Nova received some grief from peers (such as Kuro) for this: "In the end Sora no Woto was pretty much a light-weight version of Haibane Renmei and its enjoyability was greatly dependent on how one could get into the relaxing but somewhat melancholic atmosphere." It was not just the comments, but also the mocking the hapless Finn suffered at #animeblogger. And now Omo comes out with the following analogy:

The second story changed in the way how the setting was revealed to us. In the meta-sense, that’s usually called “world building” or “character development.” There was a lot of that; entire episodes were dedicated to funny little tidbits about their world, about their social organization, about their religion and technology. I believe those who honed in on this subtle but strong narrative would have likened Sorawoto to Haibane Renmei. In that show, too, much of the narrative goes like our clueless protagonist in learning about the worlds both now resides.The audience learns about the world, and more importantly, explore and speculate, alongside with them.

I told you, guys.

BTW, personally I think Sora no woto is Aria with tanks.