If I’ve learned anything from doing this column and reviewing all this damn anime, it’s that a show usually establishes its rhythm fairly early on. As such, I can feel confident in predicting that, through on until to the end of its run, SPACE BROTHERS will be a solid, understated, feel-good human drama… that can get a little padded and repetitive. We’re nine episodes in and the choice to stretch this story out over 50 odd episodes is already seeming like a bad idea. If they ever scaled back on the total count, I’m sure this would be one of the first to go.
Look, I like Mutta a lot, and I like how they’re taking time to show how involved and complicated his journey to become an astronaut is. However, it’s one thing to simulate the tedium of going through a bureaucratic selection process; it’s another thing to take that simulation so far that the experience of watching the show starts to feel like you’re actually going through a job application.
I’m pointing my finger at this whole business with Mutta getting so out-of-sorts about Hibito’s will and then his parents just shrugging it off. Realistic? Sure. But it’s a non-event in the plot - - exactly the sort of thing that makes the cut just because there’s so much screen time to fill. We then have his faux-celebration party and the point is that his cohorts suspect his success is due to nepotism… and that’s a point that’s been reaffirmed many, many times already.
Look, don’t get me wrong. SPACE BROTHERS is a great show. But it’s moving about as fast as the Moon in the sky seems to.
Watch this episode, "Individual Resolve” here and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here. Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
