Without Wings -under the innocent sky- (Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Fuck if I know ; I can’t make head nor tails of the plot. I’ll say “fanservice-heavy harem comedy with a dash of heroic fantasy” to err on the safe side, but even that fails to accurately describe it.

Characters

Takashi Haneda is the protagonist of a ridiculously cliché harem, with various girls (his little sister cousin, the aggressive one, the athletic one who lets her mind wander, and a fourth one I can’t quite get a hold of yet) fighting over him before he’s even stepped five feet towards school. Also, we get numerous panty shots and even naked shots of their breasts when they push themselves onto him. And he’s got whiny narration by Hiro Shimono (when did his career devolve into “cliché harem lead” ?). But the lot of them only get 5 minutes of screentime.

The rest of the episode is dedicated to a trio of loser dudes unlucky in love, and desperately trying to set up a drinking party with whatever girls they find. One of them is 35 and owns the bar they hang around at ; the other two look high-school/college-aged. Anyway, the only girls who accept the invite are the part-time waitresses. Overall, it’s a very pathetic scene that makes me loathe everyone involved.

But wait ! Just before and during the ending credits, we see all of them in a heroic-fantasy setting, fighting monsters and the like ! Is this a MMORPG or an actual parallel world they’re escaping into ? I have no clue ! (And why would Haneda need escaping anyway ?)

There’s also a bizarre framing device with radio/TV shows (including an outrageous American-accented DJ) shown in a rapid succession… and I’ve got no clue why they’re doing this.

Production Values

Decent, I suppose. The very heavy fanservice whenever a girl’s on screen is quite annoying, though.

Overall Impression

What the heck is this shit ?

Now, I can understand trying to be a bit creative when adapting yet another harem dating sim. But this is just incoherent crap, with three different narratives that completely fail to coalesce into any coherent whole. It’s probably trying for the “self-parody” angle, but that just makes it more obnoxious.

I hate every single character and it makes no sense whatsoever : avoid like the plague.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2011 – Page 4.

Published by

Jhiday

I've been kinda blogging about anime for years... but mostly on forums (such as RPG.net's Tangency) and other sites. This site is an archive for all that stuff, just in case.

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