I'm saying "failing" and not "failed" for obvious reasons, but even if the show turns over a new leaf with episode 6 and starts combining all of its' elements with much more finesse (I doubt it, but who knows?), the opening arc has still failed. I naively hope that this disclaimer will stop people from hating me. Also, when I say it's "failing", I'm referring to it failing in an artistic sense, not a commercial one; I don't want to hear "Hey, I tried to pre-order the Kanata-Neko plushie but it's all SOLD OUT, so clearly the show is a success!"

In essence, So Ra No Wo To is two shows: a post-apocalyptic show intended for more mature viewers, and a cookie-cutter moe-blob show that intends to sail easily to profitability in the large wake left by K-ON! and other popular moe shows (but mostly K-ON!.) Some people thought that Brad came down too hard on the show when he summed it up as a typical exercise in moe pandering, but that aspect is there and it's pretty blatant; the main character even looks just like K-ON!'s Yui. It's impossible to ignore, and believe me, I've been trying.

It's not that a show with moe character designs can't be deep; I am not unaware of the fact that anime is supposed to make money. Even otherwise innovative shows will often take advantage of whatever trends are selling at the moment. If they want to cash in on the moe craze in order to draw fans to a show that otherwise might not garner much attention, I can certainly understand that. The problem isn't the concept of mixing a post-apocalyptic show with a moe show, it's how they're going about it.

The post-apocalyptic part of the show expects a lot of patience and perspicacity from the viewer, whereas the moe product is meant to be as obvious and easily consumable as possible; by mixing these two styles, they annoy both the patient viewers with the hyper-obvious characters, and the viewers who want an enjoyable moe show with a lot of seemingly plotless meandering. Rather than mixing together artistry and marketability, both halves are so effectively compartmentalized that the show practically gives you whiplash as it changes tracks:"Oh, here's a subtle hint about something that happened during the war, better think about that in light of what happens later- Oh, now Kureha is bitching about something, TSUNDERE ALARM!!!!"

Have you noticed that when people talk about these characters, they tend to use phrases like "they're so obnoxious", or "They make me want to stab my eyes out?" We don't just dislike these characters, we are downright MAD at them for actively ruining the show. Every time there's an interesting scene that deals with fallout from the war, Kanata opens her mouth and makes a statement that screams "I'm the bright and cheerful one, and I see the bright side of EVERYTHING and everyone can learn from me!", and I seriously wish I could slap her- or rather, slap the writers who seem to think that I'll be able to see her as anything more than a tired character type. Noel bores me to death since she's merely a 10th generation Rei-Ayanami clone (although I guess at this point, you could call her a Yuki-clone instead), and Kureha has done absolutely nothing other than act like the definitive obnoxious tsundere. Rio shows signs of having an actual personality, but one out of five isn't good.

Oh, and it doesn't help that other than (arguably) Rio, they're all pretty stupid. Did it occur to no one on the show during episode 5 that if the packs were ridiculously heavy, maybe they could take some things out of them? Packing what you can reasonably carry is kind of important in survivalist training, you know? I know it was supposed to be funny, but the fact that the attempt at humor necessitated the characters acting unbelievably dumb made it hard to take the show seriously later (when you saw the remains of trench warfare), and it was supposed to have a real emotional impact. The whole show suffers from these kinds of counterproductive juxtapositions.

If we forget the moeblob aspect for a minute, there's seriously a lot of good there- I like the way the remaining people are torn between survivor's guilt and joy that they're no longer in the eye of the storm. I like the fact that everyone intuitively knows that this is a war that everyone lost, and the only way to "win" is to live, period. I like the way the adults have a kind of bemused admiration- or more likely, envy- for the children who are too young to understand what it was that the world lost. I love the scenery. But this is all in the background- in the foreground is a show I don't want to watch. I just don't want to watch another episode that features Kanata, Kureha and Noel, and when you hate the characters, the show has failed.