Astra Lost in Space – 01 (First Impressions) – The Final Frontier: Getting Along

ALiS immediately sets the mood and grabs our attention by throwing us into the inky nothingness of space to float with poor Aries Spring (Minase Inori). She has no idea how she got there, but is understandably terrified, until she spots someone approaching her with an open hand.

Now that we know how bad things are going to get for Aries, the narrative rewinds back to the day Aries sets of for the five-day “Planet Camp.” Shortly after arriving at the spaceport, her bag is stolen, but the very fit and valorous Hoshijuma Kanata gets it back…only to be arrested by cop-bots.

No matter, Aries and Kanata eventually join their six fellow high school students (plus one little sister with an alter-ego in the form of a hand puppet) at the gate and before you know it, they’re on a 9-hour FTL journey to Planet McPa.

The meetup at the gate and the trip paint the characters in broad strokes, but the bottom line is they’re all very different personalities—pretty typical for a Lerche show. Within a couple minutes of setting foot on McPa, those clashing personalities are immediately tested by a weird floating orb, which I’ll just call a singularity. One by one, it sucks up the students who can’t outrun it.

After a very trippy visual sequence, everyone finds themselves floating in space, near a planet that doesn’t quite look like McPa. You couldn’t ask for a more nightmarish scenario, especially considering these are just kids with zero experience in space. Fortunately, there’s a spaceship in orbit, just within the range of their thruster suits.

They head to the ship, open the thankfully unlocked hatch, and climb aboard. There’s a grand sense of adventure afoot, and the music really helps to sell it. That’s when they realize there are only eight of them—poor Aries is still out there, drifting further and further away.

With insufficient fuel for a two-way trip in their suits, Kanata decides to use a tether to reach Aries, and we return to the end of the cold open, with Kanata reaching out to take Aries’ hand…only his rope is just too short. Disaster! Whatever to do? Kanata decides to go for broke and detach himself from the tether so he can grab an eternally grateful Aries.

But while they’re safe for the moment, there’s another problem: on the way back Kanata runs out of fuel, but his trajectory is five degrees off, meaning he and Aries will fly right past the ship. It’s time for the others, putting aside their initial differences to create a human chain outside of the airlock that snags Aries and Kanata and pulls them aboard.

That’s when they learn of several more problems—there are always more problems in space than in…not space, after all. They’re 5,012 light years, or more than three months, away from home, with only enough water for 20 days and only enough food for three.

With the aid of Zack Walker, he of the 200 IQ and spaceship license, he manages to calculate a route that will enable them to resupply at planets within twenty days of one another…but there’s only one possible route. Even so, the fact that there’s a remotely feasible plan bolsters everyone’s spirits.

With hope in their hearts (and probably very little food in their stomachs) Kanata is chosen as their captain, and they all take their places as the ship’s FTL activates, and they head off, through hardships, to the stars, on a very simple mission: Get Home Safe.

The last act seems to blow by extremely fast as solutions present themselves almost too easily, and while many members of the cast showed different sides, the jury is still out on others, but over all this was a strong start to a good old-fashioned space adventure. No convoluted factional conflicts or supernatural chosen ones…just nine kids probably in over their heads, but who have no choice but to grow up and do the best they can.

Macross Delta – 13

In case we forgot, Macross Delta reminded us it can present an epic climactic air-and-space battle, augmented with the dualling, increasingly powerful songs from Prince Heinz and Walkure. But before the aerial battle down on Ragna, both Johnson and Gramia play a little game of chess with their respective armadas, and the Sigur Valens’ stereo system gets knocked out. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Squadrons engage the Valens, but Hayate, Mirage and Delta go after the Aerial Knights led by Keith.

Delta also has to contend with NUNS, which considers their gambit a failure and detonates a nuke-type reaction bomb in the Protoculture Ruins, causing a massive explosion that threatens to consume Delta Squadron. Hayate manages to escape the blast radius, but his plane is wrecked and he has to eject. Freyja steps down from the stage to check on Hayate’s status, but it’s Mirage who rescues him, and gets a warm, unexpected hug in return.

Not long after that, the ruins reappear in a different form, and connect with the Windermeran flagship, enabling Heinz to pipe his song out to the masses of Ragna, resulting in instant Var contamination. Johnson orders all units to pick up as many civilians as they can and retreat from Ragna, meaning for all intents and purposes the Windermerans have won.

