Review of Astra Lost in Space

I usually drop shows that I don’t like. Although this time it was different – I felt obliged to finish this. I love sci-fi. And at first episode this anime left very good impression, so deep down while watching this series I hoped: perhaps, perhaps I was wrong and this anime actually is good. And this is what I realized.. This anime could have been a masterpiece. Had it followed its sci-fi survival route. Instead, we got some teenage soap drama with idiots in space kind of comedy(?) series that couldn’t decide what it was. That really hit on my nerves. In more ways than one.I think people who enjoy sci-fi and good writing will dislike this anime.

How can something have such an amazing setting but be ruined by terrible cast/writing?
I guess it’s simple:
1. Add pointless characters.
2. Put them in illogical situations where it’s impossible survive, but they do.
3. Make story boring by making all the problems solvable within half episode (let me remind you they are travelling in vast space and trying to survive on unknown planets).
4. Fanservice (no need to explain this, but in a nutshell you add nice visuals and body parts to cover up the lack of plot)

The explanations below may contain SPOILERS. It is needed to reason my opinion:

- POINTLESS CHARACTERS -
The characters I did (kind of) like at first were Kanata, Aries, the biology boy, and perhaps that snipe-shooter boy, the genius and transgender. All the other characters pissed me off. Why were they there? Especially the character whose entire story arc revolved around singing and some stupid drama with her mother. I don’t even bother remembering her name. How is this related to space travel in any way? Just go sing in your local bar or something, I don’t care about you. Don’t be useless. Later she becomes pretty and useless. What an upgrade.

Then the blond chick Quitterie whose name is the only good thing about her: she Quits thinking and wants to Quit all the time. And whines all the time. She is the only person with legit medical background but somehow DOES NOT BELIEVE IN CLONING. I think she is the least person who needs any explanation of what cloning means, but for some reason it was mainly explained to her.
And in the end she becomes a FASHION MODEL so who the hell cares about her medical background anymore.
These small inconsistencies in story is what made me pissed off the most, therefore this character is broken.

I didn’t even care about the parents in this story. Their only purpose is to be bad and I get it. Whatever. Later it turns out that there was something more to them. But that was written so out of blue that I don’t care. Whatever.
And I forgot the small girl because she was just there for the plot sake but nothing more to her that I would care about. I might be heartless, but the writing made me so.

Later I realized that I didn’t care much about the transgender and sniper boy either. In addition, Kanata is stupid (jumps everywhere and loses limbs for the sake of arguments) and the genius boy is there for the plot convenience and some comic sketches with Quitterie. Perhaps the only character I did like was Aries, and that may have been because she had good first impression and some nice quotes. Spoiler warning: In the end she gets dumped by Kanata because even though they are married Kanata freaking travels away on his spaceship. And the biology boy was ruined by the reveal that he was a king’s clone, making him a drama king for the last couple episodes and some commercial hog at the end of the series. In the last episode seems like it is super convenient for him to just do whatever, even kill himself (I mean if you travel to space you always have to keep that in mind that you might). Who cares about the consistency of the world and nation building anyway? People with brains might, but it’s not needed in this show.

- FANSERVICE -
That beach episode was terrible. I don’t ever forgive them for my disappointment.

- ILLOGICAL SITUATIONS -
Of all the planets they go to, only one (in episode 7) proved to be dangerous enough to make the story interesting and realistic. But they failed that!
MAKE STORY BORING -> Lo and behold they find an identical ship on the same planet not too far away and can fix all their issues with few steps! Yay!

Some more notes:
Adding an additional member was at first disappointment for me. I kind of hoped that this is survival show and we are losing members, not gaining them but nonetheless the added character actually made this anime better (for few episodes). She was the only person we could relate to, so having this small mind game of Earth/Astra was pretty good. But the issue swiftly went over to clone soap opera so that’s was about it.

- THE ONLY GOOD THINGS -
The mentality. That in hard times you have to stay together and stay positive. But in the end everything was just so convenient for them, I don’t feel like cheering at all.
Also, visuals were good. But story is more important than visuals.

- END NOTE -
This anime is overrated due to its very good first impression. In the end, this series became a very bad show. Somewhat watchable, but very bad. Being bad is not always a negative thing. At least it’s not average, I will not forget this show. But I will remember it as a show that could have been so much more if it had better writing.