Bethel Anime Club

Asaba Naoyuki has had an enjoyable, if rather strange, summer vacation: he and his sempai, the head of the newspaper club, staked out the local army base looking for signs of UFO’s. To Asaba’s complete lack of surprise, they fail to see any UFO’s; but on the last night of the vacation, when he sneaks into the school pool for a swim, he does get quite a shock: a girl he has never seen before is unsuccessfully trying to teach herself how to swim.

This Iriya Kana is a strange person: recalcitrantly quiet, aggressively misanthropic, and astonishingly fragile, Asaba quickly discovers that she has more secrets in her hard, electricity-flavored wrists than he has had in his entire life. Yet slowly this mysterious (and possibly not entirely human) creature begins to open up to him, and as she does so Asaba discovers that his life may be changing… and not for the better. Is this a story of young love—or a bloody song of war? And can it be, before the end, that Asaba will see his UFO?

The somewhat prolix title of this piece roughly translates to “Iriya’s Sky and the Summer of UFO’s.” Although it gets off to a slightly cliché-filled start, after the first two episodes the show literally takes off and is guaranteed to get you laughing, crying, and yelling, “I can’t believe that just happened!” at the screen. Those of you who remember the similarly grandiously-titled Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora should know the general feel of this series.

6 episodes—two silly ones, one good one, and three awesome ones.