Sora no Woto 7.5: Best Yuri Tea Party of the Year

So while I was rotting out in the desert SnW 7.5 was released so I am quite late to the party, had I seen it when if was first released I might have gone ape shit in the desert since SnW 7.5 was chock full of all kinds of goodness that was absent in the barren desert of the Middle East, yuri goodness, moe, and a glorious and shameless promotion of booze. While being drunk on duty is punishable under UCMJ, drinking is still quite common place while off duty and certainly there is not shortage of people who would like to drink while on duty. Sadly for those of us stuck in the Middle East having near beers is tantamount to weakness though the complaints never cease about how much it sucks that alcohol is not allowed. To that end the Fortress Maidens have it made as they not only got gloriously drunk on the stuff they themselves distilled, but got away with it as well. Of the less fanciful things that happened, though as a DVD only ep it was racier than it usually was, there was the time honored modern tradition of a training exercise…

So in the US military the reserves get to play with the old early 90s version of MILES which is pretty much glorified laser tag. While seemingly cutting edge there are certain limitations to MILES in that cheating does still take place where the reset-able units are still used and it makes of a sort of IRL counter strike with the respawning without the explosions. Also while blanks made a decent enough sound the mess they leave behind makes for some nasty carbon build up which is bemoaned when the exercise is done. Still even if it is glorified laser tag there are those who take the exercises a little too seriously as they really get into, I know my unit once built a tower of shame which was a hazardous structure  made of old beacon towers and ply wood. It served as a “fortified guard tower” come to think of it the thing was most unstable and if some one got hurt on the thing, well… it would have stopped the whole evolution. Among other amusing barricades that were used were the plastic jersey barriers, which were only good for laser tag unless filled with concrete. Even when there should have only been small arm kills other things would amusingly show up, one guy got hit by a super stealth mortar, another by a cloaking M1A2, and yet another by the most quiet and invisible AH-64.

While equipment error and rampant cheating in MILES make for a very fun and hilarious training there is always the addition of bad acting and not shortage of DOROMA in the ECP scenarios. When doing OPFOR things get to be really fun as the OPFOR gets to break all the rules and have a good time at pretending to be evil and for some of the leaders in OPFOR it’s fun to make people on your shit list as the “expendables.” While the 1121st isn’t big on having large scale exercises the overacting is common enough in IRL, and Noel’s newest creation in water armaments was at least a more successful implementation than most jury rigged defenses I have seen. Also at least they didn’t break any leased equipment and did not have to go through the whole ordeal of camp set up and camp tear down.

While Yumina wasn’t meant for long marches I think of her eagerness to participate in a training exercise to be something akin to kids playing cops and robbers. Cops and Robbers was an old game I used to play as a kid, during a time when going outside was fun and what we lacked in tactile weaponry we had imagination… Nowadays you could simply play Halo 3 or Modern Warfare 2 and not look stupid as a person that is older than 9 years old. Even if there is a lack of violence in Sora no Woto, the 1121st at least was doing proper methods of entry when they were stacking at door ways for urban combat and since they didn’t have the numbers and equipment to do it the proper large scale way I’ll forgive them for not doing vertical entry and setting up kill zones at the exit points. Add in the fact that they were all drunk at the time I can see how it devolved into a final showdown. Still much yuri affection was shown between Felicia and Rio, it was delectable if nothing else.

Another thing they did get right was making Kureha the poor Private be the ammo runt, that much is pretty consistent as for training at least there are no shortage of volunteers for crew served weapons. There are some officers that go as far as manning the weapons when the for is  “at the wire,” which is to say they kick the guy who would be using the weapon if shit was real off to get some trigger time when they normally won’t. The good officers would at least help you clean up the mess 1000 plus blanks would leave, the worst would just let the enlisted do the cleaning and hand their pistol over to some poor private for “just a light clean.” While the training aids the 1121st had were largely primitive at least they didn’t have to go through the torturous ordeal of cleaning up the carbon from numerous blanks, and while the the M240 is a great weapon, with blanks it is a nightmare to clean worse than the .50 cal machine gun IMHO.

So after a hard day of training they decide to get gloriously drunk, which happens quite often where ever possible in the US Military at least. To be sure some of these celebrations are rather tame, but sometimes well some of the pictures of that most hazy of events are quite shocking to say the least. As fan service though it was fun to see drunk Yumina talk about her 8 million gods, and try to convert an owl. I am not sure how Kureha was unable to get a buzz but as the designated driver during my E-3 days I can sympathize as it is no fun watching other people have fun just because you are under 21. Even if Kureha had no fun I had plenty of fun witnessing the the alcohol fueled yuri party, while underage drinking is largely illegal it happens and at least the 1121st was drinking some of the good stuff instead of the cheap watered down beers that they sell dirt cheap at gas stations. Even if Yumina missed out on the first yuri bath I hope she had fun doing “this and that” to Kureha when a second bath was deemed both necessary and desirable.

While Noel seems to be the worst victim of the hangover at least Kanata remembered something of the event even if Rio was so hammered she forgot it all. Speaking of Rio it was so wonderful to hear drunken rants about her responsibilities. As for restricted areas, well there is always someone who wants to dare the forbidden fruit. It did not annoy me all that much that Kanata knew the secret of the distillery but it was an interesting and fun way to explain how it was that Kanata learned the secret. Even if one was ticked off by how Sora no Woto ended if you like yuri, if you are a poor former conscript, or if you have served a while in uniform it’s still an episode worth watching in the case of the latter two groups you might remember a few of your own cluster fucks. A nice bit of fluff an not the usual total fanservice that DVD only eps can sometimes be.