Sunday 5 August 2012

Space Brothers - Episode 19

We finally reach the penultimate day of the would-be astronauts testing as Space Brothers hits its nineteenth episode - after all of the tension and struggles of that period, it seems that those involved have finally turned a corner.

While we're still left assuming that Team C have torn one another limb from limb by this point, things are looking surprisingly calm and even decidedly cheerful within both Team A and B - it seems that Makabe has won his struggle for leadership of his group, while the final green cards dished out to both himself and Mizoguchi allows them to understand more fully what they've been through, while Mutta and company seem to have taken the lack of food within their group in their stride.


With food almost completely out in the approach to their last day, Mutta saves the day by scraping together just enough ingredients (and indeed knowledge) to make udon to fill the gap - an activity which also serves to tighten the bonds between the group as they chat about all things space-related and find plenty of common ground to come together as friends.  In short, everything is lookingly decidedly hunky-dory here - but will that be the case when the time comes for each group to choose two individuals they believe to be worthy future astronauts?

Although I'd still contend that this particular arc of Space Brothers has been spread a little too thin in places, and indeed I'd argue that this episode does exactly that as it threatened to turn into a cooking show with a "how to make udon" special, there's still no shortage of enjoyment to be derived simply from watching the show's characters bouncing off one another and getting along - it's oddly satisfying to see everything come good for our main two groups of trainees at the end of it all, while the next episode finally promises some tense pay-off to all of this build-up as decision time looms large.  Right now though, I'm mostly just excited to see where the series plans to head next now that its current arc is finally being wrapped up.

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