Space Brothers - Episode 24

We're back in Houston as Mutta returns to living with brother Hibito to prepare for the final round of astronaut selection exams - a joyful event perhaps, were it not for the presence of dog-cum-alarm clock Apo.

Still, there's little time to dawdle for either brother - while Hibito is being put through his paces learning how to operate and use the lunar vehicles he'll need to employ when he reaches the surface of the Moon, so Mutta finds himself operating a vehicle of his own... albeit nothing more than a lawnmover as he helps out Ozzy with his day job.

As the episode progresses, so it sets up its main thrust of the coming weeks as we learn that Hibito's selection to journey to the moon was actually a major surprise - a surprise which came at the expense of a far more highly qualified Japanese astronaut named Takio Azuma.  While Mutta spends some time hanging out with Hibito's stand-in, Lowry, it becomes clear that Azuma might be the biggest obstacle between Mutta and his dream, serving as he does on the committee which will make the ultimate decision on which astronauts are selected.  It seems that Azuma's legacy and his unspoken rivalry with Mutta's brother also hangs heavily over Hibito himself, causing the latter to form doubts of his own.

While it goes about shifting its focus, this week's Space Brothers is understandably a staid affair, happy to simply go about its business without drama or fireworks and letting its characters carry things through as required.  As a result, this was a decidedly unspectacular instalment of the series, but one that holds plenty of additional promise just around the corner - promise that it will hopefully deliver upon, and given what it's managed so far I have few doubts that it'll be able to execute whatever it puts its mind to.