Sola Episode 1 Summary:

A teenage boy grabs a camera and heads out into the dark early morning and starts biking through the city towards a pier. He’s preparing his camera to take pictures of the sunrise when he hears some noise behind him. Here he meets a girl kicking at a vending machine trying to get a drink out after the machine ate her money. Their eyes meet and the two feel somewhat of a connection. The girl asks what he’s doing and he explains that he’s waiting for dawn to take a picture of the moment the dark sky turns blue.

He helps the girl kick the machine and a can drops out (a tomato juice drink). He turns around to give it to her, but she’s already gone. The scene changes to show some kids playing outside, while a girl stands inside a cave away from the light. Then there is a person in a cloak struggling through some barren landscape.

Back at the highschool of the teenager, he is on the rooftop of his school with a digital camera looking at the sky with through the LCD screen while talking to a female friend about the girl he met earlier. His friend is astounded by how much interest he has in taking images of the sky. She also mentions to him about having to buy a present, in which he counters by telling her he already bought one.

He shows her the present in class, which is a rather bizarre looking stuffed doll, but she doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He tells her girls like that kind of thing, but when shown to the other girls in the class, they share her opinion of how bad the present is. After school, they ride the trolley to a hospital.

At the hospital, we find this girl in a bed while a younger girl is sitting next to her. The older girl is impressing the other girl with some origami tricks when the two other characters walk in. The younger girl jumps off the chair to meet them. She identifies the teenage girl as Mana, but Mana tells her to refer her as “onee-chan”. The little girl identifies herself as Koyori and the guy as Yorito. It turns out that Yorito is here to visit his older sister, who is the girl in the bed.

They present her with a birthday cake and that her name is Aono. He presents her with the present, but she discards it to a pile of similar looking stuffed dolls. While they light up candles and turn off the lights, they hear the church bells ringing, which Koyori points out as broken and that they are working on fixing it. Yorito opens the curtains slightly to take a look when Aono tells him to stop. He is about to close them when he notices something outside and he runs off to the rooftop. He pulls out his camera and takes a picture of the sun setting with the church to the side.

At the church, we find the girl Yorito met earlier that day. Back at Yorito’s home, Mana is making dinner for him. She chastizes him for running out to take pictures instead of spending time with his sister. While making dinner, Mana notices she needs ginger and sends Yorito out to buy some. Elsewhere, a bearded man with glasses is out searching for something when it starts to rain.

Yorito gets out of the rain when he notices the same girl at the same vending machine, again kicking at it. Her umbrella is blown out of her hands into the air and Yorito notices that the inside of the umbrella is a picture of the sky. The two meet again and Yorito hands back the umbrella. He goes to help her get her drink out again. He tells her that her drink doesn’t look very tasty. She tells him to stand aside as she takes several steps back and starts running at the machine. He sees what’s happening and instinctively runs in to stop her and the two end up knocking heads. The drink rolls out afterward.

She tells Yorito that the drink is good and that he should drink it by pretending he fell for her lie. He drinks it and says he fell for it. She brings up the topic of the sky and she shows him a picture of the one picture of the sky that she has. The picture, however, looks exactly like the image Yorito took at the hospital. Yorito goes on naming a number of different cloud formations. She thinks about the different clouds and imagines herself in a field with white clouds and a blue sky. The imagination disappears and a stream of tears is on her face. She thanks him for the information and tells him to keep the umbrella as she runs off. Before she could, Yorito asks for her name. She tells him it’s Shihou Matsuri after finding out his name. She then runs off.

Back with the bearded man, he finds a cardboard box and when he opens it, he finds what he’s looking for, which is a girl inside, who tells him she’s hungry. The next day, Yorito does not go to visit his sister, as Mana explains to Aono that he told her that he had something to do. The man brings food to the girl, and she asks him if he’s found “her”. He tells her he has a good idea of where she is.

At Yorito’s home, he recalls the image that Matsuri showed him. He pulls out his camera and scans his pictures and finds out that it’s the same picture he took with the church. At the church again, Matsuri is awoken by one of the doors being opened. She looks outside, but finds nothing. As she closes the door, the bearded man appears. The man goes on the attack throwing objects at Matsuri. He activates light to shine through the windows, while Matsuri tries her best to avoid the light. He then pulls out a sword when Yorito opens the door and everyone is at a standstill.

Sola Episode 1 Review:

As I mentioned on my First Impressions post, this anime started out as a simple, normal life type of show with some person with a hobby of taking pictures of the sky. And it’s pretty evident that the show is about skies as the title of the anime literally means, well, sky.

Like almost all shows, this episode serves to introduce all the main characters. Here we have Yorito, the main character; Matsuri, the other main character; Mana, who is Yorito’s friend; Koyori, Mana’s sister; Aono, Yorito’s sister; and the bearded man and the child he’s taking care of, although she’s probably not a child in terms of age.

After all that, this series could have been as boring as staring into space, but it’s saving grace is Matsuri who has some qualities that might deem her as a vampire. In the ending scenes, we see that Matsuri cannot be exposed to sunlight or anything similar. And then we have Yorito who loves daylight. There’s the mismatch, the love interest, and the ensuing dilemmas waiting to happen. Now that’s a good series to follow. Not to mention, the animation quality is very nice. Everything is drawn in all seriousness, so there’s no over-exaggerated faces.

There was no opening sequence for this first episode. Instead, there was an insert song to take its place. But you can tell that there was an opening sequence song ready for use as the show takes time out to introduce their sponsors.

And just like a good number of anime series, the first episode ends in a cliffhanger of sorts that make you stay tuned in for the next episode. As I’m writing this, I’m anxiously waiting for the next episode like everyone else.

Overall, this episode does a good job introducing the characters, while leaving enough ambiguity to start making assumptions and deductions on what’s going to happen. For me, from what I can tell from this first episode is that Yorito and Matsuri will fall for each other, but Matsuri’s need to avoid sunlight will cause a big dilemma down the line. Yorito’s sister Aono seems to be the same as Matsuri. Mana will probably admit that she has feelings for Yorito and the love triangle will begin and someone’s going to get their feelings hurt, probably Mana’s. The bearded guy will probably end up as an ally while the girl he’s helping is someone also afraid of the light and needs something from Matsuri. And Matsuri is probably going to die by the end of the series. Sad, but it’s leaning towards that direction.