I guess we can’t truly escape the beach/pool episode curse, doesn’t matter what anime we see featuring high school kids these days. As such, we have a beach episode with girls in bikinis and boys (briefly) having a hot for each other in a show that clearly doesn’t need ones. I must say that the sheer commitment for Kanata no Astra to embrace its anime tropes is something worth… pointing out for. I was expecting that the journey gets grimmer the more they go, so this Paradise planet/ island really caughts me by surprise, not in a good way. The drama in these two episodes, as a result, isn’t about men vs nature but more about the dynamic between team members themselves and their relatives back in their home planet. In a way, episode 5 is the first time we get a perspective outside of these kids and head towards their parents during the search for their lost kids. They are in a real bind as well as they are considering to go through the process of declaring them legally deceased. Except from Aries’s Mom who opposes the idea, the others are composed, too composed, in fact. There’s certainly something beneath the surface regarding (some of) the parents here, and with many of them have high social status (Ulgar’s dad is a vice-president, Luca’s dad is an infamous senator, Yun-hua’s mom a famous singer, and so on), they certainly can pull something as big as sending their kids for experiments, but for what goals?
As far as this two episodes’ main conflict concerns, it’s a pretty solid development in my book. The gist of this conflict revolves around Ulgar and Luca, as Ulga realizes the latter is a son of the man he’s after. Ulga has all the motives to kill Luca to revenge for his brother’s death, but he gets sent off when Luca quite literally reveals himself. Now, I didn’t see the secret behind Luca’s identity coming but it’s a welcome one. Even more than his sexual ambigious, his revelation also touches on his issues with his family (another kid joins the block). These backstories from both Ulgar and Luca do a pretty good job of strengthening their personality and make their bond even stronger. In terms of fleshing out the cast through internal conflict I have no complaints whatsoever.
As Kanata realizes, one of the common grounds between our team members is that most of them being neglected by their parents, and with the first proper introduction of the parents side I am more certain now that the conflicts between the kids and their parents is going to be the main overarching theme of Kanata no Astra. The only one member that doesn’t fit that pattern so far is Aries, whom gives off the wrong vibe for me behind her cheerful personality (manga readers please don’t spoil). Consider Kanata no Astra’s tendency to embrace anime tropes, that she turns out to be someone more sinister than her appearance is a big possibility. The last episode ends on a cliffhanger again with “is this one a betrayer” and frankly it’s a cheap tactic to me. There’s still plenty of fun so far for the kids and their trip. So far, Kanata no Astra remains a not-perfect-but-always-fascinating journey. It serves reasonably well as a mystery, and it does a decent job of giving its cast the moments when it counts, but the weak humor and the over-reliance on anime formula brings the show down a notch for me
Not going to spoil anything, but will point out a couple things in the episodes that hint at what is going on.
1) Human Genome Management Project. What is it meant to do (we don’t know yet)? It could be a red herring, but it seems odd to bring up and note that Luca’s dad was the leader against it. Also something about illegal campaign donations.
2) Yunhua and her mom have a mole on the exact same spot on their faces. Not even identical twins, who have the exact same DNA, experience this. I have two cousins that are twins, and the mole on one’s arm is the only way I can tell them apart.
3) Zack mentions that his dad and Quitterie’s mom are working on memory transfer technology.
4) Some of the parents seem oddly eager to declare their children deceased. Specifically, only Aries’ mom and the woman to the left of her seemed to be still concerned about the kids.
From previous episodes, we got some insight into Yunhua’s, Zack’s, and Quitterie’s upbringing. In the latest episode we also learned why Ulgar hates his dad and Luca’s similar position. We don’t have any insight into the other kids yet, but we have enough clues between the history of these five and the four clues dropped in these two episodes to figure out the “whydunnit”.
this seems pretty spoilerish tbh and you should have kept it to yourself. I haven’t read the manga but I can pretty much piece together the plot.
Trust me, after this, it gets really, REALLY good, and you’ll get what you want soon enough.
The tsunami wave for me was an excellent payoff to the beach episode. Well, it’s a personal thing, but tsunamis terrify me and seeing it after the ideallic beach episode fun was a sharp reminder, that there are no paradise planets.
My main problem with this series is how scripted their luck feels. Like this time again there is some mega tsunami and not only were the two remaining characters not knocked out or submerged they also both managed to cling to the one single tree/thing sticking out of the water in a radius of like a hundred kilometers. It was the same with all the other planets they have visited so far. I try to ignore it (with moderate success) since the main plot intrigues me though. I really want to know what’s up with all these mysteries going on.