With everyone gone home, Mutta starts to spend some time with Azuma.
What They Say:
Hibito has made it safely into space, and he’s on his way to the moon. Meanwhile, Mutta runs into Azuma and his family, and he decides to approach them.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Hibito firmly up in space now, events are moving pretty well down on Earth for a number of people. There’s some comedy as we see some ideas of what the JAXA director, Nasuda, is thinking (anime tie-ins, products!) as well as what’s going to come next. Mutta had some very good moments previously with Daneil Young with what may be in his future with pilot training, but the big news is that everything will be happening soon with the final decision. So much of what the main people have dealt with is getting Hibito and the crew into space. But now the decisions must be made about the next round. While Mutta is staying in Houston to deal with Apo, everyone else has gone back home to Japan, which makes his mother sad as she really, really likes all the cheap lobster.
With that in the background, we thankfully continue to get more time with Hibito since we do finally have a character in space. And Hibito is the perfect kind of spokesman as we see him doing a broadcast for his home country from the Orion where he’s showing off the crew, the ship and the experience as a whole. He’s been a good character from the start, but this humanizes him even more. That provides for some wonderful material, but it’s not all about Hibito. Mutta’s time in Houston is getting him a little closer to things, including a surprising sequence where he ends up seeing Azuma with his family in the cafeteria and spends some time with them. It’s almost surreal since you expect sparks to fly, but that’s not what Azuma is really all about.
Getting Mutta to understand Azuma a bit more is definitely important, probably for his chances to some degree though you suspect everything is already settled, but seeing him play with Azuma’s kid, spending some time talking with his wife and just watching him with his son definitely adds a new layer to things. His wife ends up giving him some ideas about what it is that really changed things in the end for Azuma, and it’s something that that makes an impact on Azuma when you get down to it as he’s trying to understand them as well. The expansion of Azuma is an obvious path for the show, giving us a better look at the man and how he views the world, his job and his family, which in turn makes things clearer for how he’ll deal with Mutta as well as Hibito when you get down to it.
In Summary:
Azuma was long expected to be a key character in this arc of the series, so having an episode that’s largely devoted to him is definitely welcome and educational about the man. Having time with his family goes a long way towards showing a different side of him but also making it clear that he is who he is, which is something that’s difficult for others to connect with. He’s hugely protective and you can see how that would have issues with an organization like NASA and what you have to do, both in space and on the ground, to promote the organization. While he dominates, we get some very good time with both Hibito and Mutta as well which makes it a very, very enjoyable episode as a lot is going on but it’s never rushed and always filling in more of the blanks.
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.
