Sora

""Your name is Sora... Because you're just like the sky... Beautiful, dignified, and full of life.""

- Sora's parents

""Father... Mother... The sky... Isn't beautiful at all... I want to clean up this sky!""

- Sora

sora is a Prequel to the fan-acclaimed Suguri, a horizontally-scrolling doujin Shoot'Em Up by Orange_Juice released during Comiket 78 for Windows PC. Just like its predecessor, it stars a title protagonist, Sora, who must fight her way through waves of Mecha-Mooks with a boss waiting at end of each stage. sora's storyline takes place on a once peaceful world being ravaged by an ongoing war between humans and altered humans. It was a war that brought chaos, death, destruction, and the end of any moral values that will ultimately bring an end to all life on Earth. Sora, one of the most powerful altered-humans ever created, is unwilling sent into battle to settle the score. Like Suguri before her, Sora can amass a large arsenal of weapons at her disposal, ranging from beam rifles, bazookas, energy swords, and even a pile bunker thrown in for good measure. The game maintains its trademark dashing and lock-on shooting gameplay, but this time Sora's able to three weapons instead of two (generally an energy weapon, a ballistics weapon, and a close-range weapon). The game also improved on its combo-scoring system and adds more emphasis on funneling through enemy fire to restore lost life energy and building up energy for your Hyper Attacks.

An English-translated version of sora has been released on June 1, 2012 and it's currently available through GamersGate. Surprisingly, this was not localized by Rockin' Android, the same translators of SUGURI, but rather by ΩTH as it involves use of such terms as "reploids" when the characters were originally referred to as "altered humans," as well as a few Dub Name Changes.

Like SUGURI, sora was followed up with a Shoot'Em Up-meets-Fighting Game with Acceleration of SUGURI 2 released a year later during Comiket 80 in 2011. The game features both the heroines and boss chacters of their respective game as playable characters, a Story Mode, Arcade Mode, local and online Versus Mode, and notability borrows a few other mechanics from Senko no Ronde. During it's initial release however, lacked certain key originally planned for the game and suffered from character balance issues. Thankfully, the Orange_Juice took action and fixed many of the game's issues with update patches.

sora's official Japanese website can be viewed here and its English website can be viewed here. Acceleration of SUGURI 2's Japanese website can be viewed here.

These games provide examples of:

 * Action Girl: Sora, rather she likes it or not.
 * Advancing Wall of Doom: Stage 4's boss, Sham, uses this as part of her attack patterns.
 * An Ice Person: Tsih.
 * Apocalypse How: The war between humans and altered humans brought destruction to Earth as it made very the air to support any lifeforms toxic and ultimately uninhabitable.
 * Art Evolution: A huge improvement from the artist in terms of the art-style and overall visual quality in sora compared to SUGURI. The same goes for Acceleration of SUGURI 2 compared to its predecessor.
 * Attack Drone: Sora can use the Pod weapon much like Suguri.
 * Background Boss: The mid-stage of Stage 5 in sora.
 * Beam Spam: Oh boy does sora deliver on this. The Artillery weapon also qualifies.
 * Blow You Away: Mira.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: The English lyrics incorporated in "Le Train" and "Grand blue" songs from sora.
 * The same goes for "Remember me" in Acceleration of SUGURI 2.
 * Barrier Warrior: Nath specializes on defensive tactics to reflect engery-based attacks.
 * Bullet Hell: Very much like it's predecessor.
 * Charged Attack: The Buster. Other weapons can use a charged shot as well.
 * Cute Little Fangs: Tsih has them in Acceleration of SUGURI 2.
 * Downer Ending:
 * Dub Name Change: In ΩTH's English localization of sora, the names changes as follows: Tsih's name was changed to Telos, Sham was changed to Siri, and Nath was changed to Nadius.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams
 * Genki Girl: Tsih.
 * Gratuitous English: In sora, it features the songs "Le Train," "Grand blue," and sora's version of "Rendezvous", all of which incorporates English vocals instead of Japanese, although some of songs have mistranslated lyrics.
 * Acceleration of SUGURI 2 has "Swordfish" and "Remember me," both of which are also sung in English. The latter does suffer from mistranslated lyrics; the former on the other hand, not as much.
 * Highly-Visible Ninja: Mira.
 * Humongous Mecha: Nath pilots one.
 * Improbably Female Cast: To a similar extent of SUGURI.
 * Kill It With Fire: The Flamethrower.
 * Laser Blade: Sora can use one, and she knows how to use it.
 * Lightning Gun: The Shock weapon.
 * Limit Break: Hyper Attacks also returns in sora and Acceration of SUGURI 2, but players can now chose either Standard and Advanced modes to invoke the Hyper Attacks.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Like Suguri via the Launcher weapon. Stage 1 also opens with this, although this trope is invoked in many places of the game.
 * Mecha-Mooks
 * Meaningful Name: Sora's parents named her after the Japanese word "Sky," referring to how beautiful they are, although it doesn't seem like the sky is beautiful at all in the game.
 * Mook Maker: Sham can summon reinforcement mechas to fight alongside her.
 * More Dakka: The Machine Gun, but then again, this game is a Bullet Hell shooter after all.
 * No Continue Run: Required to unlock the secret characters and their respective stages in Acceleration of SUGURI 2.
 * Peek-a-Bangs: Alte.
 * Playing With Fire:
 * Rank Inflation: sora and Acceleration of SUGURI 2 does this just as their predecessors did.
 * Ray Gun: The Rifle series.
 * Roboteching: Orange_Juice loves their arching lasers and missiles.
 * Scarf of Asskicking: Mira wears one.
 * Scoring Points
 * Shock and Awe: Alte and Sham uses some electrical attacks.
 * Shoot'Em Up: sora, just as SUGURI before it.
 * Spread Shot: Rifle-S.
 * Token Mini-Moe: Tsih.
 * Turns Red
 * Wave Motion Gun: The Rifle-M's and the Artillery's Limit Break.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Tsih, Nath,.
 * Scoring Points
 * Shock and Awe: Alte and Sham uses some electrical attacks.
 * Shoot'Em Up: sora, just as SUGURI before it.
 * Spread Shot: Rifle-S.
 * Token Mini-Moe: Tsih.
 * Turns Red
 * Wave Motion Gun: The Rifle-M's and the Artillery's Limit Break.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Tsih, Nath,.
 * Wave Motion Gun: The Rifle-M's and the Artillery's Limit Break.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Tsih, Nath,.