KANATA NO ASTRA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionKanata no Astra

REVIEWS

• 

  planetJane

  75/100
  Through hardship to the stars.

  All of my reviews contain __spoilers __for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

  ---

  Joining alongside The Magnificent Kotobuki and its seasonal contemporary Machikado Mazoku as unlikely 2019 anime success stories, Astra Lost In Space is refreshingly straightforward to get your head around. Astra enters the scene as a survival series, our protagonists--a gaggle of high schoolers--are set to attend a literal space camp on a field trip. This is the sort of thing that meshes well with the near-future setting, and all goes well for about five minutes before a giant ball of light appears out of nowhere and teleports them countless light years away. They’re stranded in the depths of deep space, but happen to spot a derelict ship floating nearby, which they survive by commandeering, and dub The Astra, the show’s namesake.

  This is the thrust of Astra’s first half. Our protagonists include Kanata, an athlete with aspirations of being a starship captain and a past haunted by an accident on a different field trip many years ago. Aries, a ditzy heterochromiac with photographic memory and a big heart. Quitterie and her sister Funicia, respectively an aloof popular girl type and a child with a handpuppet who she sometimes speaks her mind through, and a number of others.

  

  (Kanata is a rowdy fellow)

  Committed to surviving in space and hopefully finding their way home, the cast is the highlight here. The show thrives on interpersonal dynamics. So when twists small and big like respectively: the unassuming and arty Luca turning out to be intersex, or Ulgar (who developed a somewhat infamous reputation as “Sasuke in space”) turning out to know how to use a gun (a thing presented as having been outlawed for years) and trying to kill Luca due to a tangle of political intrigue involving their respective families, they actually matter. It’s also why you care when they manage to survive each and every brush with disaster they face. From plant monsters early on to having their ship be rendered non-functional, potentially stranding them on an alien planet still well far from home, during the start of the series’ second half.

  Going back to the aforementioned twist, family in general is a theme that comes up a lot in Astra. Almost every single member of the cast--with the notable exception of Aries--has some kind of issue with their parents. The extremely shy Yunhua, whose mother treats her like dirt, and Ulgar, whose father says to his face that he wishes he’d died instead of his late older brother, get the worst of this, but it’s present all around. To put it in the show’s own words:

  

  What initially seems like a coincidence turns out to be the show’s grand reveal. We found out in the second half that--again excepting Aries--the entirety of the Astra’s crew are clones of their own parents. Something both pointedly illegal in-universe and, when we’re given the why (they all want to perform an experimental consciousness-transfer procedure when their clones come of age, so they can effectively live forever), despicably immoral on its face.

  Here is where things get a bit complicated. Astra’s main theme seems to be that family is defined not by blood, but by who is closest to you. This is in of itself a good--even great--lesson that many people need to hear. The way Astra handles this gets a bit...peculiar. For one, Aries turns out to be the clone of someone who’s not her mother. There’s an entire subplot about royalty (in space!) here not worth going into, but she’s the clone of the late princess of a monarchial zone on the crew’s home planet. Charce, the crew’s biologist and pretty boy, turns out to be the clone of said zone’s monarch, and the reason the weird light ball abducted them all to deep space in the first place. You see, excepting Aries’ mother, the parents of the entire crew have conspired to strand their children in deep space to conveniently get rid of them, now that cloning is illegal, a recent development in the show’s world.

  It is, to be sure, a bit contrived, but it at least ties back in with the show’s main thematics. The other grand reveal is much less relevant. I could summarize it--it involves a covered-up migration from Earth to the crew’s home planet, which turns out to be also called Astra, a faked century of history, and a half dozen other things--but it’s genuinely just not relevant.

  

  (Yeah whatever)

  Nor is the satellite character, Pollina, they recover from a stasis pod on one of their planetary stops who exposits all this. It rather seems just like another mystery for the sake of having another one that’s a bit harder to guess at than the clone thing (it’s not exactly telegraphed, but you can see it coming if you’re observant).

