The Answers (Or At Least Some of Them)
Astra Lost in Space Episode 9
Bombshell after bombshell this week in Kanata no Astra. It is interesting when an actual confession and engagement between two young characters is not the biggest news in an episode. I mean normally, characters actually committing to a relationship would be an explosion worthy event, but here, amongst the opening revelations and the final reveal (both of which have been heavily telegraphed but still worked really well) Zack’s declaration that he and Quitterie were getting married and that she was his fiancée just kind of felt like comedic filler to soften us up before the end.
There’s no way to review this episode without spoilers so here’s the warning for those who haven’t been watching the show – I am about to go through the reveals.
The episode opened by confirming a lot of what we’d been suspecting and that is that all the kids are in fact clones and the reason they’ve been dumped in space is most likely because of the new law that got passed on their home planet. I kind of called it last week and had been wondering about it for awhile, but I did get one crucial thing wrong:
“We also get some more wondering about how all these kids ended up getting spaced and after some blood testing results raise at least one interesting point I think we’re back to wondering about the whole new law on Earth and whether or not all these kids are cloned or part of some kind of experiment and are now being hidden from compulsory DNA testing.”
Karandi – episode 8 review.
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Yeah, it is a big thing I got wrong here. And it wasn’t so much the idea of it being an experiment, though it wasn’t. It was actually a really horrible plot by a group of people who legitimately need the award for worst parents ever (though I guess most of them didn’t see themselves as parents) and it tied in with Zack’s father’s memory transference research and I guess we should have put that thread together. But no, the thing I actually got wrong was that it wasn’t a law on Earth.
End of the episode they finally can see their home using the newly repaired telescope and I realised that not one of them actually called it Earth. And then Polina saw the screen and she called it out. That wasn’t Earth. It wasn’t her home. But it was theirs.
So now we have to wonder is there a connection between Earth and the planet Astra where the kids have come from. Was Polina only in that capsule for 12 years, or given it is a different planet could it have been a lot longer. Like, she was searching for a new home for Earth because of some disaster and then she went into hibernation. Humans colonised the new world and many generations later they have now come across her? Maybe.
I love that despite getting a lot of answers there’s still so much to wonder about. I can’t wait for the next episode.
The full series review can be found here.
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Karandi James
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Images from: Kanata no Astra. Dir. M Andou. Lerche. 2019.
Most series would have been content with the clone reveal. The foreshadowing was solid, and I’d seen the same things you did.
But no, this is Astra Lost in Space, so they couldn’t be content with that. They had to go all Plus Ultra on us with the Earth/Astra reveal!
You should have seen my poor braining trying to think back through every episode, trying to recall if anyone mentioned the name “Earth…”
They got me on that point, too!
This show is just so much fun to watch…
It is a bit weird though that when they named the space ship Astra no one mentioned, ‘oh just like home’ or something.
Still, it was a very nicely timed and well delivered reveal which on top of the one we were expecting made this episode great to watch.