katlyn.rempel - 2014-04-01 11:05:52

It's hard to tell what Pilot's love song was trying to accomplish, or even what kind of story it was trying to tell. From the love story between two people who are enemies, to the warfare with young pilots, and the commentary of corrupt government. Just leaves the whole show confusing by the end.

Well the plot of the show goes that a floating island is being sent off to find the end of the sky. A mystical where no one from the island knows what lies beyond it. To prepare, the island is sent with a whole colony of people, defended by what military they have including eager young cadets who either want to help or just to see the end of the sky themselves.

Right off the bat, this is one of those split series. Where you get episodes of the cast doing something, before the dramatic turn in either episode 6 or 7. We meet whole cast of wacky character who pretty much fall into stock character but are unique to not be grating by their presence. Honestly the only one the group i didn't enjoy was Kal-el the main character.

Kal-el is a pretty dull lead, all the points are there. He's nice to his friends, he inexperienced but show potential, he's in love with a girl he can't be with, and on top of all this he has dark part that involves getting revenge on someone. This would be fine if he actually had more to him then just those things, by himself he's boring so he needs all these other characters around him to give him purpose in the show. In fact i would be willing to say that nearly anyone else in the cast has more of a story then he does, or at least something with a bit of depth to it that you didn't see coming.

The reason i'm focusing on the cast is because the show doesn't want to tell you anything else about the world your in. Nothing really matters to the story outside the floating island. They love to talk about the end of the sky but no one explains why the island float, or why they have children in the military, or even what they expect to find. The whole story really wants you to care about these characters and its so obvious about it, that it comes off as trying way to hard.

What can be entertaining about this show is the dogfights. Ridiculous as helicopter plains that require one person to fly the plane while the other shoots seems backward in design, the dogfights are one of the main draws of the show. But their very infrequent and when they are their its usually just a few shots of one or five planes fighting with a lot of quick cuts. And the major fights don't even appear until episode 7.

But the one thing that really annoy's me about this show is that it really abuses the concept of "It's the journey, not the destination" as, without spoiling much, they map out they're whole world by the last episode and meet several different nations but were told all of this through exposition, this show loves to talk about exposition on they need to get to the end of the sky, they must reach the end of the sky, every episode is them talking about how they need to get their. But from the lackluster characters and poor explanation, i could care less about why they need to get their, i just want these to interact more give more history to the others beyond the main ones. The show builds this whole world and it does nearly nothing with it aside from politics and a bunch of people talking about it.

The few moments the show does have is overshadowed lack of depth, this wasn't a fun flight or a dramatic tale or even a good love story. Just a disappointing flight

jefferey.ziemann - 2014-01-09 23:48:32

First impressions of Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta or The Pilot's Love Song is it a great show? I'm not sure but it is enjoyable and if you appreciate a show with good animation and music you'll already like this show. So far it has a unique yet predictable plot with the show already having the generic character tropes. Not necessarily being a bad thing though ,but plot wise I can't say much considering this was the introductory episode what I can say is this show has potential to being one of the best series of this season and deserves to be given a chance. For a first impression this show seems to be pretty good I'd continue watching this show giving an overall score eight out of ten to stream it.

Crunchyroll Stream http://www.crunchyroll.com/the-pilots-love-song/videos