Common Name: Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai
Alternative Names: The Magnificent Kotobuki, The Kotobuki Squadron in the Wilderness
Score: 4/10, 4/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Action, Comedy, Military, Political
Summary: Hired for everything from package delivery to protective services, the Kotobuki squadron takes to the skies of the dry desert land they call home. Foremost among the squad's six pilots is their rascal ace, Kirie. Regardless of what danger or political maneuvering the group finds themselves in, Kirie lives only to fly through the skies for a reason that still eludes her thick skull. While she tries to puzzle her thoughts together, though, she can always depend on her fellow pilots to drag her back down to earth when it really matters. After all, the life of a pilot of the wild skies is hardly a safe one.
Review: While I know I might sound like a broken record for making this statement but Kyouya no Kotobuki Hikotai is the best example of how important it is to balance the various elements within a series. As a show that clearly exists as a passion project and testing ground for either Digital Frontier, Bandai, or Sentai, it is understandable and reasonable that there might be some aspects favored above others. That understanding does not, at least in this case, make the product as a whole any better. If anything, it begs the question of why they even tried at all. Put bluntly, Kotobuki is a mess of a series. Both in its execution, in the story it wants to tell, and in its general reason for being. Though there are a number of ways in which the series can be approached and appreciated, all but one of them leave you feeling wanting or outright disappointed when all is said and done. To dig that knife in deeper, though, is the fact that the one thing that this show does well is something only an incredibly niche audience will notice, let alone appreciate. So, as much as I typically try to avoid pushing people away from a series, I honestly cannot recommend this show to any kind of demographic or genre clan. Rather, this is a series I can only recommend to unique individuals and you will know if you're one of those depending on how you answer these two questions. First, how much do you like planes? Second, do you like planes enough to look past everything else in this show the way Godzilla fans look past the human drama just to get five minutes with their reptilian god(dess)? If you answer yes to both of these, then this is your show. If you didn't, I'd recommend skipping this review unless, of course, you want to stick around to see just how bad this can get.
Trust me when I say that this gets bad in ways that you probably couldn't even imagine in your wildest fever dreams.
To kick things off, let's first address the elephant in the room that will, for good reason, turn most people away from this series: the bad CG. Kotobuki's bizarre use of CG animation is nothing new to the world of anime. Many series other series have tried and failed to convincingly blend 3D animation and your standard animation in much the same way this show does. Seikaisuru Kado is the first that comes to mind and, as much as I like that series, the way the CG characters were plastered onto a 2D canvas and interacted with 2D characters was a problem for a lot of people. Kotobuki suffers from that exact same issue but without any of the cool visual effects that made Kado stand out. What's worse, though, is the way in which the series refuses to stick to any one, particular style. From episode to episode and scene to scene, the way in which the characters are rendered will suddenly and inexplicably change. One minute, Kirie will be moving and talking and be shaded in the manner you'd expect of a CG model. The next, she'll be rendered in 2D and bear all the standard limitations of that medium.
Notice how everyone but Kirei (the girl in the red coat) and the NPC guy look and are shaded
differently from the rest of the cast? You'll see a lot of that in this series.
While the answer for why the staff might decide to swap styles can be a simple one--the desire to capture a particular movement or expression that just wouldn't have been possible in the other medium. Yet, as you watch it, it becomes clear that that excuse isn't going to fly with this series. In their own right, the CG models of Kotobuki's characters are some of the best and most expressive I've seen to date. Though their motion is still not perfectly matched to the world around them, they talk and move and interact in much the same way you often see with big-budget CG movies.
Their models even get some solidly convincing shading when the show cares to include it.
Of course, that brings forward the other typical explanation of there being monetary or time restraints but that excuse doesn't work here either. While CG models might cost a lot of time and effort to make and make well, the animation process for CG ends up costing much less than traditional animation in the long run. That is, after all, why so many studios turn to CG to cut costs. Had the series simply stuck to 2D or 3D animation, it would have instantly been a lot easier to recommend this show to a more general audience. Since it didn't, though, I'm forced to stick to my initial statement that this show isn't for everyone and hammer in the first nail in Kotobuki's coffin.
Of course, I'm hardly an expert on the implementation and cost of CG animation
but I don't need to be an expert to see that this clash of styles just doesn't work.
