It’s relatively fair to label Sky Girls as a typical otaku-wallet-driven mechamusume pandering ball of fuss. Just because it can carry its own weight as a character-driven story (like many others before it) and take itself seriously enough doesn’t mean it’s any good (but also certainly doesn’t mean it’s bad). All that it does is carry the tune, like a snake charmer, and people who find it appealing will tune in based on the commonly understood concept as “taste” and “whatever floats his boat” and what have you.

Despite what I may find it distasteful, Sky Girls does have a moment of clarity as the clutter floating around parts way for a ray of amusing insight to pierce its reasonable but all too predictable testimony. The fansub translates it along the lines of that these highly mobile aircraft are pioneers in a new era of aviation and the squad of girls can pursuit dreams as acrobatic stunspeople, touring the world to show off their l33t skillz. The simpler reality was that they must demonstrate their l33t skills as weapons of war to get funding from the brasses.

What occurs to me here is simply–just why am I watching (or why is the average fan who’s watching Sky Girls) Sky Girls? Would it be OK if the mechamusume fetish was stripped (/zing) of its para-militaristic bent and turned into a normal sports drama? When I was watching Ginban Kaleidoscope I recalled the former occupation of Pete was a barnstormer. That’d be a cool crossover. But why not?

And how our heroine-protagonist Otoha Sakurano wrestle her military duties with her less violent and less gore-glorious calling seemed to me just that little bit more ironic. Is the average otaku no different than those nameless (but not faceless!) military generals who oversee the Sky Girls project? Are we just predators looking to exploit innocent girls to satisfy our own needs for things we can’t do on our own by paying for it?