Walkure fights to counter Heinz’s song, but Heinz risks his life to boost his output, and the Windermerans take a shot that shatters Walkure’s stage shield, injuring Mikumo (who shilds Freyja from harm, showing she’s not all about herself). The Valens fires a huge cannon to finish the Island ship, but Johnson swoops in just in time to absorb the hit before plunging into the sea in one of the many fist-pumping moments in the episode. With that, Freyja realizes her song simply must reach Hayate at all costs, so she jumps off the ship and starts flying, using her rune and her voice to ride the wind.

Hayate gets his groove back, is able to read Keith’s moves, and actually seems to best him, While Mirage rescues Freyja from a watery grave. Both Freyja and Mirage then risked their lives to keep Hayate—and their longstanding flames—alive for Part Two. Walkure joins Freyja’s extended arrangement of the OP, the Elysion emerges from the waves and takes a shot at the Valens, and Keith takes a nosedive towards the ruins (it’s unlikely he’s dead though). Walkure, Delta, and the Ragnan evacuees escape Ragna, now a Windermere-held world like the others, and Gramia dies shortly thereafter.

Lord Roid is put in charge and announces the completion of the Starwind Sector. But they’ve surely only won this latest battle. As long as Walkure have a voice and the Deltas have their planes, the war isn’t over yet. Until next season.

Macross Delta – 12

To quote Ron Burgundy, of all people: “Boy, that escalated quickly.” I thought we were being set up for a huge battle in Al Shahal, but Heinz’s song is so powerful, Al Shahal falls in fifteen minutes, putting a very large target on Ragna, the last world they haven’t annexed.

I like how off-guard Walkure and Delta Platoon are by this news; it matched my own surprise quite nicely. I knew our heroes would be heading into battle very soon; I just assumed Al Shahal would last longer than fifteen minutes—shorter even than the running time of this episode.

But you know what? I’m glad the stakes have so rapidly escalated. I like the mild sense of dread and disquiet everyone wears on their faces, and the desperation in all of the remaining forces amassing at Ragna for what could be their only shot at a serious counterattack. The only reason they have any time to prepare at all is because King Gramia won’t allow Heinz to sing again so soon; though Heinz says he’s ready to sing again at once.

While Heinz rests, Arad promotes Mirage to 1st Lieutenant and puts her in charge of Delta Platoon, while Keith continues to question Roid’s dedication while Roid worries that Heinz, Keith, and Gramia are all intent on burning out in a blaze of righteous glory…without any plans for the future of Windermere. As Roid puts it, a new wind must come to take the place of the old, just as Mirage must step into Messer’s place.

Ernest Johnson is prominent this week, and not just because he’s the commander of the counterattack; he actually trained King Gramia when he was a lad (the king is 35, old for a Windermeran, but no one else). He knows how proud he is and how far he’ll go to preserve his people’s honor. Then a liason from NUNS arrives to inform Johnson that his forces are to destroy the Protoculture ruins on Ragna to prevent the Windies from taking control of the planet and the cluster.

This plan seems akin to releasing all the ghosts from their custom-built storage facility in the basement of a run-down firehouse in Ghostbusters (the original, not the upcoming film): a bad idea that could have unpredictable, possibly cataclysmic consequences. Put simply, the ruins are dug in too deep in Ragna, who knows what destroying them would do to the planet? Probably nothing good.

When Lady M gets NUNs to agree not to destroy the ruins until after Johnson’s forces counterattack, I felt very relieved for the people of Ragna. Meanwhile, Walkure and Delta mentally prepare for the imminent battle of their lives. Hayate, Freyja, and Mirage all independently end up on the same flight deck, though Mirage hides while the other two talk, though I like how she doesn’t know why she’s hiding.

She catches a couple of tender nuggets between the couple about things like how far they’ve come together, the mutual respect they’ve developed, and their commitment to keep fighting for each other, their friends, and their freedom, but it’s not like they snog or anything. Even better, Mirage’s comms blow up, giving away her position, and rather than run off in a tizzy, Hayate has her stand her ground and encourages her as he and Freyja encouraged one another. All three intend to get through this, together.

When the previously stationary Macross Elysion finally burbles to life and lifts off into orbit and fold space, it’s a pretty impressive and awe-inspiring moment: very much the ‘good-guy’ equivalent of the Windermeran flagship launch last week.

Then the Windermere fleet intercepts them, and we see how comparitively puny the Elysion is, and I got a lump in my throat. Okay, maybe this isn’t going to be as easy as giving the aggressive schoolyard bully a bloody nose…

In terms of raising stakes, building tension, putting us in the heads of its characters, and sheer adrenaline extraction, this episode of Delta put all the pieces of the previous eleven together and delivered a must-watch experience, even absent the actual battle. I hope the payoff matches the excitement of the setup.