Mutta’s trip to America continues to have some really fun and engaging material to it.
What They Say:
Mutta has arrived in America, but he’s off to a rocky start with Hibito. Meanwhile, his future as an astronaut is in jeopardy because the headbutt incident has been brought to JAXA’s attention.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The problems that exist between the brothers certainly weren’t a surprise but it’s also rather good to see that they figured things out in the way they did relatively quickly. There’s only so much time you want to spend on it, but you don’t want to rush it either. The encounter between them helped to cement a few things without really fixing all of it, making it so that the show and Mutta can progress now that he’s at NASA with Hibito and getting a look at everything. Amusingly, while he’s exploring NASA and all it offers, his fate is being decided back at JAXA in a big way as the next round is about to be decided. While it is serious business, it’s good to see that there was some levity to it as well from the men involved.
Mutta getting to see where his brother trains and works is pretty fun, especially since a few culturalisms get in that makes him laugh when used with his brother. The appellation of Samurai Boy for Hibito continues to amuse him but there are simple enough reasons for it. What happens along the way though is that Mutta really begins to understand why his brother has succeeded in so many ways over the years, especially in America. When he sees him on a late night show talking about the program and having fun with it, it really does make a change in his thinking. Of course, Hibito also knows how to tweak his brother just right and makes a few sharp statements about him during the interview which will just drive Mutta to near insanity, but you have to wonder just how big of an impact they’ll have in the end.
Mutta’s enjoying the trip overall, but with word about how his former boss may have made up stories and altered true ones to the JAXA officials, he’s feeling like he’s going to be taken out of the picture now and it doesn’t exactly depress him but it definitely takes the wind out of his sails. While we see how he deals with it, we also see the movements made back in Japan with his other coworkers that will help to bolster his case and it’s really good to see that these kinds of things are followed up on rather than just taking the director’s view of what happened. But it’s also something that ties heavily into the past as the man investigating the story has a connection to the two brothers from when they were children visiting JAXA. It may be a forced connection, but it also shows how things you do at any age have an impact throughout your life that you may not even know about.
In Summary:
Space Brothers provides its challenges for Mutta here and seeing how he copes with it while being unable to do anything about it is good. Discovering it as he did and knowing that anything he says won’t make a difference, he kind of sleepwalks through part of his tour of the facilities, but there’s still a lot to take in and he can’t not let it go past him. The first half does some really fun stuff in showing how Hibito has managed to make a name for himself in America and among those he works with while making plenty of friends. The second half shifts gears to something almost a little more somber but it’s more just heartwarming as it progresses and you get to the truths of the matter and see that it won’t go unnoticed. It makes you feel tingly watching it unfold and as the real stories continue to come out.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