Now let's move on to the second nail--the show's cast. For the most part, the story of Kotobuki is centered on the six pilots of the Kotobuki Squadron who function, more or less, as contracted mercenaries. Throughout the series, they're given a number of tasks that range anywhere between making deliveries and mapping parts of their world to espionage and starting/finishing wars. It is generally understood that they are the best of the best and frequently prove as much in spite of the fact that they all fly a brand of fighter plane known for being flimsy and unstable, the Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa. To drive their home the point of how great they are, though, you'd expect that the series would try to showcase how their skills and power translate to their social lives as well. All the better, you might expect the series to take a very different turn, showing how their obsession with the skies or wartime experience separates them from your average civilian. Unfortunately, neither option comes to pass. Instead, we're greeted to a series of one-note archetypes that have so little going for them that I could only bring myself to actually focus on three of them.
Care to guess which ones actually had enough characterization to be worth remembering? I'll give you a hint.
If you cut this image in half, you have a 50/50 chance of guessing correctly.
Starting with the show's true main character, Kirie functions primarily as your standard genki ditz. Though she is passionate about flying and is determined to be the best pilot out there, her happy-go-lucky attitude and tendency to act without thinking often get her and the rest of her squad in trouble. Over the course of the series, it is made fairly clear that there is more in her head than just clouds, though. Carefree as she might seem, she often finds herself pondering why exactly she loves flying so much. Undoubtedly, part of the reason comes from her childhood fascination with planes and the surly old pilot who served as a kind of surrogate parent for the young Kirie. Yet, with his disappearance and presumed death, she feels like all her training and skill might have been for nothing since she can't show him how far she's come. Unfortunately, the show never actually goes so far as to state this line of insecurity in Kirie's character. At best, it's an assumption that can be drawn once the show finally gets around to dedicating an episode to her tragic past.
To be clear, though, her cheery disposition isn't some kind of coping mechanism. She's always been weird.
As for the rest of the squad, the only characters really worth mentioning are the Kotobuki Squadron's captain, Reona (far right), and her right-hand-woman, Zara (to her left). Presenting herself as a stern but caring leader, Reona serves as the solid backbone of the squad. Like Kirei, she is an incredibly skilled pilot but has the benefit of many years experience that let her think and act rationally in times of crisis, personal or otherwise. Yet, despite her cool exterior, it is eventually made clear that she's only slightly better off than Kirei, having only recently tamed her fierce and reckless fury. Zara for her part, though, is very much the motherly face of the squad. Like many parental duos, Zara often plays the role of the more empathetic leader to give Reona an excuse to be nicer to her subordinates without losing face. Underneath that act, though, she more often than not ribs her boss for not simply being more honest with herself and letting the others get closer to her, rather than relying on her to make her real feelings known. As you might expect, though, that kind of depth of understanding does come with some emotional strings attached as well, though the show tries to shirk and dodge any real statement as to where the boundaries of Roena and Zara's relationship might lie. Also like Kirie, though, the only real worth in their characters come with the way they are struggling with their pasts. Reona, for one, feels a reckless need to show her appreciation to the man who saved her during her more reckless youth. Meanwhile, Zara wishes to show Reona her appreciation for doing much the same for her some odd years ago. While these personal goals might be directly stated this time, they still end up falling short in the end partly because we are never actually shown either of these supposedly important events and partly because nothing ever comes of either.
I don't think we're ever actually told how old these two are supposed to be, now that I think about it.
The rest of the cast, unfortunately, might as well be NPCs for all they matter to the story at large. For example, while it might be a common criticism that dandere characters aren't actually characters, Kate has absolutely no character to speak of. Throughout the show, she's played for laughs because she's functionally just a human-shaped calculator. Even when her crippled genius brother is added to the equation of her character, we see her care for him only two or three times in spite of general statements that she spends all her free time with him. Emma, the squad's ojou-sama, is given just as little characterization. Once or twice we see her look down her nose at some idiot civilians and act haughty but we get nothing for her beyond these few moments. Toward the end, we get a snippet of a conversation between her and some unnamed friend that reveal some minor details about her family life but none of it really adds anything to her character or explains anything. Then, lastly, there's Kirei's rival Chika who is presented as being a short, childish, tsundere brat and nothing more. Unlike the rest of the cast, she doesn't get any attempt at explanation or validation. She's just a leech that fights with Kirei every chance she gets because that's just how she socializes.
