I finished Space Brothers.
In the last ten episodes it managed to introduce one of the worst recent representations of a black man I've seen in anime for a while.
Holy shit.
He's Jamaican and says "Yah, man!" at least ten times in his debut episode. He has dreadlocks, and someone comments that he never washes his hair. Fuck. He says "hey I wash once every five days" or something like that. Not sure the exact number, but he basically agrees. Oof.
It actually cools off on that shit after two-ish episodes, and he becomes a more reasonable character, but man that was rough.
It's a shame that happened so late in the show that it really stuck with me. I like the show a lot overall. Especially after it changed slots to, I'm told, an older audience's time slot. They start introducing some actual real conflict, like PTSD, and fatal incurable diseases, and how people deal with these things. Maybe not with as much gravitas as these issues deserve, and also why the hell would NASA just throw their highly trained successful astronaut under the bus without even trying to provide therapy, I feel like that's wholly unrealistic...
Ahem. Okay so I have some issues. IT's not a perfect show. But it is light-hearted, it's fun, it has lovable characters, and it's incredibly inspirational. Or at least, I found it to be so. Watching Space Brothers made me feel like I could do anything I wanted to do. Of course, Nanba's basically a genius, even if he acts like a doofus and has bad luck, but I'm not a genius... but that's beside the point! Good fun show.
Yaaaaaay!
