Category: Uchuu Kyoudai

Anime has many golden rules. One of them is that whenever there is a prediction, MAKE SURE TO PAY ATTENTION TO IT. It’s very important foreshadowing for later, trying to be cryptic in one way or the other. The way in which Uchuu Kyoudai did this though was quite original. I mean, we basically got the message that things would go well for Mutta, with a very big thorn lurking in the shadows. What really piqued my interest: what the heck is that thorn? What is that fortune teller like? I love how we first need to understand her in order to be able to understand what the hell that prediction meant.

For the rest of the episode, it was excellent build-up. The thing with this episode was that we got to see the characters in an off-day, when they’re trying to become an astronaut, but instead trying to settle down. Here, everyone is looking for a house, getting used to their new country, attending a party. Now this is how you flesh out characters: show them in different situations so that they can show off their different sides.

We’re also getting a few more glimpses of the new characters to be added to this series, but this episode mostly was about the old cast. Hinting that they’ve got a few nice back-stories coming up. Seriously, this pacing would drive me crazy if the source material wasn’t so good though. Imagine sitting through this pacing with bad characters who constantly get on your nerves? It’s a good thing that this show has an awesome cast that makes every minute worth watching here.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Time for this show to catch up on some of the developments for the characters that are going to be important for the new arc: the one woman who has previously had no background, plus the guy who will be the instructor for the main cast. Both developments that were really welcome. Yet again this show proves that it can be amazing when it just picks a character and somehow gives this one a memorable backstory.

Beyond that there were lots of small moments, like with Serika and her family, Kenji and how he analyzed that strange message that both he and Mutta got, it’s great to see some old faces back again and even some of the new characters who didn’t get any attention look really interesting to watch and I can’t wait before they too can get their own bits in the spotlights.

Oh and it’s been a while since Mutta made me laugh as much as what he did here. It’s both a combination of how he couldn’t be funny when Hibito’s life was on the line, and that this episode was just that hilarious. He did not have many jokes, but the ones he had made me laugh uncontrollably. I especially liked how he just went ahead and dressed as silly as possible, now that he was in astronaut jumpsuit anyway.

Also, about Ena: she has four siblings, and even the youngest is an adult. More series should do that!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

After what feels like months of watching Hibot struggle for his life, we finally get a “normal” episode of Space Brothers. For the series’ standards, it is an uneventful episode. It’s meant to build up for later, and introduce the upcoming arc, which will focus on Mutta again as he travels to the USA in order to meet the top astronauts out there. A teaser line-up showed quite a few different characters, so that really sounds promising here!

In the meantime they also took their chance to give Sharon some character with her husband. They’re two people with a great passion for watching the starts that came together. It’s a nice little detail, but nothing more. What caught my eye the most about this episode was how she reacted when she learned what Hibito went through: they didn’t provide the full details for the fear of confusion.

Still, this series has a habit of a lot of dead very inspiring people. There’s Brian, then there is Sharon’s husband, and didn’t Serika’s father also die? Death plays a very big role in this series, but in a different way from normal. And the thing is that I keep thinking that this will be some hint for the future, but in the end everyone manages to survive.. It’s quite annoying, but well played from the creators. Just know that you can’t keep pulling stuff like this…

Also, did they spell Nanba Mutta as “Namba Mutta”? Is that his official English spelling? It’s a bit weird to have that ‘m’ there in Romanji.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Here is a question: how do you best recommend this series? I mean, it’s absolutely fantastic and it has some of the best writing out there, but it will be incredibly long. For people who have no life it will be easy to check out, and I think students also can find the time to sit down and watch. But what about the people who don’t have a lot of free time or patience? I mean, I can only handle this series in my life because there is only one episode coming out each week. What’s the best way to make this huge length of 100 episodes lose its intimidation?

I mean really: this series deserves to be watched. This episode actually brought tears to my eyes with its charms. The scene in which Mutta and Hibito talked to each other again had so much build-up behind it. In the past arc, Mutta only did one thing. But the past episodes made sure to put so much meaning into that little action of his. This episode then really took its time to show their conversation, skipping away the time delay for storytelling conveniences, while acknowledging that it’s still there.

Also, a small detail: when was the last time in which we saw a small child who was still changing his teeth? Yes, it’s small, but I really appreciate the detail that this show put into it. Every single one of those details shapes the characters, and this show does it better than any other anime currently airing.

Also, the comedy is back again. I sure missed it. But I love how this show can pull a joke when you don’t expect it. Buddy in particular was hilarious in this episode, with both his memories of Brian, and his reaction to Damian’s state.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

At the start of the episode, Hibito only had 8 minutes of oxygen left. The oxygen ran out at the 17 minute mark. Substracting from that the 3 minutes of recap and opening, about five minutes of a flashback. And then you come awfully close to going through the actual time that Hibito went through. In real time! That was bloody intense.

I really thought that the creators would end up killing off Hibito, but the build-up was perfect: his rescue is very believable in the end. In the end what saved him was that one of the buggies was nearby. The creators pulled a few tricks, but having the Brian arrive at the last moment… thanks to all that build-up it got away with it.

The detail I probably loved the most here was the way in which there is no wind on the moon, so tracks don’t get erased. I mean, the last episode was great because we got to see a souvenir that Brian Jay left. This time though, we also got to see his footprints that brought him there. It’s a small detail, but so powerful, considering that he died afterwards.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Holy crap, Space Brothers, what are you doing to me?

