The End Of The Journey, And The Beginning
Astra Lost in Space Episodes 11 + 12
For various reasons I didn’t get to take any screen grabs of these two episodes, though I’ll honestly have to watch them again anyway because even if I’d been trying to get images, I’d have been too engrossed in the story to remember to do it. Episodes 11 and 12 of Kanata no Astra deliver a suitable ending to what was one of the more interesting stories of the Summer anime season.
While the show isn’t without its flaws, the survival in space narrative with the kids uncovering the truth as to why they were sent into space in the first place was very nicely handled and made for pretty compelling viewing. With episode 12 going double length, as the first episode did, we’ve managed to wrap everything up nicely.
I will admit, I didn’t expect episode 11 to go that far. I kind of expected an emotional climax to the reveal of Charce being the traitor from episode 10, however I didn’t expect any character to get genuinely injured. Admittedly, given the technology level of the society it was clear that if they made it home they could do something about the injury, but still that must have been horrifically painful.
And that’s where Astra’s charm really works. We went from something that intense to the characters laughing about it and making jokes and it didn’t feel like a jarring shift. I’m not entirely sure I’d be laughing about it so soon after the incident and yet with this group, with how they had coped with things up until that point, it kind of worked.
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I’m desperately trying to avoid outright spoilers because I do believe this is an anime you should definitely watch and guessing where it is going is half the fun. I do feel their arrival back home went a little too smoothly in the end. It felt like they needed one more stumbling block or at least some kind of conflict but it seems that everything did work out okay. Which made for an ending that allowed us to see where each character went next and how the society changed but felt a little bit far-fetched given the grand conspiracy they were about to reveal.
Still, that’s a minor nit-pick in an anime that was thoroughly enjoyable. I do plan on doing a binge watch of the whole thing before I write the series review but to be honest this is one anime I’d love to own on DVD so now I’ll just have to wait and see if it comes out in Australia at some point.
The full series review can be found here.
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Karandi James
Want To Read More About Astra Lost in Space?
Images from: Kanata no Astra. Dir. M Andou. Lerche. 2019.
Ok, will do. Just taking my time with it now because I want to savor it.
Good willpower. I can’t do that. Once I open a book I devour it.
I’d love to have a physical copy of this series too. I needed more of it, so I started reading the manga of it to see what was missed.
Let me know how the manga goes. I am weighing up whether to read it.