emily’s cat broke a vase in her house, she asks Emily why she disobeyed her by bringing the cat along, Emily tells her that the cat hide in her luggage but Aunt Elizabeth says she’s lying. Jimmy bails Emily out by saying he brought the cat along to eat the mice in the barn, and Aunt Elizabeth tells him to get it out of her sight and out of the house. At dinner Emily is told that getting the cows to pasture in the morning will be her job, and that the Murrays don’t use maids for washing and cleaning, also she’s told she’ll attend school to get an education. The next day Elizabeth tells Emily to get rid of her braids because its not proper, she refuses to do so (Emily does her hair the way her father said her mother used to wear it), so Emily gets locked in a dark room. She soon escapes out a window, and wants to run to her old house even though she would be alone. Jimmy distracts her by showing her how butter is made, then Jimmy shows Emily his garden and she is impressed by its beauty. Jimmy then shows Emily the family grave yard and explains to her what the pride of the Murray family is, “always see things through no matter how tough”, and how everyone buried there loved the New Moon farm. Then Emily has a confrontation with Aunt Elizabeth, and Emily and Elizabeth basically come to a understanding with one another. The next day at school Emily is confronted by another girl who takes her books and throws them to the ground saying “go home you don’t belong here”. Well that’s all for this episode, below are some screen shots.
The first thing I have to say about the Emily of New Moon anime is that as far as I’m concerned it’s a absolutely beautiful anime, the images are crisp and clean, the colors are bright and vivid, and backgrounds are drawn with a focus placed on the natural beauty of the surroundings. Unlike other anime, the characters in Emily of New Moon are dawn closer to real life people then the way most anime portray people. Emily is draw as a real eleven year old girl, she’s cute but not overly so, she intelligent and emotional but she’s not a genius or a emotional manipulation machine, and best of all she’s not a typical anime loli girl. The other character in this series seem to me that they could be people that you could meet in real life situations, maybe that’s because this series is based on books that reflect the author’s real life experiences. For all the people who complain that all the anime out there is geared towards older teens or adult this series proves them wrong. In Emily of New Moon I found nothing that could be considered objectionable when compared to normal television programming. In Emily we have a caring young girl struggling to adapt to her new situation, in Jimmy and Laura we have caring and kind older adults that try to help Emily fit in to her new situation, and Aunt Elizabeth comes off as cold and hard but I get the feeling that underneath her cool persona she’s really a caring person but tough, the kind of person that you can hold on to like a rock in the middle of a storm. If you want a anime to sit down and watch with your young children and not have to worry language or sexual content then this is your anime.
This episode starts off with Elise looking at a picture of her friends from the European base, she has a flashback of her forced evacuation, and relives the destruction of her former base. The next morning Togo tells the girls that the must work together as a four member team, and they begin simulation training. A while later Eika is furious because five straight simulations were failures due to Elise’s failure to be a team member, she keeps acting independently causing failure. As the girls are eating lunch the alarm goes off, an A+ level flying worm is detected approaching the ship, the girls launch from the ship and head off to attack the worm. Elise starts to attack the worm on her own, her sonic diver unit prevents the other girls from attacking, and she gets captured by the worm. Eika is about to attempt a rescue when Vic Viper shows up in his new fighter plane and frees Elisa. The worm retreats for now, and Elise receives treatment for her light wound, the doctor tells her not to throw her life away. Elise says that everyone whom cared for her is dead so whats the difference, and the doctor and Oya convinces her that people really care for her. Eika is ready to have a confrontation with Elise but when she sees her practicing alone she convinces her that working as a team is better than working alone. The worm reappears and the Vice-Captain only wants to send out the three girls but Eika argues that things will be different and at the last minute the Captain agrees and gives the order. During the battle Elise works as a team with the other girls and the worm gets destroyed after a short battle, then back on the ship Eika offers her hand to Elise in congratulations but Elise refuses infuriating Eika. Well that’s all for this episode, below are some screen shots.
Well here we are at the start of the last half of Sky Girls, in this episode the other girls try to get Elise integrated into their team, but due to personnel issues it fails at first. Finally Elise works as a team member with the other girls defeating a worm in the process. The adults in this episode do their jobs, in many other anime the adults are practically worthless doing nothing but causing problems, but here they use their life experiences to give the girls the a little push when needed, and sympathy or a shoulder to cry on when necessary. This episode give a little more background on Elise and why she’s the way she is, but I still feel that she’s way too young compared to the other girls, its almost like all anime producers must include at least one loli for viewers whom like girls of that type no matter how out of place they really are. I think that Col. Togo or Eika needs to give Elise a good spanking every time she acts like a child and risks other peoples lives, maybe that would teach her how to behave. Overall I continue to enjoy this series for what it is, a light science fiction anime with just a hint of fan service.