  That’s a writing flaw, to be sure, but it’s one that seems to be inherited from Astra’s primary influences. A lot of the show, from the overall plot, to aesthetics, to the weird structure, to even the fact that it’s explicitly pointed out that the characters all speak English, feel inherited from 20th century American sci-fi. If it’s not a direct line, it’s one passed down by Astra’s more immediate likely predecessors, the scores of sci fi anthology manga that have run for years. Many of which are rather obscure in the west.

  Does this excuse this problem? Not entirely. Certainly, as the show closes in on its finale, it sometimes approaches near-Code Geass levels of defiance of conventional narrative logic, but it never really flies entirely off the rails either. The show manages to keep an at least mostly level head on its shoulders, even through all the bizarreness (and, thanks to the localization team, bad puns).

  What does predispose a more forgiving attitude is, well, no one actually bites it in Astra. It’d have been extremely easy to have one or more crew members die--especially the traitorous Charce--but despite all the death flags that pop up, everyone actually makes it out of Astra alive. Only Kanata is even permanently harmed--he loses his right hand in the penultimate episode.

  The show ends with a timeskip to a few years in the future, with all the characters (sans the villains, who are given their just desserts) living out their lives happily. The show even pairs up two of its couples.

  

  (Maybe three? You go, Ulgar.)

  In this light, it’s hard to fault the show too hard for its flaws. If anything, they might make the series even more entertaining for a certain kind of anime viewer. There really is nothing quite like the honest-to-god fact that the last episode of the show is called “Friend Ship”. That the main plot moves along at a nice clip, the character dynamics are so entertaining, and the show ends on a warm note, all mix together to make this a solid little series.

  Were this last year, where even comparative failures were often wildly interesting, something that’s merely solid might not be of note, but 2019 has been a rather slow year for the medium, even if the summer season has been the arguable highlight of it, shows like Astra can get a little more shine than they otherwise might, and maybe we should all be thankful for that. After all, it’s true what they say. If you shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you may land among the stars.

  ---

  And if you liked this review, why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?

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• 

  Aniosophy

  90/100
  This HS field trip in space has absolutely no right to be this good, everything about this is extremely interesting

  

  -
  Bravo👏👏👏 This anime to me is the definition of the phrase “go above and beyond their expectations” because god damn for a show that I was initially really dragging my heels to start because of how cliche the first episode started, by the end of this series I actually found myself being impressed with how neatly this story was able to tie up all of its loose strings by the end, and was actually able to tell a complete story within just 12 episode (which nowadays is actually kind of rare).

  

  -
  Everything about this series just really impressed me more and more the longer it went on, from how much development each of the main cast gets throughout the series, to the deep and actually complex story this show portrays, to the moments where characters actions actually have long-lasting consequences, just everything about this show just really impressed me by the end. Sure you could say they cheated a bit by making the first and last episode almost an hour each, but at the end of the day this story was able to be told within just 12 episodes (a single anime season) without it feeling at all rushed or needlessly drawn out throughout the entire season, so for that alone this show receives a lot of praise from me.

  In fact, now that I think about it this might be the best single-season anime from this entire year so far, because everything else that was good this year was either a continuation of an existing property or took at least two anime seasons to tell its story, The only thing that even comes close in my mind is “Dumbbell Nan-Kilo Moteru?” but even that show really didn’t carry the same level of weight to story like this series, maybe that will change during the fall season, but right now to me this is honestly the best 12/13 episode series from this entire year.

  

  -
  Now without really getting into spoilers because I want as many people as possible to read this post to hopefully convince them to watch this amazing series, while I did in the past joke about how this series might as well be called “Plot Twist: The Animation” because of how many GIANT revelations happen during this series, overall if you were to watch this series altogether after it aired I don’t think you would actually notice how many times new information comes to light, because of how well the story just unfolds at the most opportune time.

