The last room of their testing experience is upon them and it’s going to be a doozy.
What They Say:
The third exam will take two weeks. Mutta and the other candidates are transported via sealed bus to a large, barren n facility. Then they are led to an area that is known as the last room.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the previous episode playing a good bit of psychological games with all the participants, especially with how it rough in another group just to see how they react to different personalities in a small confined space, Space Brothers showed some of the varied types of testing that has to go on to find the right kind of personalities for the difficulties of space flight. It had some humor to it that work well, especially in relation to Serika, but as we see here with Mutta, it’s something that he knows he can work through and survive since Hibito did the same. Using his brother as a motivator isn’t a surprise, but it’s good to see him acknowledging that his brother did survive all of this, or some variation on it, and he should be able to do the same as well.
Their arrival at the training facility is similar to the bus in that it’s mired in mystery. They’re all lead to a place they call “the last room” where it’s their last chance to have something to eat, relax and so forth before moving on. They also have a disclaimer form that they have to sign off on and think about while watching some secret footage from a wreck that happened back in 2023 that was never shown publicly. It’s something useful to showing them the dangers, but you have to believe that those that are involved in this and have been since the start are committed and understand all of this already. But there’s also a chance that after all the training and testing that has gone on so far, feelings can change and a new element of fear has risen in them that something like this can highlight, causing them to whittle themselves off the list before anyone else has to do it.
The system they put into effect going forward from there is really interesting and pretty brutal as they set three teams of five to work together in the training portion now. They’ll be working together to go through all sorts of tests to see how they handle the stresses of the job and performance, but the brutal part is that at the end of it all, the five member team will decided as a whole which two members of the team are best suited to be astronauts. Seeing how they survive in a small space overall for a length of time, under camera view, with personalities working together and conflicting is a lot of fun. You have to feel for Mutta from the start as it seems like he’s got some trouble makers on his team, at least one of them, as Furuya just snaps at everything and “shoots straight” as he puts it. He’s such a rough personality in the group that it’s hard to see how he’s survived until this point.
In Summary:
The closed space and personality tests that get underway in these kinds of environments are endlessly fascinating to me and are the kinds of things I wish I could participate in just to see how I’d deal with it and wit the people involved. The setup for it here is a bit long in what they do, but it helps to stage things well as they get into the real meat of things, such as the math of their job and the personality conflicts and resolution that has to be dealt with. There’s also the small bit of fun that creeps in with how Mutta is still looking on lovingly at Serika – all while Serika is just trying to hide her hunger and doing it poorly. It’s cute and fun and adds some lightness to what’s going on with the more serious side of the show.
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.