~Chizu ni nai Basho~

sola | Episode 1 - The Sky-Colored Umbrella | Air Date: April 6, 2007

Summary: Yorito Morimiya’s two greatest passions, photography and the sky, lead him to meet a mysterious girl one early morning. He attempts to help her shake her money out of a vending machine that swindled her, but she disappears and he misses his chance to capture the perfect sunrise.

That same day is the birthday of Yorito’s sister Aono, so he and his childhood friend Mana Ishizuki go to visit her at the hospital where she is staying. They meet Mana’s little sister Koyori there and deliver the birthday cake and an unusual gift from Yorito.

Later that night on an errand run for Mana, Yorito stops to seek shelter from the rain on the same bridge as earlier that morning. Lo and behold, the same girl from before still seems to be struggling to get her money’s worth from the drink machine, and he decides to wait out the storm with her. The girl, who calls herself Matsuri Shihou, shows him a picture of a familiar sunset over the valley where the local cathedral lies. Yorito is surprised to meet someone who shares the same love for the sky, but Matsuri steals away after seemingly falling into a trancelike vision of sunnier skies.

The encounter with Matsuri preoccupies Yorito all throughout the next day. As he uploads the pictures he’s taken from his camera to his computer, he notices one sunset that looks strikingly like the photograph she showed him. Feeling compelled to go to the church he sees in the photo, he accidentally intrudes upon a violent attack on Matsuri by a mysterious man.

Kad says…
As a photographer and a lover of the sky myself, this series interested me from the very beginning. It’s not often that the main character in an anime is an artist like Yorito, and I’ll be eager to see how his hobby is developed during the rest of the series. With regards to animation and production values, the backgrounds and attention to detail were marvelous – aided greatly, no doubt, by the very crisp and high-quality raw and subbed versions I viewed of this episode. The character designs were nice, albeit a little generic in comparison to all else. The music was enjoyable and not too intrusive, and I thought it fit the laid-back city setting well. Aesthetically, sola is a pleasure to watch. Though the plot and characters were treated with the typical light first episode overview, I felt they weren’t dislikeable. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the rest of this series~.

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