  I know I already said this but the balancing act alone of needing to balance between unfolding the story at the right place to make it feel not to fast or to slow, while also giving each of your characters enough time to develop, while also needing to make sure the story still feels interesting enough to keep your viewer captivated, is a really hard task for many series to tackle (let alone in just 12 episodes) so the fact that this series was able to accomplish all of that, is why I am going to give this series a 90/100, because other than the real cliche opening at the beginning of the series (and the small cliche moments that are sprinkled throughout) I cannot think of any other reason to deduct points from this series.

  Everything from the story, the characters, the animation, the music, and the way it all just comes together, in the end, is why I feel this series deserves a 90/100, if you have any other flaws you can point out in the comments to give me a reason to lower the score go for it, but for now, this is where this anime is going to stay in my library😅 If you have or haven’t watched their series yet I hope you enjoyed it just as much as me😊

  
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• 

  raulzitosvm

  70/100
  Um anime meio esquecido mas que vale a pena dar uma chance

  Ok, nesta review irei abordar as coisas positivas e negativas (em minha opinião) a respeito de Kanata no Astra, um anime meio que deixado de lado no ano passado.

  

  Gostaria de começar comentando um pouco sobre como a premissa é original, uns brothers vão para um acampamento em outro planeta e ficam perdidos e tem que voltar para a casa. Eu realmente achei bem original.
  O primeiro episódio tem 47 minutos e é uma boa introdução, apresenta os personagens e mostra como a história irá decorrer.

  Os personagens:
  Acredito que os personagens sejam realmente interessantes, cada um é uma pessoas diferente com suas características únicas, da pra perceber isso, todos possuem potencial para uma boa desconstrução.

  

  Os primeiros episódios:

  Como já disse, o primeiro episódio é uma boa introdução, apresenta os elementos da série e seus personagens, porém, depois daí, acho que começa a desandar um pouco. Depois do primeiro episódio o anime começa a ter uns conflitos super fáceis de se resolver, sem consequência e com muitas, mas muitas conveniências. Eu entendo e concordo que o anime deve trabalhar seus personagens, porém, para que isso ocorresse em Kanata no Astra de maneira interessante, seriam necessários mais episódios. Os primeiros dramas são bem ruinzinhos e chatos, não da tempo para algo ser realmente trabalhado com os personagens, o anime começou a desandar bastante.
  Os primeiros planetas até que são bem criativos, mas como já disse, os conflitos são resolvidos com muitas conveniências e de maneira muito fácil.

  A atmosfera:

  Kanata no Astra é muito colorido, não combina muito com o que o anime quer passar, tipo, os mano tão perdido no espaço, mas mó feliz e de boa. Pode até ser justificado pela personalidade do Kanata, e pelo fato de que são adolescentes divertidos, mas ficou colorido demais, as cores dos cabelos dos personagens são muito contrastantes, acho que poderiam deixar o clima mais tenso para dar a sensação de que eles realmente estão perdidos no espaço, não numa férias divertida. Como podemos ver nas imagens que coloquei anteriormente, o anime é muito colorido.

  O decorrer da história:

  Depois de certos episódios, mas precisamente, no 9° episódio, o anime começa a ficar realmente bom e interessante. Os plot twists começam a vir a tona e de maneira bem colocada, são MUITOS plots, mas até que da para digerir bem. O anime toma novas proporções e explica coisas que no começo achamos só uma falha no roteiro ou uma conveniência muito forte na verdade são coisas que realmente fazem sentido para o plot e se encaixam perfeitamente na história.

  O final:

  Eu diria que o final é legal e prazeroso, o espectador queria ver um final assim. É bem legal quando mostra os personagens depois de velhos e o que aconteceu com eles, é bem divertido.

  Acho que é basicamente isso, para resumir:

  Pontos Fortes:
  O final
  Os personagens
  O enredo

  Pontos fracos:
  Dramas mal trabalhados
  Conflitos resolvidos de forma muito simples
  Conveniências demais

  Acho que o que Kanata no Astra ficaria realmente muito bom se tivesse mais episódios, acho que isso é o principal, para que os dramas fossem trabalhados de maneira correta e para que os plots não ficassem tão rushados, dessem um tempo a mais para digeri-los. (Embora eu já ache o final bem legal)

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