Japanese Title: Uchuu Kyoudai

 

Similar: Moonlight Mile

A Place Farther than the Universe

 

Watched in: Japanese

Genre: Comedy Slice of Life

Length: 99 episodes

 

Positives:

• Knowledgeable about the space programs

Negatives:

• Atrocious directing
• Flatline pace from start to finish
• Moving manga

(Request an anime for review here.)

I have wanted to watch Space Brothers since I started writing reviews. Who hasn’t dreamt of being an astronaut or travelling the stars to expand humanity’s horizon? I kept it on the backlog as one to look forward to amongst the long series, something to pick me up – an old reliable – after clearing through a stack of lesser anime. Several readers also requested this for review. Imagine my disappointment to be met with this.

Space Brothers is about the process to becoming an astronaut. It follows Mutta, a recently furloughed automobile engineer in search of a new purpose. Meanwhile, his younger brother Hibito is on top of the world, or rather, out of this world as a leading astronaut set for the moon. When Mutta’s parents sign him up for the space program behind his back, he now has opportunity to fulfil the promise made by the siblings as children. They could both go to space together.

When I say Space Brothers is about the astronaut process, I mean it. This anime does deliver on that promise. We see every step of the rigorous journey from the application to the interviews to the many training programs before one even has a hope of final selection for the rocket crew. Yep, you could spend years preparing, practicing, and training only to end up on the bench as everyone else watches Earth shrink to a marble from the window. Space Brothers does a good job of detailing the process while injecting a personal touch from the characters.

It sounds as if Space Brothers has succeeded in its mission, so how could I possibly be disappointed?

The execution of this project has resulted in the most boring anime experience of my life.

A long series that takes its time isn’t an issue for me – Legend of the Galactic Heroes is my favourite anime after all. However, it needs to justify the extra time taken. Space Brothers does not do that by any measure when this extra time goes to filler. Every shot is slow. The shot should cut, but will instead hang for a half or full second or even two (a long time in editing). How many times do I have to watch someone wake up, brush their teeth, and eat breakfast? I have lost count at the number of slow pans across a character with no animation.

Speaking of. Screenshots of Space Brothers look fine. Animation of Space Brothers looks the same. There is no animation. The mouths flap at least. When someone walks, the camera will switch to a medium shot to cut off the legs (no animation needed there) and bob a still image of the character up and down. This is moving manga. And filler.

Here’s what you do: get a camera and a copy of the manga. Now slowly pan the camera as you read panels through the viewfinder. Oh, you finished reading the panel already? Tsk, tsk, don’t be so hasty. You must finish panning the camera first or you will break the “immersion” of this man’s career. That’s the Space Brothers experience.

Speaking of again. Read the great manga instead (no camera). You will clear the full series (the anime covers half of the volumes) in a third of the time it would take to finish the anime. The anime also manages to make every character boring and none of the foreigners, of which there are many, seem very foreign.

Space Brothers has to have the worst anime direction I’ve ever seen. There is no craft, no effort whatsoever in this directing.

The acting is good, but the script lacks soul. It’s flat, likely a symptom of the bad directing. The soundtrack seems to have maybe three songs, each overused to death and made more noticeable when that damned camera is still slowly panning after the dialogue ends! I swear the sound editor turns up the volume on that one “idle’ song just to drive you mad during these moments.

I can’t even recommend it for the good parts in between the filler. There are no good parts. This awful directing is everywhere. Across the 99 episodes, I recall no tension, not even during the one tense moment.

Do not watch Space Brothers. You could become an astronaut with the willpower required to make it through this series.

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: Read the manga. I cannot recommend the Space Brothers anime with how much it disrespects your time.

(Request reviews here. Find out more about the rating system here.)

 

Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive: None

Negative: