Sunday 2 March 2014

Space Brothers - Episode 96

While Mutta is taking a bit of a break and dancing the night away with Serika, our attentions in this week's Space Brothers turn to Kenji Makabe and his current state of affairs.

If nothing else, Kenji is certainly busy, with his wife just weeks away from giving birth to their second child, Fuuka keeping him occupied and work providing him with testing and training on a project so secret that he and fellow Japanese astronaut Nitta don't even know exactly what it is they're working on.


In spite of all this to worry about, Kenji seems to feel like he's stuck at something of an impasse - he's a father, but not a "proper" one with the time he wants to devote to Fuuka or his second child, and he's an astronaut in name but not one that looks set to be travelling into space any time soon.  All of this soon changes rapidly however, as Kenji receives work of the extent of the mission for which he's training - the exploration of a passing asteroid - followed by news that his wife has gone into labour.

All in all, this is a really simple but effective episode of Space Brothers - there isn't exactly any complexity to Kenji's emotions, but nor does there need to be and the result is a pretty satisfying one overall.  I certainly hope that this isn't the last we see of him in the series, as his mission and family situation both seem ripe for plenty of fascinating moments moving forwards, and as a character he's more than likeable enough to carry a story arc of his own without any trouble whatsoever.

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