Space Brothers: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Space Brothers: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 21, 2015

It’s been a bit of an education watching my two sons grow up and navigate the territory of being brothers together. I personally only had sisters, and ones older enough than I was that they were actually out of the house pretty much by the time I was in elementary school, so I never had the experience of having a male, or really any, sibling around for much of my childhood and adolescence. There’s definitely a “different” dialectic to two boys, especially if they’re around the same age, than that between a brother and sister or perhaps even between sisters. My boys, for example, have traversed a rather wide range of behaviors toward each other, from grudging tolerance to physical threats and occasional lashing out to, now that one is in college and the other getting close, seemingly bona fide friendship and rapport. There’s more than a bit of that variance in brotherly relationships front and center in the largely enjoyable Space Brothers, an anime based on a popular manga by Chūya Koyama. The prologue of Space Brothers takes place in 2006, when siblings Mutta and Hibito Namba stumble upon an unidentified flying object while out in the woods one evening. That sets their imaginations ablaze, albeit in different ways. Little brother Hibito, born under felicitous circumstances (or at least simultaneously with an important sports victory, which narrator Mutta takes as portentous), seems to have a future paved in figurative gold, easily achieving his dream of becoming a world famous astronaut by the timeframe of the series' main arc in 2025. Older brother Mutta is not nearly so lucky, though. The series quickly details Mutta’s string of bad luck, which begins with the unfortunate “stars” (and/or a devastating sports loss) under which he was born and then continues through a litany of disasters, culminating in Mutta losing his less than stellar (sorry) job at a car company. That unease generates much of the subtextual content of Space Brothers, though the anime ultimately settles for a somewhat more traditional depiction of a hapless adult trying to forge his way toward long deferred dreams.

One of the perhaps unintentionally ironic elements of Space Brothers is that in 2025 international space efforts are still governmentally run, not having been handed over whole cloth (whole rocket?) to private industry. Japan has promoted Hibito to be their national emissary to an international expedition to the moon being run by NASA. Japan’s own space agency is called JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency), like NASA a real life entity coopted for Space Brothers’ tale of heroism and sibling relationships.

In a plot point that will probably have some resonance with those who did grow up with brothers, Mutta, who has had his ups and downs with Hibito, reacts very badly when one of his coworkers (a supervisor, actually) insults Hibito. Brothers can come close to killing each other, but if an outsider intrudes, it’s a virtual death sentence (for the intruder). Mutta’s bad reaction ends up delivering him into the nightmare scenario of having to move back in with his parents, though perhaps surprisingly, he’s also given a lifeline of sorts when Hibito recommends that Mutta not give in to despair and instead try to qualify for Japan’s astronaut training program.

The rest of the first thirteen episodes that comprise this first volume of Space Brothers then tends to exploit the sometimes rather improbable testing regimen that Mutta undergoes once he is indeed accepted into JAXA’s astronaut training program. Almost from the get go, little supposedly “unrelated” issues turn out to be tests, administered by a kind of Big Brother-esque coalition of supposedly secret superiors who keep track of Mutta and the other entrants in the program via an array of various surveillance maneuvers. Mutta initially comes to the attention of some of these “watchers” due to Mutta’s ability to notice things that some of his cohorts let slip by.

The series tends to be a bit repetitive as it details the various testing regiments Mutta undergoes, but it also delivers a perhaps surprising amount of character development for Mutta along the way. There are passing nods given to the other astronaut wannabes as well, though they tend to be largely ciphers whose function is squarely related to the main Mutta storyline. Perhaps surprisingly, while the whole relationship between Mutta and Hibito is paramount to understanding the emotional content of the series, the two do relatively little interacting in this first set of episodes.

Space Brothers may turn out to be a bit of a disappointment for those expecting some kind of grand interstellar adventure series, and perhaps future seasons will exploit more of that angle. Instead, this opening baker’s dozen of episodes is much quieter, an examination of one major character and several supporting characters that tends to move relatively slowly as it deals with issues like realizing one’s dreams and coming to terms with the fact that sometimes one’s adult life doesn’t exactly pan out the way a youthful imagination supposes it will.

The real pull here tends to be something that’s alluded to but not overdone to the point of annoyance. Mutta is, after all, the older brother and has therefore taken it upon himself (rightly or wrongly) to supposedly be the standard bearer for Hibito. What’s actually happened, though, is that Hibito has surpassed his brother, at least in his career arc, leaving Mutta to wonder exactly what his place in the world and (perhaps even more importantly) his family might be. Mutta may finally be able to slip the surly bonds of Earth, but Space Brothers shows quite compellingly that he’s bound inexorably to his brother, no matter where in the big, wide universe the two may find themselves.

Space Brothers: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Space Brothers: Collection 1 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Space Brothers perhaps at least a little surprisingly comes from the vaunted A-1 production house, an animation consortium that has provided a wealth of rather nicely detailed anime including such titles as Fractale: Complete Collection and even Fairy Tail: Part 1. Space Brothers is an often curiously minimalistic looking anime, one that has some excellent pop due to a nicely varied palette, but very little in its design aesthetic that's even slightly innovative. Mutta's design is quite winning, with a huge quasi-Afro hairdo and a bit of stubble on his lip and chin (at least at times), but some of the other characters look decidedly generic, something that isn't helped by a general lack of convincing detail. All of this said, line detail is sharp and well defined, contrast is consistent and the image is decently stable. Once again banding turns up, especially in lighter gradients in moments like fades and segues.

Space Brothers: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Space Brothers: Collection 1 features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix in the original Japanese (with forced English subtitles). (No English dub is offered on this two disc set.) The track provides solid reproduction and a nice and at times very vivid soundstage that more than adequately supports the series' dialogue, voiceover and sound effects. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is wide, though not bombastically so.

Space Brothers: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animation (1080p; 1:32)

Space Brothers: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Space Brothers: Collection 1 isn't anxious to get to outer space very quickly, and so prospective viewers will need to set their sights decidedly more earthbound to appreciate what this series has to offer. Much more of a character study than its interstellar title might suggest, Space Brothers nicely details the nurturing but competitive relationship between Mutta and Hibito, even as it tends to focus more squarely on Mutta's attempts to navigate the testing regimens at JAXA. It will be interesting to see exactly where this rather intimate feeling show goes in subsequent seasons, perhaps "trekking" boldly where no brothers have gone before. Technical merits are generally strong, and even without much in the way of supplements, Space Brothers: Collection 1 comes Recommended.