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「踊る宇宙飛行士」 (Odoru Uchuuhikoushi)
“Dancing Astronaut”
In a sense, this was a somewhat touching episode to watch – seeing how much Serika cared for her father and the lengths to which she wanted to go in order to cure his illness. But at the same time, a chunk of the episode’s content felt largely unnecessary. I’ve been greatly enjoying Uchuu Kyoudai so far – and still do – but to an extent, my patience is waning. Maybe it’s because I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning (metaphorically speaking – there is only one side since I can’t phase through walls) but the opening phone-call joke with Mutta fell completely flat for me. Mostly because it feels like we’re being toyed with – I’m sure everyone involved in the production is well aware of what we want at this point and it sometimes feels like they’re going out of their way to deny us that.
Spending an entire episode on Kenji’s phone-call, while not ideal, made sense. We knew very little about his background and nothing whatsoever of his previous job. Until last episode, what he’d done between falling in love with outer space and actually taking the astronaut exams was a complete mystery, so there was actually some merit in fleshing that out a bit. But it’s completely different with Serika this week. As entertaining as it was to watch the adorable younger Serika prance about, most of the content of the episode is essentially a rehash of things the series had already told us about her in a far more succinct manner, drawn out to fill a complete episode. We already knew that Serika’s father suffered from an illness which forced him into hospital and sparked bother her desire to become an astronaut-doctor and begin writing her diaries. Frankly speaking, this episode presented us with very little in the way of additional material on top of that. It’s starting to feel unnecessarily drawn out.
I understand exactly what they’re trying to do – they want to get us more invested in the characters who are going to be continuing onwards from this point. The thing is, this has already been done extensively earlier in the series and I’m sure most of us have already become as invested in them as we’re ever going to get. I didn’t need any of these heartstring-tugging moments to make me want Serika to pass because they’d already convinced me I wanted Serika to pass long ago. We’re stalling here where we could be moving forwards. I’d be curious to know, given how well paced it’s been so far, whether this part was quite as extended in the original manga.
Next week, we may finally find out whether Mutta passes or not. Of course, we already know a chunk of the episode is going to be devoted to the other candidates, particularly those who failed, so it’s entirely possible that scene under the open sky could end up being next week’s cliff-hanger…
tl;dr: @MoombaDS – Another week, another phone-call. #SpaceBros
Random thoughts:
- Mutta was half right about them using amidakuji!
- For some reason, something about Serika’s grandparents irritates me…
- Even as a child Serika had a love for writing about food!
- Tsundere Serika?
- That flip-book was pretty cool!
Full-length images: 01, 02, 05, 14, 18, 28.
Preview
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Omake
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while not neccessary, i actually not find the wait for mutta’s result that tedious… Perhaps is because I have already waited 30+ episodes and it almost become expected to get “toyed with”… its not really a valid reason to defend what they are doing here, but being numb for the long wait had made it more bearable for me… its like getting used to getting beat up, so it feels less painful ¬_¬?
I can certainly understand that! While I may feel that we could be getting to Mutta’s results sooner and moving on with the plot, I definitely still found this episode enjoyable in itself.
And here I thought Tsurumi had written the phone numbers of all candidates on that letter last episode. ^^
i didn’t know DVD was still around in 2025…
and damn, i guess we won’t be getting Mutta’s announcement in the next episode…
i guess they’re saving for the ‘End of The Year’ bang…
the episode itself was touching , though…despite that mood-ruining dance at the end…
so next week we learn about that mizu jerk. my nipples are getting sore from all the milking.
This episode was very heartaching. ;_; Last week it was an inspirational episode, but this week it was very heart breaking. I almost teared up in this episode!
Welp, next episode is that ass. It’s obvious he won’t pass but I guess tehy’ll also tell Mutta’s fate next episode?
Also, I don’t think you should expect any fast pace in this episode. Expecting it will only lessen your enjoyment since this episode was one of the most enjoyable ones but some people disregard that because they were expecting Mutta’s result.