Oh my god, the cliff-hangers just get more and more aggravating with this series, especially now that Hibito’s life is on the line. And here this episode comes and makes things even worse. Not by picking the cheesy route by making things escalate even further. No, Space Brothers is evil. It uses the fact that it takes twenty minutes for a buggy to arrive at his place. And puts in another Brian reference at the end of the episode. Holy crap, you are so evil, space brothers.

Also, I didn’t think it was possible, but it happened: Space Brothers will continue past 50 episodes! In fact, it’s getting moved to a Saturday evening timeslot. That’s prime time there! I don’t know who the producers are who made this possible, but whoever you are: you rock! Heck, this means that there is a very good possibility that this series will end up with a hundred episodes. And it already was one of the best of the airing series when it started! I can’t believe that there will be another series with that kind of length, that isn’t a shounen series.

The disadvantage will be that it’s a very intimidating series to watch. But heck, 100 episodes of Space Brothers, consistently delivering heart-warming and nail-biting episodes. This will make sure that the creators can really take their time. The danger of dragging on of course still remains, but I think that this has been wonderfully balanced so far. Even this episode: the reason why it rocked was because it kept dragging on the fate of our two astronauts. That’s how you make use of slow pacing. This is not like the series is padded for the sake of padding, it really adds something.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Damn you Space Brothers and your cliff-hangers! Seriously, it’s been a while since I’ve watched such addictive ones. You can see them from miles ahed, but just keep hoping that the show will extend a little bit further, or that by some stroke of miracle there is a double episode this week or something. One point of criticism though: if you want to retain tension, don’t name your episodes “80 minutes left to live”. Just sayin’…

And seriously, how little of Mutta has there been during the past two weeks. He only appeared at the end of the episode for a very small, but very significant role. I really like how he instantly realized that Hibito would try to make his way out of the cave. We also saw a completely different Mutta than usual. For the past two weeks, all silliness has been removed from this series. Normally this is like signing a series’ death warrant. Here though, it fleshes out the characters even more. This episode still had me at the edge of my seat from start to finish.

What I also really like about this episode… they revealed that Brian Jay had an older brother. I’m not sure whether it’s my memory being buggy again, or whether they really saved that revelation for this episode. But still: 30 seconds was enough to create yet another really interesting character in this series. As if the series didn’t already have enough of them!
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

I had been spoiled about the cliff-hanger of this episode (seriously, try to keep things like that out of the shoutbox; you know who you are…), but neverthelesss. : what an episode. And to think: this airs on sunday morning. Think of all the traumatized kids here. I mean, nobody died yet, but still, this was heavy stuff here. Also, an entire episode in which Mutta didn’t appear.

Here, you can really see the benefit of realism. You have series in which characters have all their bones in their bodies broken, limbs cut off, or cough up blood like crazy. But in this series, you really fear for the characters’ lives due to how meticulous it has been in portraying its characters: they feel real, making any danger to them so much more tangible. Especially since this episode also was a big chunk of atmosphere of Hibito trying to save both himself and his partner, all the while that this episode kept dropping hints that his oxygen tank was about to burst.

And it did, while both of them were still far from being saved. Heck, how long is Hibito going to be able to survive like this? And this brings me back to an awful feeling that I’ve had since this series took so much time into building up Hibito’s launch. I originally thought that something would just go wrong there, but heck. Are the creators seriously planning to kill off Hibito? Holy crap man. I mean, I can see the creators actually go through with that with all of the build-up they’ve done!

And I’m already going to give a warning for next week: really try to keep spoilers to a minimum there. Something tells me that that is an episode you do not want to be spoiled about…
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

We’re only eight episodes into the year, and I’ve already found a very big contender for the best OP of 2013. Holy crap, the new OP for this series is amazing. When it finished it took me about half a minute before I managed to control my self to stop laughing.

Beyond that, we’ve finally arrived at the final quarter of Uchuu Kyoudai. It was a delight as usual to watch, but the most interesting were two of the developments that happened in it. Most importantly, the cliff-hanger in which Hibito accidentally raced off a cliff and will very likely be in a lot of trouble for the next episodes. My guess will be that the next few episodes will focus on this, while Mutta and the others prepare for their trip to space. But then?

You see, the thing is that Mutta still is quite far from being an astronaut. Sure, he’ll get there, but we’re a few years further down the line before he gets to move into space. The creators will probably show some conclusion about Azuma, but are the creators really going to skip a year around that point? Would be awesome for the character-development.

Meanwhile, I loved Nasuda’s analogy about the kanji for “Person”. Not just its direct meaning, but also how it got used afterwards. That lead to some very fluid animation afterwards, by the way, when Murasaki came and shook everyone’s hand. The lecture that followed later in the episode also was just hilarious. In any case: this episode confirmed that this series will set a very high standard for the rest of the series this year to follow.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

This episode… the creators actually succeeded in making it feel so unreal. The whole point of this episode was to let everything sink in, but really: if you skipped 20 episodes and just went to this episode, the outcome wouldn’t surprise you in the slightest. This show just succeeded in making me incredibly happy that all of them managed to make it. That is SO hard to do.

One thing I do hope is that one of the future episodes will explain why Mutta got hired. I mean, we have enough hints: he’s incredibly perceptive, he holds people together, he’s very social, he’s Hibito’s older brother, but I wonder what sealed the deal. This episode showed that it can answer questions that it asked months ago with Ya-san’s little comment.

And after all this time, the humour of this series still is rock-solid. I loved how the creators used Apo in the middle of that nerve-wrekcing speech that Mutta had to give in front of the press. But also Ya-san’s comments about Serika were hilarious. It has never been explicitly said that other people knew about Mutta’s crush, even though it’s obvious. This just was the perfect time to show this. “Now the entire country knows!”
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)