Sora undertakes her first magic request, but Hara warns her that this client is very peculiar. The client, Motohashi, is an older woman with a request to open her safe. This woman does not have the key but always locks the safe again after checking the contents, so she is continually calling upon the mages to unlock the safe when she wants to look inside. Likewise, all the other students in the mage class undertake their own requests except for Gouta who is still a novice.

As Sora begins to explain the details of her request to Hiyori, Miss Kawada enters the class and explains that all client requests are confidential. She then tells all the students that they are strictly prohibited from using their powers without authorization from the Bureau of Magic.

After class is over, Sora and Hara go to the client’s house to fulfill the request. Sora opens the safe but runs outside with the contents, several photo albums, hoping that Motohashi will come outside the house. Hara chases after Sora and warns her not to get involved with the client’s problems. They return the albums to the safe and the client tries to close it, but Sora reveals that she actually destroyed the locking mechanism.

The client is naturally upset, but Sora explains that she needs to move on with her life and not continue to seal up her memories in the safe. Sora’s words reach the client and they look through the album together and talk about their experiences. Sora gets teary eyed when she sees the similarities that the client and her mother share. Meanwhile, a discouraged Gouta is ready to give up mage training but his instructor convinces him to keep trying.

Thoughts:
This is make or break time for Summer Skies, because the first episodic client episode should give you a proper handle for the show. If you liked it, keep watching. If not, drop Summes Skies for something else. Summer Skies has more room for subplots and probably won’t have as many client episodes as the original, but expect to see a few more.

Looks like the next episode will focus on Gouta, who has so far been really boring. I’m not going to go on a Gouta rant, but the manga introduced him as a much more interesting character. The story just isn’t the same without the initial love/hate relationship between Sora and him. In the manga we learned quite a bit about Gouta during his introduction. His importance to the story has really been understated in the anime after three episodes.

This section wouldn’t be complete without complaining talking about the animation, which seems to have taken a step back. One point that continues to bug me is that the shots are either too wide or too close. It’s like there’s no medium ground between a wide shot and a close up. Maybe that’s due to how the show is animated. Second point is that too much headspace is cut off in close up views. I don’t know if it bothers anyone else, but it really bugs me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Anime, Someday's Dreamers: Summer Skies.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.