Review of Astra Lost in Space

I already read and reviewed the manga before this, so I don't feel the need to belabor the point with an introduction nor the basic plot summary. All you need to know is that a bunch of kids are sent to another planet for interplanetary camping, only to get sucked into a wormhole that spits them out into deep space, and they have to find a way to make it back home. As you know, I really liked the manga, and I was super excited when I found out an anime for it was going to be made. I couldn't wait to see how itwould look on the silver screen, and sure enough, it did meet my expectations reasonably enough. But the transition from one medium to another isn't always the smoothest, and I think Astra slightly suffered because of it.

The adaptation itself sticks pretty close to the manga, mostly compressing and leaving out some scenes in order to make use of its twelve/thirteen-episode runtime. But before I get to that, let's talk about the animation. It was done by a relatively new studio, Lerche, and...it shows. I mean, the character designs are nice, the colors are bright, and while the character movement isn't exactly the smoothest, it gets the job done, and any CGI that's used for things such as the spaceship and the environment is fairly well used. The background art in particular is fantastic, fully conveying every planet's beauty and underlying danger, from the plants to the animal designs. But one of the show's main flaws is that for SOME reason, somebody thought it'd be a great idea to have nearly EVERY scene, except the parts where the kids are actually in space, framed with with black aspect ratio blocks. Those in and of themselves aren't necessarily bad, but the way they're integrated here makes no sense. Visually, it winds up making several scenes look like they were chopped out of an original frame, and there are several parts where some characters look like parts of their heads got cut off because of it. It's really jarring, and I have no idea who thought this was a good idea.

Thankfully, the soundtrack is much better in this department. The opening and ending songs are great, with cheerful, upbeat tunes that convey the show's overall atmosphere and idealistic nature to a T, and the actual background music is the same way, with quite a bit of jazz influence in there, and I'm always a sucker for jazz. I couldn't find anything wrong with the soundtrack, as the entire thing is just great! I kinda wish Yunhua's songs were included in the OST, as they were beautiful. Considering she's voiced by Saori Hayami, who is well known for her elegant, mature singing voice, it's no surprise that they'd be well sung. Why aren't they included in the OST CD?!

I don't have much to say about the characters that I haven't already said in my review of the manga, other than that the anime is true to their characterizations. Plus, again, they all fulfill various character archetypes that are pretty common in anime at this point, and nothing new is done with them. I didn't find them to be bad in any way, as even if they were rather one-note, I still found them and their adventures fun to follow, though others may not. The voice acting was great though!...but Funicia's voice could get way too shrill at times, especially when she cried. It grated on my ears way too much. Luca is still awesome, and Quitterie is still an irritating tsundere girl at first.

So the anime is a pretty solid adaptation of the manga...though I do have to dock some points for several things. For one, the anime only has twelve episodes, with the first and last episodes being 45 minutes long as opposed to the regular 22 minutes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the manga itself was short, so with a good staff, they can make do with the short length and adapt the manga easily, right? Ehhh...some of the decisions made in transitioning from page to screen really baffled me. For one, in the second half of the episodes, when Aries needs to be saved from being out in space, Kanata uses a rope to get to her, and when he does, the other characters use the rope to pull them back once he hangs onto it again. For some reason, this was changed to everyone never using the rope again once Kanata and Aries are together, seemingly forgetting about it while trying to force some "If you drift away at this point you'll die" drama that's extremely artificial because, again, nobody thinks to use the damn rope! Not only that, instead of using said rope, the characters all hold hands and make a human chain for Kanata and Aries to use to get back to the ship, because power of friendship, am I right? Why throw away a perfectly logical and plausible solution in favor of a forced, superficial moment of triumph when it would have been easier to just use the damn rope?! Plus, if they had used the rope, they could have saved a lot of episode time and used it to flesh out the characters and their situation more!

Furthermore, in the process of adapting the manga, the producers of the anime wound up changing and leaving out a lot of details in order to fit the episode length. Some things being left out are understandable (An entire flashback detailing how Quitterie's upbringing made her develop a haughty personality when the anime shortened it to just a few shots of her childhood, which establish things just fine, and various scenes of the kids traversing the various planets), others...not so much, such as some really important plot and character details and the main reason why the children were chucked out into space in the first place. I mean, the entire second half of volume one is crammed into one whole episode (The ones focusing on Vilavurs), so it's inevitable that some things wouldn't make it into the anime. Ironically, the anime also adds entire new scenes that weren't present in the manga, with one taking place during the final episode. I won't spoil it for you, but I thought it was a wonderfully done scene that truly gave one character some much needed closure and added a lot of depth to him.

Overall, it was a decent adaptation that unfortunately was marred by a plethora of production issues and odd adaptational decisions. But on its own, it's still a fun sci-fi adventure that deserves more love than it gets. Check it out if you feel like watching a lighthearted, plain good space adventure mystery.