Anime Review: Iriya no Sora UFO no Natsu

Review Iriya no Sora UFO no NatsuWritten by WarpshadowRating good/very good

If there is one constant in anime is that there will always be stories of normal boys that capture the hearts of strange women. Iriya no Sora is such a story not as good as some but better than others.

When Naoyuki Asaba sneaked into the school pool late one night he never expected to find a girl there. This wasn't any normal girl either for Iriya is a girl with little social social skills and strange knobs on her wrists. Iriya transfers to Asaba's school but she remains aloof from the rest of the students and is often called away to the office for some unknown reason. The truth behind these oddities is found out during an air raid drill when Iriya takes Asaba to a secret shelter and reveals that she is a part of the military.

Iriya no Sora is a small production that largely escaped notice of the larger anime viewing public. Created in 2005 this is an Oav with superb animation quality. One of the largest problems with this production is the short running time which has little time to develop the characters especially the rather odd titular character, Iriya Kana. This is not to say that she or any of the other characters are devoid of personality, it is just that they could have benefited from some more time to expand on their personalities. Like many shows Iriya starts out light and comedic but gradually becomes darker and more dramatic. This Oav is more capable of handling the earlier episodes than the later. Even with it's faults Iriya is a nice Oav, just not an exceptional one.