Uchuu Kyoudai – 28

「ドーハのきせき」 (Dōha no Kiseki)
“Miracle of Doha”

Brotherly love has always been one of the central themes of Uchuu Kyoudai and this is certainly an episode which highlights that fact. Mutta is not alone in having been bullied for next to no discernible reason, and he’s probably also not alone in trying to keep his brother out of it. Rather than tell Hibito where his injuries came from, he pulls the classic tactic of claiming an overabundance of lamp posts. ‘People who are truly strong don’t need to fight,’ he says. I’m sure a lot of people can understand his sentiments of not wanting to get Hibito involved (although perhaps for slightly different reasons than Hibito apparently being too strong). I can also respect his choice of pacifism, though some might argue that standing up for himself might well have got them to leave him alone. But for some – Mutta included – it’s far easier to take a beating yourself and do nothing about it than it is to watch someone you care about be subjected to the same treatment. It was pretty awesome to see Mutta finally take a stand on Hibito’s behalf where he had been unwilling to do it for himself.

But perhaps more impressive was that Hibito respected Mutta enough to heed his words – to hold back from fighting and search for another option despite how much he obviously wanted to take things into his own hands and fight the bullies. He took the only really logical route when dealing with UFOs – to try and fake it, even going so far as to stay up late every night and hold up Mutta’s birthday party to finish his hoax in secret. It was rather an impressive fake too – he should’ve taken a photo instead of video footage, done some fiddling in photoshop and it would have been totally believable! Remove some string, add some blur, voila! The footage may not have been what saved Mutta from the bullies in the end, but the effort Hibito went to and the respect he showed by listening to Mutta’s admonishments must’ve helped a lot to secure it has his most prized possession. It’s not often that someone will go to such lengths to try and get you out of trouble when a potentially easier (but undesirable) route is available.

There’s one other major thought I had this episode – why are they showing us the whole space procedure now? I don’t mean the broadcasts explaining how the launch procedure will work, but rather the extended sequence in which we witnessed what will happen with the craft while they’re in orbit. Aren’t we going to be seeing this in action in just a couple of episodes? I’ve always felt that Uchuu Kyoudai does nothing without a purpose – will the actual procedure happen differently? Could something go horribly wrong? With all the talk about preparation for death and the build-up towards the launch, I can’t shake a small feeling of worry. Let’s just hope I’m imagining things!

tl;dr: @MoombaDS – Who needs real UFOs when you have Hibito to provide such awesome fakes? #SpaceBros

Random thoughts:

• Sharon may have seen a UFO, but sad to say, I’ve never actually seen one.
• They’re going to gattai in space! Although I know what that means, it’s a word I’ve never heard outside of mecha shows and thus conjured images of super robot transforming rockets!
• This appears to be that gang thing in Japan where they take everyday words and write them out in complex kanji so it looks cool.

Full-length images: 04, 14.

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