Alternate Titles: Toaru Hikūshi e no Koiuta, Love Song of a Certain Pilot
Light Novel Adaptation by TMS Entertainment
Simulcast on Crunchyroll

Premise

A bunch of kids go to an aviation boarding school on a floating continent, but they remain split along social class lines. One of them falls for a young noblewoman.

Iro’s Verdict: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

Allegedly The Pilot’s Love Song takes place in the same universe as The Princess and the Pilot, but I saw absolutely no indication of that during this first episode. I was expecting a relatively down-to-earth, aviation-themed story. Instead, we end up at a boarding school on a floating continent, ruled by a princess who apparently has magic wind powers. And yet, even with this apparently unique setting, we fall into tired cliches: high school, love at first sight, falling for a high-class girl, etc. Combined with a lack of technical quality in the animation and directing, I could only be rather disappointed. Time will tell if I’m wrong, but I don’t have high hopes.

Jel’s Verdict: Cloudy Future

Normally I’m all for slower paced material, but in this case, the otherwise flat presentation made The Pilot’s Love Song more boring than anything. We just drift from scene to scene with little narrative connection, and the low quality CG and simple animation make it hard to present the details with the subtlety they need. We meet characters that we are meant to care about despite just meeting them and they even throw in a Love At First Sight scene, something I’ve never been a fan of. I do appreciate the refreshing setting — although it is ultimately yet another school — and the foreboding words of the main character’s narration at the end do hold out promise for a much grander adventure, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this improves as it moves along.

Lifesong’s Verdict: Both Unique and Unambitious

Any good story has a level of mundane elements involved. It’s how we know what to expect and vital to our ability to invest in a story and its characters. The thing to note about The Pilot’s Love Song is that its setting was ambitious at one point, but as someone who consumes a lot of fiction, I have a hard time seeing anything it does adding something to make its more mundane elements interesting. The things that should be fantastical are made banal by how worn they are. That said, it’s hard to get a feel for this show one episode in. The fantastic elements needed to make this more than a by the numbers experience could be right around the corner. Riding a bike through some clouds was a nice start, for example. I may stick to this show if I have time, just to see if it does manage to transition from the derivative fare it is now to something with the more fantastical elements I am looking for.

Marlin’s Verdict: In Rough Air

The beginning of this show didn’t really inspire any confidence with me. An annoyingly energetic sister and her pathetic brother going off to see the horrors of war? Seemed a weird concept to me. The only thing I could hope for is that seeing combat changes their awful personalities and gives us an actual look at the effects of war on the soldier. However, something tells me that won’t come into play as much as I would hope. Still, the romance was cute, if rushed in its execution. Having them know each other for more than an hour before he goes all clingy would have been a bit more appreciated. Still, as with most middle of the road shows I’d give it one more episode before writing it off completely.