Based on what I’ve seen of reactions to Free on the internet, it seems like a large quantity of people are ruling it out with one glance at the promo material rather than 20 minutes of episode time. It’s becoming increasingly obvious how much of a shame that is, because this show is complete in ways it didn’t even have to be to be an enjoyable ride.
Recently, I’ve been taking on a major item that’s been on my checklist of must-read manga, Adachi Mitsuru’s Touch.* Though it’s not as popular in the States, it’s widely regarded as a classic in Japan. As usual, the conventional wisdom was dead-on and this classic has been a joy to read, bursting with old-timey summer atmosphere, gradually-blooming romance, and dust-covered baseball. I also noticed that several newer works I’ve read before this draw heavy inspiration from it.** Picking just one chapter from the thirty I’ve blazed through so far was difficult. I ultimately settled on this one because, among other things, it rolls out a musical montage to no music.
Last week’s episode was an utterly amazing display of great body language and visualism on display, coupled with some great human drama. This week’s wasn’t a big step down, as we got a lot of characterization for Serika and Sharon in addition to the titular brothers.
The reason this episode post took so long is that there was so much brilliance in this episode I legitimately had to watch the episode a good 4 more times, take my reaction notes from different runs, organize them, and edit in some shot-for-shot analysis for the past two days. There was too much stuff both important and sublimely executed that I couldn’t not talk about all of it. Short version: It takes some effort to parlay one character’s death flags into development for another who’s never met her before. This is one episode I’ll be coming back to along with Dear Hibito and Brian as go-tos for why Space Brothers is the best anime of the decade to date, easily the best episode of anime to air since I started this blog, and probably one of my all-time favorites. Like its main character, this show has no ceiling.
So Hibito got right back to Earth, greeted the crowd, then collapsed onto a hospital bed due to gravity fatigue. Not much to say about the scenes where Hibito was readjusting to Earth’s gravity. It’s a real part of what astronauts go through, so of course Space Brothers handles it realistically. The writer was fun enough to approach it from a few different angles, the best of which was of course ultra-heavy Apo.
That bit does make one feel sorry for those with German Sheperds
Despite the fact that this episode featured a rocket launch of sorts, it was very much a lull episode. Events were treated with little fanfare and passed by quickly. No surprise here. This show is far too polished to waste time building up obvious fakeouts.
Following up on the impressive (well, to me) discovery that Inu x Boku SS is Square Enix’s top manga, I had another thought. It went something like this; “Well, that anime was pretty darn good, and I know it sold a fair amount of Blu-Rays. I wonder if that has anything to do with how successful the manga is right now?” And so I took to the Oricon rankings, checking for shows from Winter and Spring 2012 that came from manga source material, and looking to see if they experienced a boost in sales. So I put a lot of numbers into a lot of spreadsheets, got distracted by the Saurday anime slate, and made a lot of graphs. If you’ve ever wondered why manga publishers sponsor anime, this should be an entertaining read.
So. Much. Paper.
I kind of understand why Space Brothers has a huge overlap with fandoms of various battle series. One, it’s an objectively good show with very understandable messages. Two, it’s been on crunchyroll for a year, so it’s had plenty of time to catch the eye of the people who come there for Naruto (i.e. the majority of users). Three, similar to a good battle series like Hunter x Hunter, it can set an arc based on a very rigid set of rules and ideas, but grow very complicated very quickly, while being a thrillfest the whole way. The sealed-capsule arc was a great example of that approach in action, as was the more recent lunar-crash arc. The comeback competition is really just the latest example, this time featuring Engineering, but knowing that it’s somewhat formulaic doesn’t make it any less exciting to watch.
Bonus points for viewers who happen to have built a robot before
It’s like this show is making up for lost time in the recaps by showing off its high gear constantly. In addition to the conclusion of a great flashback, we got an absolutely killer stinger for the engineering competition. This is Ayumu Watanabe’s natural rhythm.
Full Disclosure: I like making lists. This particular list is the result of an afternoon of me sitting down and trying to list all the anime episode titles I remember. This correlates pretty well with my actual favorite anime episodes, because I’ve seen most of them enough times to remember their titles. When making this one, I set myself a limit at 60 and reached it fairly quickly. After making the list, I actually ranked them. So yeah, had a lot of fun with this one.
Animetics 