It sneaks up on you. You come in for Sonic Divers versus Worms and you stay for the quiet horror sitting under every scene: a world that lost its young men, so the cockpits get handed to teenage girls because there is nobody else left. The Divers are the right call too, not city-sized super robots but strap-on powered rigs that make every dogfight feel like the pilot is out there in the air with nothing but nerve and a harness. Otoha, Eika and Karen earn the squad dynamic the slow way, through drills, arguments and downtime, and by the time Elise shows up the unit already feels like a place you know. It came out of a 2006 OVA pilot and never pretended to be prestige, which is exactly why the training-day episodes land as hard as the sorties. Cult status earned by the shows that take their girls' competence seriously.

Set in the near future, this sci-fi mecha action series begins after a war against alien enemies called the Worms wiped out a third of humanity, with young men making up most of the dead. Humankind won only by turning to weapons of mass destruction. Ten years later the Worms come back. To meet the new threat, a mecha unit is formed around large mechanical frames known as Sonic Divers, and three young girls are chosen to pilot them. These few Sky Girls may decide how the new conflict ends.