Asgard Anime’s First Impressions: Super Sonico: The Animation

Warning: If you haven’t watched Super Sonico: The Animation yet and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading this article right now. Otherwise, go ahead and indulge yourself. Spoilers, spoilers everywhere. You have been warned.

With the Winter Anime Chart 2013 having a great line-up for the first month of the year, Asgard Anime has a brand new segment for all you anime fans called First Impressions – quick anime reviews based on a series’s first episode. This week we have none other than SoniAni: Super Sonico The Animation (そにアニ).

Overview

Super Sonico (すーぱーそに子) is the official mascot of Japanese software company, Nitroplus (株式会社ニトロプラス). Created by Nitroplus’s very own Tsuji Sanada, Super Sonico is known for her signature head phones, long, pink hair and generous busts. With her short biography telling us that Sonico is a college student that works as gravure model and sings and plays the guitar in a band called First Astronomical Velocity (第一宇宙速度), perhaps a lot of people have expected that this will be another anime that caters to fan service and the like. So how did it really go?

What The Story’s About

SoniAni follows the life of Super Sonico. Simple. Easy. She goes to school, models for a company, helps her grandmother run her restaurant and hang out with her friends. That’s it.

The show would have been boring if it hadn’t been for Sonico’s charming personality.

The Leading Lady

Super Sonico obviously runs the show. What came as a surprise was the fact that despite her sexy facade, her innocence is kept intact in so many levels. Cheery and polite, she gives everyone she passes with a greeting or a kind word. When she was late for her class, Sonico profusely apologized to her professor. However, the same professor gave her a compliment on her intelligence during their class.

Sonico’s innocence takes a whole new level which borders on annoying when she modeled for a company called Bonbon. The perverted representative of the company wanted to take more photos of Sonico in an even more skimpier outfit compared with the one provided for by modeling agency. Although she had qualms about it, she wore it just the same to make everyone happy. Things would have gotten out of hand if it weren’t for her masked manager. To add more cute points to her character, Sonico is a proud member of the Crazy Cat Lady club and owns five cats of different colors.

The Animation and Others

White Fox (株式会社) has become better and better. Compared with their previous work, Hataraku Mao-Sama! (はたらく魔王さま), SoniAni has a peanut butter smooth art that blends well with the colors. Sonico’s one and only voice actress, Ayano Yamamoto (山本彩乃), just amps up the character’s moe factor. So what’s Super Sonico without music? Beat Goes On! and Love the World have been performed by Super Sonico and First Astronomical Velocity respectively. While the songs are catchy and are fitting for anime, it somehow has a Vocaloid (ボーカロイド) vibe to it. Is it just me or am I imagining it? Animation-wise, everything is good.

Bottomline… For Now.

While the art is great, it takes a good story to get you hooked on a series. On its maiden episode, SoniAni can get boring even if its candy-coated with Sonico’s sweetness. While the first ep has some comedic parts such as Sonico running into an empty classroom as well as her awkward turn of events during her photo shoot, things will turn mellow again they same way the it started. One of the most notable points which can be taken on the first episode is that it has very little fan service as what was expected because of obvious reasons. If more challenges are thrown into Sonico’s path during the course of the series, then this anime will be well worth watching.