Granted, I suppose I shouldn't have hoped for anything more since she's absent from the first
1/4th of the show because she was injured off-screen before the show even began.
If you were hoping the NPCs might be any better, though, you're still out of luck. The support and leading cast of the larger Kotobuki Company are similarly one-note. The captain of the company's blimp, for example, is little more than a spineless, idiot man-child. The company's female president and her female political rival might as well be the exact same characters for all their enigmatic scheming and indirect manipulating does for them as individuals. What's most disappointing of all, though is the fact that the series main villain isn't any better. For a character whose ambitions have given him enough power to move and sway various bandit groups within the aeronautics-obsessed wild west frontier that is this show's world, it's disappointing that this character ends up being little more than your basic Hitler analog. In the end, he proves to be your standard, power-obsessed maniac who is more than happy to nuke the world to see his ultimately pointless and baseless goals realized.
How could someone so silly and childish possibly be unapologetically evil?!
Easily. Very easily.
Of course, with Isao's failure as a compelling villain comes the third nail in the coffin of Kotobuki, the story itself. Over the course of this series, we're obviously meant to grow attached to the core of the Kotobuki Squadron as they unknowingly become tangled in Isao's schemes. Through their eyes, we are meant to gain an appreciation for their wild western skies and the cities that dot the landscape. We're meant to grow attached to all this but the show never actually puts forward the effort to ever make me care. With only half the main cast having any depth whatsoever, the show is already crippled in its main goal. Regardless of how zany and ridiculous their adventures might be, none of the cast proves to be anything more than a collection of tropes dressed in fairly solid designs. Without that key point of connection to the cast, though, there's no reason to care about the growing political intrigue as Isao takes the stage. So, on and on this chain of apathy goes until the final confrontation comes to a head. Even if the building of the confrontation mildly intrigues you by this point, though, it all still falls apart once the heart of Isao's scheme is made clear with a Shyamalan-level plot twist that is almost guaranteed to upset you.
If you really want to know: the twist is that this world is an isekai that regularly gets wormhole
anomalies that drained the oceans and abducted some Japanese WWII pilots and their planes.
None of this is helped though by the show's generally terrible pacing and storytelling. Characters speak so fast that even I, a subtitle veteran, needed to slow the show down just to keep up. Massive plot points are revealed with the tone and brevity of an afterthought. Characters get mad for idiotic reasons one minute and are completely calm the next. Put bluntly, this show is such an absolute goddamn mess that I could easily dedicate another thousand words to list out all the nails I could shove into its coffin. For the sake of wrapping things up, though, I'll instead move on to the one thing this show does well: revel in the joy of flight and the planes that make it possible. Regardless of how much you care about this show's moronic plot and it's cardboard cutout cast, the series as a whole proves itself to be one big love letter to classic Japanese planes. Even if you're not a fan of CG, this show captures the thrill of flight in much the same way the Ace Combat franchise does. Each and every episode, I found myself reveling in how much effort and detail went into showcasing various planes and why the cast loves them so much. Whether I was tilting my body in unison with the movement of the cockpit in a scene to clenching up whenever the cast performed aerial maneuvers, Kotobuki made each battle a visceral experience on par with some VR experiences.
It's during combat and dogfights, not character drama and political scheming, that this show really shines.
The things that really prove this show's true intentions, though, are the little touches that make these flight moments that much more impactful. Very rarely do I recommend listening to anime with headphones but, in this case, the audio mixing proves to be something really special. Everything from the plane creaking under the pressure of their maneuvers to twang of the Hayabusa's metal wire and the bang of the engine backfiring or taking a hit, the SFX of Kotobuki try to capture it all. The unique differences between the engines of different models to the firing of different weapons, nothing is left to the imagination sound-wise, making it that much easier to become captivated with the action and movement of each battle. This kind of attention and dedication to detail are the reasons why I call this series a love letter to classic Japanese aeronautics. More to the point, though, this is exactly why I say that this show is only going to appeal to a very niche audience. If the execution, characters, story, and plotting of the series was any good, I would have no problems recommending it more generally. Considering how much this show goes into speaking to a very specific fan base, though, I can easily understand why someone might watch this series in spite of its myriad failings. After all, even though I'm only an amateur aeronautics fan, I was able to look past all these flaws and get wrapped up in the joy of soaring through the blue.