Space Brothers - Episode 17

Between broken clocks and alarms sounding in the middle of the night, the stress is palpably growing as we reach the final straight of the current selection exam.

While Team B have been handling the "phantom alarm" problem for a little while now, it's a new experience for Team A as it sounds in the middle of the night - by this point, I assume we can discount the members of Team C as having all murdered one another in the night given how long it's been since we last heard about them.  Anyhow, I digress - rather than simply ignoring the alarm or not worrying about it until morning, the crew of Team A carry out a full-on (and fruitless) search to try and find its source.

It's at this point that Mutta beings to join the dots as to what's going on - seeing how suspiciously and out of character Yasushi is behaving makes it clear to the eagle-eyed Mutta that he's the culprit in some way, shape or form, but it doesn't answer perhaps the more pressing question of why.  As Mutta ponders this, he's struck with a memory of a previous conversation he's had, and upon pinning down this memory he recalls a discussion while watching Hibito train at NASA regarding so-called "green cards" - special instructions given to one individual in secret to test the ability of others, or a group as a whole, to function under stress or when someone else has made a mistake.  That problem solved in Mutta's mind, his reaction to this knowledge seems to calm down the entirety of Team A... but what about their food shortage?  That can only be another JAXA green card prank, right Mutta?

Although it's arguably taken a little too long to get there, it was immensely satisfying to see Mutta join the dots and figure out what was going on within the exam, even if it requires quite a suspension of disbelief that nobody else had mooted this possibility right at the start - I'm no prospective astronaut, but I've seen enough Big Brother to know what the purpose of such activities would be.  I'm still a little concerned that we still feel a little way off the climax of this current selection exam - I'm not too sure how much more drama or entertainment can be wrought from it at this point, and I'm really eager to move onto the crux of these tests so that we can head off in a new direction.  I get the feeling we still have a little way to go before this takes place however, so much like the would-be astronauts themselves I guess I'm just going to have to remain patient.