Well, the argument for them actually revealing Mutta’s results next week is two-fold:
1) We honestly already KNOW Mutta’s results, because if he were to fail, they’d probably have to come up with a whole new batch of candidates and go through all this all over again. So they don’t really need to spend the whole episode on it because we’ve essentially already spent 10 or so drawing it out already.
2) Next week, one of the focuses is on candidates who have failed. This of course sets up a new way to troll us, because Mutta’s answer will come packaged in with the failures. It’s going to spend most of the episode with Mutta standing in the park with Hoshika (functionally as the B plot) while cutting to Tsurumi calling the rest of the candidates, setting us up to expect failure (both because he’s the only one getting his results in person and because he’s getting his result in the Failure Episode).
So my expectation is that he gets his results at the end of the episode after a long conversation with Hoshika while we learn about the other candidates’ results first.
I thought the picture flip pages in her diary were ingenious.
Its also possible next week he gets told he did not get picked and then in another episode the person that was choosen to move on quits or backs out giving Mutta another chance.
I just want Mutta to get selected so he can maybe hook up with Serika and become a couple.
Eh, I think it added something to actually see the relationship between Serika and her father. I mean, it’s very generic to have her motivation be “my father died so I want to go to space and do research on the space station that will soon be decommissioned, dur dur”.
For me the best moments of this episode were when she eats the popsicles at the end and says the taste hasn’t changed and when she picks up her father’s books and makes the decision to become a doctor. It’s really impressive if you think about it that she stuck to that even years after her father died.
Aside from honoring her father’s memorial by becoming a doctor/astronaut, there’s no reason to send her into space to do biomedical research (despite her claims). Biomedical research is extremely expensive here on Earth, so I can’t imagine NASA commissioning an single astronaut for one limited purpose (to cure a mysterious disease) on the soon-to-be defunct ISS.
So far, they have adapted an average of 2 chapters of the manga per episode of the anime. But in the case of Kenji and Serika, theirs is only 1 chapter of the manga so, yes it’s was really drawn out.
As someone who is privledged to know the results (And who will not reveal a thing) Thanks to having 18 volumes of the Manga, I felt the pacing for this episode was spot on and in keeping with what has happened so far.
I haven’t posted my thoughts to date simply because I haven’t had the time. But the fact of the matter is, seeing the little nods to the popular culture as well as the most important elements of manned space flight has left me ever more appreciative of the series.
I stumbled across Uchuu Kyoudai more or less by accident one day while I was stationed in Japan. I was at the local lawsons station and saw that they had the manga for sale. This long 3 year ride to this point, enjoying the manga, following NASA developments, this anime, the big earthquake, everything, has left me more appreciative of the flow of the story. What is the most important aspect is Mutous growth as a character up until this point. In a sense, I think people are beginning to get a feel for what a central question is in this story, but I will go ahead and pose it:
“What is it to have “The Right Stuff”?”
In the manga and in this faithfully followed anime, we can divine our own answers but I think we all know what the biggest aspect of the right stuff is.
Thanks for continuing to cover this anime. I enjoy reading other peoples perspectives and takes on anime to date, and frankly, yours has been a very enjoyable form.
Keep up the good work. Your efforts to really describe the story on a different level than what most people would do are an excellent reflection on your dedication to making this blog an enjoyable site for people to visit and read other takes than their own.
Good to have you with us! It has certainly been a great series so far and is probably one of my favourites of the entire year despite how relatively underappreciated it seems to be in some circles. Thanks for you kind words and I’m glad you find my posts enjoyable!
I don’t mind the occasional side trip to zoom in on a secondary character… But 2 episodes in a row was too much. I would have been happier if they had combined this episode with the last one or had shown her background between episodes focused on the main plot line. So I couldn’t really enjoy this episode properly since I just wanted them to stop dragging their feet on informing Mutta.
The fact that they made 2 episodes of waiting for the results with at least 1 more to come, says that they don’t have enough material in the main plot line for where they want to end this for the number of episodes they have left. While I’m happy that this series wasn’t just a 24 episode story, there are other areas of the plot I would have preferred them to drag out.
Personally I don’t mind the wait– in fact, I was expecting it because a good storyteller always delays the climax for as long as possible. And the author of this series is quite an awesome storyteller.