Writing this made me realize that the soccer World Cup is being held again this year. You’d think I’d realize sooner with how France is when it comes to soccer …
Anyway, Uchuu Kyoudai has been around for more or less 2 years so I figure you already know what it is all about. That and its English title “Space Brothers” kinda give it away too. Either way, SpaceBros tells the story of two brothers, Nanba Mutta and Nanba Hibito whose dream is to go into space together. However, life happens and Hibito, the younger brother, goes there first. Will Mutta follow into his footsteps or not?
This is only why I started though, the reason why I stayed is because of the story. I’ll be honest though, at times it was boring. It always is, after 99 episodes of cute rivalry and endless training and stuff, it can become boring.
But the ride was nice.
I had no idea that becoming an astronaut was so hard. In retrospect, I should have known but the point is, I liked the fact they showed us just how hard it was and how long and the number of things you have to know and be able to do just to go into space.
Space Bros is the kind of anime that actually teaches you stuff and anime like that are always the kind I like.
As I said though, it sometimes became boring. It was training after training, introducing character after character and you often got lost. They should have cut a bit on the training part and the introductions I think and focused on advancing the story a bit more.
Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it, and I still think that the trainings were an important part of the story but toward the end, it started to be annoying. It gets even more annoying when you actually have finished the anime and seen the end and discovered how unsatisfactory an ending it was.
Let’s talk about that ending shall we? It was bad. Awful. Not an ending at all. It didn’t even make me want to read the manga because we had 99 episodes to somehow wrap up a story. And it didn’t even give proper closure. I feel cheated.
I am thankful for the characters though, Space Bros would not have been even remotely bearable without its characters. Big props to Mutta obviously because Mutta was so stupid he was awesome. And cute. And interesting too.
Hibito reminded me a lot of my own overachieving, confident and carefree little brother. It made him a little less likeable, because I obviously don’t need to see my brother on-screen on top of seeing him at home.
The whole cast of characters actually was interesting. They all had their strange little quirks, even the most normal ones weren’t as normal as it seemed. Quite a nice cast of character. Too bad they didn’t get any closure either.
I still think it was a great story, but the execution not so much. It is quite educational but at times also quite boring, thank god for Mutta for providing comical relief.
Recommended, obviously, because it has more value than it seems at first glance. Good luck though, 99 episodes is damn long.
