This was probably Space Brothers’ best episode in a while. I could have said a lot of good things about it; it plowed through a lot of time awful quickly, it made a pretty fun Terminator reference, Deniel’s retirement was cool, Murakoshi made it to space, Mutta’s getting a spot on a backup crew, and a bunch of other stuff. But, unfortunately, I’ll only remember it for one feature, and not a positive one. In previous episodes, there were instances of light xenophobic attitudes, but it wasn’t a consistent enough thing to be a concrete problem. Too, some non-Japanese were shown in a positive light at various points. But there’s really no justifying this:

There are two reasons this could have happened. Either the anime staff were totally clueless about what depicting a black person as a gorilla meant (unlikely given the amount of research that’s gone into other parts of the show), or they knew and did it anyway. Either way, it’s stupid and extremely disappointing. I just hope to hell this doesn’t become a regular feature of the show.