Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo - Episode 2

If the first episode of Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo left me wondering which direction this series would be heading in (and it did), then this second instalment hasn't really done a lot to alleviate this confusion, churning along at a million miles an hour without really letting the main plot concepts pan out all that much aside from the odd brief hint here and there.

The first episode ended with some mysterious girl seemingly about to zap Ahika, and this episode begins with her floating through space (in a space suit of course, this isn't Gurren Lagann where people can stand on top of space ships posing without any difficulty), and next thing we know she's in bed and having some odd dream. Upon her return to school, she's called to see the student council, who quiz her on her stealing of a capsule last episode, before she finds herself being rescued by... you guessed it, that mysterious girl again, who both aptly and rather typically announces herself to be a mysterious transfer student in the very next scene, although at least we learn that her name is Honoka.


Honoka wastes little time in zapping Akiha again, and taking her back to Leopard's colony (which, according to the press had been destroyed by missiles) so that she can tag along in a bid to steal some piece of equipment that is vital for Leopard. All this is carried on against the backdrop of Itsuki and Nina from the Mystery Department (snappy name, that) investigating what happened to Lopard's colony for themselves, despite assurances from the Inter-Colony Police that it had been destroyed.

Now, apologies if those last two paragraphs read like the sped-up rantings of a madman, but that's pretty much how the plot of this episode is presented to the viewer, and to be honest I really can't make head nor tail of it. Of course, this isn't a bad thing necessarily as it's still early days for the series, but at the moment I'm struggling to find anything particularly positive to mention aside from the comic value of Leopard's dialogue, with the story and animation both otherwise continuing to have an oddly "old school" feel to it somehow. Anyhow, I'll be continuing to watch the series for now in the hope that it can develop into something stronger and generally more tangible.