Spores [she/her]

The show always wants to bridge the extraordinary with the ordinary.

That’s an interesting observation that I missed! And yeah, there definitely is an extra layer to being one of the firsts to set foot on a new frontier only to face the same alienating factors that corporatization always brings like with the insurance, souvenirs, and poverty.

It’s kind of hard to comment on stuff without spoiling things since I’ve already watched this haha.

It seems like there is an exploration into the line between passion/dedication vs obsession with the introduction of the Roland character. It must be hard aging and being faced with inevitability and nothingness of death especially if your self worth and pride is entirely based on something you can no longer do. I guess it would kind of fuck with you as an astronaut especially because it is such a dangerous job so death is something you are always faced with and have to normalize. Plus you’re stuck in space for a huge chunk of your life so it becomes all you have.

Then, the other thing is Ai’s infectious enthusism for the moon and for buying souvenirs apparently and half that souvenir shop is that big pink mascot. They turned space in one massive company town and then told everyone it’s Disney Land. That’s a terrifying thought right there.

I agree. Reminds me of this post. Even the moon is not safe from super tacky branding and products.

I actually have a bit of an opposite take as you which is that this ep offers a systemic critique but with main characters who are not class conscious. For example, characters will act when faced with something obviously wrong that is happening in front of them but do not (or maybe don’t realize they could) take collective action to oppose the larger forces that cause these situations to happen (such as profit motive, company hierarchy, nepotism and favor based corruption).

Interestingly, I think the person with the most “class consciousness” is the spoiled son who tries to get as much out of his lucky class position as possible. As typical of late stage capitalism, it’s only when the ruling class gets too comfortable and is super blatant do they face any sort of consequence.

Also yes, I do like the way they included the points system which is def some dumb shit I can see PMC types coming up.

It’s true that the plaque bearing the INTO logo is what changes her mind, but why wouldn’t it be on there, seeing as they were the ones that won the conflict? While still in the ship, she says the plaque’s a message of peace and therefore it is important, but that message loses all importance when she sees who it is that’s spreading the message. Surely, she has prior knowledge about INTO, that I cannot believe that just the logo would break her enthusiam and optimism.

For me, I interpreted the situation as Ai naively jumping to conclusions too quickly. Like she probably imagined something that asked for peace or pointed out the horrors of war rather than a self congratulatory thing by imperialist powers. Kind of like if someone told you about a poster on climate change but it turned out to be made by an oil company and is about how much that company has helped or whatever.

I agree with you regarding hachi. Their relationship is something I don’t particularly like about this show. I think his statement was mainly to serve as exposition for the audience and not really a factor in convincing her. I only mentioned it incase you missed it.

That was a weird 180 that came out of nowhere

You may have missed a bit. She changed her mind after seeing the plaque because it had an INTO logo (INTO is kind of like the show’s version of IMF or UN which is a group of rich countries who profit from space development) and realized it was propaganda . The plaque stated that it was INTO who opposed an “evil regime” and brought “freedom and justice” to which Hachi dismissed and mentioned that INTO were the ones who began the conflict in the first place.

I think it’s worth noting because I found this to be an actually decent take on imperialism from an anime.

This one is kind of hard to watch because it forces me to confront similar feelings as hachi as im at a point in my life where i feel like I’m in a lengthy limbo. It’s hard to face what you expect of your life as a child vs what is it is under capitalism. Also only ambitions that are careerist and serve the status quo are seen as 'reasonable as opposed to those that provide personal fulfillment.

You’re welcome! This was an anime I enjoyed when I was younger but missed a lot of the themes. I found it most compelling when it’s somewhat self contained and goes thru the day to day lives of the characters. There are a lot of touching moments in the show and I really like the art style. There are some problematic aspects unfortunately but there are a lot of very well written and interesting episodes that are worth watching.

I’d like to suggest planetes.

uhhh no. This would cause wayy more drama and we don’t really have the userbase to be banning people if they’re not breaking rules.