Easy war, Easy life. Alderamin on the Sky Review

If you know anything about the military, it’s probably something to do with the chain of command: higher ranking officials leading smaller squadrons of lower ranking soldiers. Now the genres of this anime, according to it’s MyAnimeList page, are Action, Military, Adventure, and Fantasy. The amount of actual military sequences you experience in this anime is absolutely great. I think it’s easily on par with the scenes we see in movies or TV shows. To be honest, this show may even do it better than some of them.

What do you think the most important factor of this anime is? Don’t bother guessing because I’m gonna tell you, it’s the characters. Notice how I didn’t limit it to just the main cast. It’s about everyone, it’s about the whole world of this anime. They set it up so you can learn about everyone and put yourself in their shoes to experience it all. The story mostly revolves around the characters you see in the image above ,and takes place in the Katvana Empire which is at war with the Kioka Republic. The main protagonist is Ikta Solork. He’s lazy, a womanizer, and wants no part in the war. His fate changes when he’s offered a cozy job as a librarian by his childhood friend, Yatorishino Igsem, in exchange for helping her ace the military exams. Disaster strikes while they’re en route to the test via ship. A vicious storm hits them during the night and they’re forced to escape in lifeboats. A mysterious blonde girl slips off the edge of boat and into the dark waters. Ikta, being the brave man that he is, dives in to save her. We awaken with the unconscious girl and find out that she’s actually the princess of empire. Now they’re stranded after drifting so far and close to enemy territory, but Ikta has the mind capable of constructing a proper strategic and safe plan to get his comrades and the princess back to safety.

Fast forward to their safe return to the kingdom and the princess gives them the honorable title of “Imperial Knights”. Obviously Ikta resents all of this because all he ever wanted was a laid back lifestyle and now he’s become a part of the war and the military that he wanted to avoid more than anything. Naturally what happens next is he gets into a fight with the higher ranking officers and they have a mock battle with platoons and paint bullets. Of course it’s a cake walk for him because no one compares to the intuition and knowledge that he possesses.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the treasures this anime possesses but if you’re looking for an action anime on a “tactical setting” this is definitely a hidden gem. I mentioned before that the characters are very important in this series. That’s because despite the fact that Ikta has no real ambition for the army life, he still has his morals and beliefs. He cares about his friends and everyone in his platoon. They play such a big role on how his battles turn out because he believed that they could follow his orders without fault and I think they could sense that about him. It goes without saying that character development becomes strong throughout the series. I think you’ll find some episodes where you can actually connect with them. Once again this is an anime that features military and government issues, in a fantasy world of course, so if that doesn’t tickle your fancy then you might want to steer away from this one. I also really enjoyed the OP track for this anime, but I had to warm up to the ED track. I remember always recommending this anime to my friends back in the summer of 2016 and I don’t think any of them watched it funny enough. This one kind of flew under the radar of the more popular releases (ie. Mob Psycho 100, 91 Days, Food Wars etc.) If you do decide to give it a shot, I recommend a four episode test as opposed to three because the story turns up after that and you can decide whether you will want to continue based on that.